Article adapted from episode content.
Lately, much of my thinking has been consumed by the ongoing debate surrounding the sanctity of human life, particularly in the context of abortion. Recently, I had the opportunity to view a compelling video clip featuring Llaya Rose of Live Action engaging with a group of individuals holding staunchly pro-abortion views in what she aptly termed a “surrounded” event. This format, placing herself in the center of opposition, was undeniably courageous. While Llaya handled herself admirably, what struck me most were the interactions themselves, specifically the nature of the responses and claims being made against her pro-life stance. It became abundantly clear that far too often, in this deeply emotional and profoundly consequential discussion, assertions are presented as arguments, and this fundamental flaw hinders any meaningful progress towards truth and understanding.
One of the very first exchanges in the clip highlighted this problem with stark clarity. Llaya stated a fundamental pro-life position: “You don’t have a right to kill your own child. Your child has a right to life”. The immediate response from a visibly angry woman was, “You don’t get to speak for my child. You don’t get to speak for my child. Let’s start right there”. This reaction, while emotionally charged, is a prime example of an assertion masquerading as a rebuttal. Notice the language used: “my child”. Even in the heat of disagreement, the individual implicitly acknowledged the human being within her womb as a child. Yet, her response wasn’t an attempt to engage with the premise of a right to life; it was simply a declaration of her perceived authority and autonomy, a unilateral pronouncement that others have no right to voice an opinion or position regarding her unborn child.
This leads us to a crucial point: what exactly is an assertion, and how does it differ from an argument? An assertion is a statement of belief or opinion, often presented as fact, without any supporting evidence or reasoning. It is a starting point, perhaps, but it is not in itself persuasive or logically sound. On the other hand, an argument is a structured set of statements (premises) intended to support or establish a particular claim (conclusion). A well-formed argument provides reasons and evidence to justify its conclusion and can be evaluated for its validity and soundness.
The woman’s statement, “You don’t get to speak for my child,” is an assertion of her perceived right to exclusive control and decision-making regarding her pregnancy. It doesn’t explain why others have no right to speak for her child, nor does it address the fundamental question of the child’s inherent rights. The hidden, and critically undefended, premise within this assertion appears to be: “Only I get to decide whether my child lives or dies”. This is a significant claim, yet it is presented without any justification or foundation.
We see this pattern repeated in other common refrains within the abortion debate. Consider the assertion, “Women have a right to choose”. While this phrase is frequently invoked, it often lacks clarity and argumentative substance. Choose what, precisely? The speaker in the audio rightly challenges this, urging us to press for a definition and a justification for this alleged “right”. Is it the right to bodily autonomy, the right to be free from pregnancy, or something more radical? As the speaker points out, there seems to be a growing movement, evidenced by the woman’s language and the Senate Democrats’ vote against protecting abortion survivors, towards asserting a “right to a dead child”. This goes far beyond the traditional arguments centered on bodily autonomy and enters the disturbing territory of claiming a right to intentionally end a human life.
Where does such a so-called right originate? This is the critical question that often goes unaddressed. Many today seem inclined to pluck rights from thin air, equating desires with entitlements. If one feels a certain way, they believe they have a right to act upon that feeling, regardless of the impact on others. But this subjectivist approach to rights is deeply problematic. If rights are merely reflections of individual desires, their foundation becomes incredibly shaky and prone to arbitrary changes.
The woman in the clip, if pressed, might point to Roe v. Wade as the source of her right. However, grounding fundamental rights solely in government decisions creates a precarious situation. What the government grants, the government can also take away. The traditional understanding of fundamental rights, the speaker reminds us, is that they are pre-political, inherent to our human nature. Rights such as the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are not granted by the state; rather, the state recognizes and protects them because they spring from the very essence of what it means to be human. This natural right to life is universal, transcending nationality, race, and creed.
Therefore, when someone asserts a “right to an abortion” or a right to end the life of their “child,” the onus is on them to provide a justification for this claim that aligns with a coherent understanding of rights. Simply stating it, no matter how emphatically, does not make it so. We are well within our rights to politely but firmly ask, “What do you mean by ‘right,’ and where does that right to an abortion come from? Why should I believe this assertion?”.
Another common tactic employed in the abortion debate, and one that surfaced in Llaya Rose’s “surrounded” event, is the use of ad hominem attacks and irrelevant diversions. One individual questioned Llaya, “Well, how many kids have you adopted?”. The implication was that her pro-life stance is somehow invalidated by her personal adoption history. This is a classic example of a logical fallacy, specifically an ad hominem attack, which attempts to discredit an argument by attacking the person making it rather than addressing the merits of the argument itself.
The speaker rightly points out the absurdity of this line of reasoning. How does one person’s alleged unwillingness to adopt justify another person’s decision to kill their child?. This question-begging “argument” implicitly assumes that the unborn are not fully human, otherwise, would anyone suggest we could kill children in an orphanage simply because they are unwanted? Furthermore, even if Llaya were, hypothetically, a person who cared nothing for children after birth, that would not negate the argument that intentionally killing an innocent human being is wrong. The validity of an argument stands or falls on its own logical structure and evidence, not on the personal character or actions of the person presenting it. The speaker even draws a parallel to the problematic use of Margaret Sanger’s potentially racist views by some pro-lifers, noting that while her personal failings might be relevant in other contexts, they don’t inherently invalidate or validate the pro-life argument itself.
The issue of illegal abortions is another area where assertions often overshadow factual arguments. The claim that prohibiting abortion leads to millions of women dying in back alleys due to unsafe procedures is frequently presented as an undeniable truth. However, the speaker rightly challenges the definition of “safe” in this context, asking, “Safe for whom? The child?”. He also points out the inherent logical flaw in arguing that the law should be faulted for making it more risky to intentionally kill an innocent human being. We don’t legalize other harmful activities simply to make them “safer” for those perpetrating them. Moreover, the speaker alludes to statistical analyses that challenge the exaggerated claims of massive numbers of deaths from illegal abortions in the US, suggesting that while any death is a tragedy, the figures often cited are “utter baloney”. This highlights the importance of scrutinizing the evidence behind assertions and engaging with the factual basis of the debate.
Finally, the speaker touches upon a more recent trend in the abortion discussion, even among some who might identify as Christian, which involves a call for a “more nuanced” approach based on the perceived “mystery” surrounding the beginning of human life and the status of the unborn. The argument goes that since the Bible doesn’t directly address abortion or explicitly state when a soul enters the body, there is room for uncertainty, and perhaps the decision should be left to individual conscience. While acknowledging the good intentions of his friend who holds this view, the speaker firmly refutes the notion that the status of the unborn is a mystery. He emphasizes the clear and unequivocal scientific evidence from embryology, stating that there is no debate that from the earliest stages of development, the unborn is a distinct, living, and whole human being. Every embryology textbook, he asserts, supports this conclusion. The appeal to mystery, the speaker suggests, often arises when individuals struggle to reconcile the scientific reality of the unborn with a desire to still justify abortion. The fundamental question remains: are they human beings or not?. Once this scientific reality is acknowledged, the moral implications become unavoidable.
In conclusion, the abortion debate is fraught with deeply held beliefs and powerful emotions. However, progress towards understanding and truth requires us to move beyond the realm of mere assertion and engage in reasoned argumentation. Simply stating a position, no matter how passionately, does not constitute a justification for that position. We must be willing to examine the underlying premises of our beliefs, articulate them clearly, and provide evidence and logical reasoning to support them. When faced with assertions, we should politely but firmly ask for justification and challenge undefended claims. Only through rigorous and honest engagement with arguments, grounded in facts and sound reasoning, can we hope to navigate this complex and critical issue with the seriousness and respect it deserves. The lives of unborn human beings, whom even their adversaries often implicitly acknowledge as “children,” hang in the balance, and we owe it to them and to ourselves to engage in a debate characterized by clarity, logic, and a commitment to truth, rather than a volley of unsupported assertions.
Episode Transcript
This transcript was generated from the episode’s YouTube captions and lightly edited for readability: filler words and the mid-show announcements have been removed. It may still contain transcription errors.
It does break my heart that if you’re sharing, you had an abortion, that there could be a child I don’t know how old they be, 10 years old today who would be cheering you on saying, go get a mom. You got this. I can promise you that would not be the case with your statistic and your information had a right to live. You don’t get to speak for my child. You don’t get to speak for my child. Let’s start right there.
Hello friends, welcome to The Case for Life show. I’m Scott Klusendorf, your host. It’s a joy to have you with us today. I watched a fabulous, very interesting video clip this last week featuring yla Rose, who’s the head of liveaction, a very good pro-life organization. Many of you know Lyla from the days of doing undercover work where she and her team would go into abortion clinics and catch them selling fetal body parts and things like that and selling abortions to underage girls.
I really like what she does, I like her work, and she did something recently that I thought was really gutsy and really a good model for how we ought to think about engagement. She invited 25 very hardcore pro-abortion activist to come to an event where she would sit in the middle of the room and one at a time, they would get to come up and answer her or make claims about her work or generally. They would come up and attack her pro-life position and she basically called this thing surrounded it.
It’s a neat little thing to view. She’s sitting in the middle of the room at a table with one chair on the opposite side of the table where one at a time, these activists got to come up and raise whatever questions or make comments. Usually they made comments, not ask questions, and she would engage them. That’s gutsy. I salute that, and as I watched that, I thought I’d like to comment on some of the things the people said. I’m not here to talk about how lla did she did fine.
This is about some of the things the people were saying that wanted to engage yla, and they thought they were bringing persuasive arguments and they were not. So the first thing that you notice is in the clip. The very first woman who comes up is responding to a statement lla made that went like this: you don’t have a right to kill your own child. Your child has a right to life. Okay, that’s lyla’s claim, and she backs it up with an argument, the.
The response, though, was really curious. The first woman that came up was visibly angry, and, by the way, almost all of these people were angry. They didn’t even attempt to just sit down and try to, you know, cash out what lyla’s position was. They just wanted to react with anger, which is pretty much what you see on the street, and there are reasons for this that we’ve covered in other episodes of the show, but what I want you to see is this: the first person that came up said the following: you don’t get to speak for my child.
That was her response to Lila’s claim that her child had a right to life. The response was: well, you don’t get to speak for my child. Now, this is a very curious response, and right away, you should have bells and alarms going off in your mind. Notice the language used here. The woman used the word my child, so we’re talking here about a human being that even the person that is, interrogating Lila at this point, seems to concede. She used the word child to reference the thing that would be killed by the abortion.
Now, there’s a lot of things here to unpack, but let me just start with the biggies here. In addition to the fact that her language betrays her own position by calling this a child, notice what abortion advocates are really arguing for. In many cases today we are no longer arguing bodily autonomy. What pro-abortionists want is a right to a dead child, and their view of autonomy goes way Beyond what it used to be. The old argument went like this: even if The Unborn are human so the argument went they do not have a right to use the woman’s body to sustain their own lives.
The mother may withhold that support if she wishes, and abortion on this line of argument, properly understood, is simply refusing to support an unwanted Intruder or parasite or whatever they want to call it. That bodily rights argument has been thrown under the bus and I’m going to give you more examples of that in a minute. But the language here shows this newer way of looking at abortion. It’s a right to a dead child, not merely the so-called right to be relieved of pregnancy, not merely the right not to be forced to use my body to sustain another human being.
When this woman calls her offspring a child and says: you have no right to tell me that I can’t kill my own child, we’ve reached a new level of discourse in the abortion debate and it’s not good. But I want to ask another question here: where does this so-called right to a dead child come from? The person commenting in the clip did not even attempt to go there, but people today love to pluck rights out of thin air. It’s like if I simply feel something, I have a right to it.
If I feel I no longer want to live, I have a right to doctor assisted suicide. Or I have a right to euthanasia, I have a right to force a physician to kill me. And all of this is based on an idea that rights entail desires. In other words, if I desire something, you must grant me the right to do it. If I desire to be a woman, even though I have a man’s body, you must, under threat of law or cancellation, you must acknowledge that I have a right to identify as whatever gender I want.
But where do rights come from? This is where people get all tied up in knots, because if I were to ask this woman, tell me, where does your right to intentionally kill your child come from? Her answer will likely be: well, the Supreme Court said I had that right in roie Wade, okay, well, well, here’s the obvious problem with grounding rights in government: the same government that grants a right to something can take it away. Now, the more fundamental way of understanding this, the traditional way American law understood fundamental rights, was this: there are certain rights that are pre-political, for example the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
Think of the Declaration of Independence and you’ll know what I’m talking about. But what is going on here in today’s world is we’re not grounding rights in a traditional sense. That said, your rights exist from your human nature, meaning they spring from your human nature. You have a right to life that is pre-political. Government doesn’t grant that right. It recognizes in, protects it. You have that right in virtue of being a human being and it doesn’t matter what country you’re from, your nationality, your race or your Creed.
That natural right to life exists because it Springs from your human nature. Humans, by nature, have certain rights, and that’s what our Founders were arguing in the Declaration of Independence. So where does this alleged right to an abortion come from? Or, in this case, as the woman conceited, a right to a dead child? She calls her unborn offspring a child, but then is making it very clear: only she has autonomy over what happens to that child when she says: don’t get to speak for my child, so the way we speak for her child is to give her the right to kill the child.
Now there’s also an element of this that that some of you may recognize. You could also say: well, she’s simply assuming The Unborn aren’t human. In reality, she would never say that if we were talking about killing her 2-year-old. And that may be true and it’s. It’s a fact that most people who argue for abortion at the street level anyway not in academia but at least at the street level have not been school R in moral logic. They don’t know how to argue propositionally, so they simply assume The Unborn aren’t human.
I mean, would this woman make the same claim if the topic on the table was I, should I have a right to kill my 5-year-old? Well, I don’t think so, although maybe she would. I don’t know, but it’s still a radical claim to say that’s a child I have in there and only I get to speak for that child. And if I choose to speak for that child by intentionally killing him, you have no say in that. But that woman would not argue that way if we were talking about killing 5-year-olds or 10year olds, she would likely, I hope, say no, the right to intentionally kill that child does not exist.
But if she’s already con conceited that the child in her womb is in fact a child, then how is that any different than killing a 10-year-old or a 5-year-old? And the answer is it’s not. She’s already conceited it’s a human being and that, it’s a child, to use her own language. Well, why then do we get to kill that child? Now? I mentioned a moment ago that, abortion advocates have seem seemed to be staking out a new position, and really it’s.
It’s not terribly new. They’ve felt this all along. They’re just being more vocal about it now. And that new position is: you not only have a right to an abortion, in other words, a right to be relieved of pregnancy, you have a right to a dead child. Only, you get to decide what happens to that living child. Now, last week, Senate Democrats in the US Senate voted in Total Lock stop. 100% of Senate Democrats voted to deny legal protections to children who survive abortion procedures.
Now, keep in mind what this getting at here. These are not children in the womb, attached to their mothers, and the mothers are, you know, giving them support by use of their body. These are kids outside of the womb now who are on the table. They’ve been delivered alive, having somehow managed to survive an abortion procedure, and Senate Democrats said: no, we will not protect them. I mean, that sounds an awful lot to me, like what they’re arguing for, and what they’re trying to enshrine here is a right to a dead child, not a right to merely relieve the woman of pregnancy, which is bad enough, but from this the discussion with lla got very interesting, and I’m going to pick that up when we come back from our break.
We’re going to take a break right now, and I want to do two things when we come back. I want to highlight another conversation lla had, and again, I thought this was incredibly courageous of her, brave of her to invite these people to come and challenge her. She’s by herself. There’s 25 of them, and she’s there in the middle of the room on her own defending her pr- lifee views. Salute to Lyla. Good work, What I want to do, though, is pick up another claim that was thrown at her, and it’s one I suspect many of you, have heard as well.
We’re going to unpack that claim, because it’s utterly facius. And then the other thing I want to do is talk about another, kind of wave of thought creeping into the abortion debate, coming from Christians, and it goes like this: we need a more nuanced approach to abortion and we need to recognize that there’s a lot of mystery involved in the status of The Unborn. I’m going to take those two claims up when we come back. I’ll see you in just a minute.
Welcome back everyone. Like I said before the break, I want to take on two additional things that we need to think about regarding the current stated of the abortion debate. The first is another questioner who approached Lyla Rose at this form, where she courageously surrounded herself with 25 hardcore abortion activists who got to ask her questions, although none of them really asked questions, they just made statements, like the one we referenced before the break: the woman saying you don’t get to speak for my child.
Now, one other thing about that that I want to come back to before we jump to the next two items. Ask yourself this question: was that an argument or a mere assertion? When someone says you don’t get to speak for my child, I can do with my child whatever I want, or they say something like I have a right to an abortion, is that a real argument? Actually it’s not. It’s just an assertion, and the burden of proof is not on Lila to refute that.
The burden of proof is on the person making the claim, in this case the woman who asserts: you don’t get to speak for my child. Really, the hidden and undefended premise there in that assertion is this: only I get to decide whether my child lives or dies. Now that is not defended anywhere in the woman’s claims. She just asserts that she has a right to do what she wants with her own child. We’ve already talked about some problems with that, but here’s another biggie with it.
It’s not an actual argument, it’s an assertion. If I say I have a right to go kill my 10-year-old, that’s not an argument, that’s an assertion. Why? Because I’ve given you no evidence as to why I have that right. I’ve given you no explanation for where that right comes from. I mean, where does the right to an abortion come from? Nobody wants to grapple with that question. We’ve already shown that if it comes from the government, that’s not going to work.
So where does this alleged right to an abortion come from? Or, in this case, the right to kill her own child? This is a mere assertion and really I think you’re well within your rights, when someone does this, to just look at them and say: do it politely, but say: what do you mean by right and where does that right to an abortion come from? And then you could also give the hammer here and say: why should I believe what you just said?
It’s a nice assertion, but I need you to argue for it. Now, here’s the difference between an argument and an assertion. An assertion is: I have a right to do with my kid whatever I want. That’s an assertion. There’s no argument there. Here’s an argument. It’s wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings. Abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being. Therefore, abortion is wrong. Notice, we got premise, conclusion. Okay, that’s a formal way of stating an argument. Now that argument can be evaluated for validity and soundness and clarity, but notice, it’s at least advancing a line of thinking.
There’s a formal way of presenting what you’re arguing for. In this case, that isn’t happening in this form with lla. People are coming up and just making whatever statement they want and she very graciously allows them to make their points. I think she, her demeanor here, is very good. She’s not defensive, she’s just sitting there and engaging them and I again salute her for having the courage to do this. But these people that are coming to challenge her are not making arguments, they’re making assertions and one of the best ways to deal with that is to simply say: well, tell me why I should believe a thing like that.
When they say, their assertion, women have a right to choose. Oh really, why would you believe that? Choose what? Go ahead and press them to actually argue for their view and give reasons for why you ought to accept what they’re saying. You don’t need to accept their assertion just because they make it. Now, another thing that came up in this form with Lyla: another person who was there came up to the chair, sat down and looked at ly and said: well, how many kids have you adopted?
And basically she was saying: there goes your whole pro-life argument. You haven’t even adopted any kids and yet here you are trying to say that it’s wrong to kill children. We don’t want This is really a laughable argument, really. It’s an assertion again. But look, all you got to do here is look at the person and say: hi, does my alleged unwillingness to adopt a child justify you killing him? The argument once again assumes The Unborn aren’t human. Would anybody say that we can go to an orphanage and kill all the kids in there because no one wants to adopt them?
No, they only say this about unborn humans. But again, how does my alleged unwillingness to adopt a child justify you killing him? And of course, there’s no answer you could give here. I mean. Imagine if I said to you: unless you agree to adopt my three sons by noon tomorrow, I shall execute them now. That’s not going to happen because they’re all bigger than me. But play along for the moment. If you turn down my ultimatum, am I Justified killing my kids?
Of course not. I mean the homeless are unwanted. Can we kill them? This entire line of reasoning does nothing to refute the pro-life argument. It’s question begging in that it assumes The Unborn are not human. That hasn’t been argued for, it’s simply assumed. Now I think too, you could also point out that even if Lyla were the worst person in the world, she doesn’t give a rip about kids once they’re born. Let’s say she was that kind of person. She absolutely is not, but assume she was.
How would that refute her pro-life argument that it’s wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being? Abortion does that? Therefore it’s wrong. It wouldn’t. At best, this is a lazy ad hominum attack on the character of lla. It does nothing to address her actual argument and one thing that I found that angry pro-aborts never understand: they cannot get it through their skulls that arguments stand or fall apart from the people making them, for example, Let me give an example here that prol lifers sometimes bring up.
That is a fallacious way to argue. They will say: well, you know, Margaret Sanger was a racist. I don’t like it when prol lifers use that argument, and here’s why it does doesn’t help the pro-life argument that it’s wrong to intentionally kill inocent human beings. Abortion does that. Therefore it’s wrong. It doesn’t help us solidify that argument by pointing out that one of our opponents happened to be a racist. Okay, maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t. How does that make abortion wrong?
Could a good argument still come from a bad person? And the answer is yes. As I’ve said before, if Joseph Stalin argues that slavery is wrong and makes a good argument for it, that argument stands apart from the fact that he as an individual enslaved millions of Soviet peasants and killed them by the way, starved them to death in many cases. He was responsible for the deaths of millions of his own citizens during the 30s and 1930s and 40s. And yet that doesn’t mean that his argument against slavery, if he were to have made one, would be bad because he didn’t live it out consistently.
So even on the consistency question, it’s very easy to point out you’re not going to refute the pro-life argument that it’s wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being by attacking pro-lifers about how they live out their views. Maybe lla does. Maybe Lyla never adopts a child, I don’t know. But even if she didn’t, that wouldn’t refute her argument that it’s wrong to intentionally kill The unborn. The critics are just being very, very lazy here now. Another thing that came up was illegal abortion.
One of the questioners said: you know, you’re Catholic, you claim to be, pro-life. How pro-life is it for you to look the other way while millions of women die in the back alleys of states that have prohibited abortion because they can’t get safe, legal abortions? And my first question is: what do you mean by safe? Safe For Whom? The child? Notice this objection: assumed The Unborn are not human, it’s assuming, at the very minimum, that unborn female humans are not in fact human.
Because if that were the case, shouldn’t you be arguing for their safety as well? And of course, that’s not what’s in play here. But why should the law be faulted for making it more risky for one human to intentionally kill another, completely innocent one? I mean, We Don’t legalize bank robbery to make it safer for felons. Now, before you go off and say, oh, you’re comparing women who have abortions to felons who rob banks. No, I’m simply pointing out that the objection assumes The Unborn are not human.
That must be argued for, not merely assumed. By the way, we’ve taken this up in previous podcasts and we’ll deal with it on this show at a later date, where, we go through the statistical analysis to show that there never was a time in the US where thousands of women were dying every year from illegal abortion. Did some women die? Yes, and that’s a tragedy. We can all admit that that’s a tragedy. But to say 5 to 10,000 deaths a year, that’s utter baloney and we’ll pick that up on another show when we have a moment.
What I want to shift to now is another conversation I was party to. It happened this last weekend. I met with a friend who does not hold my view on abortion and who is what most of you would consider a progressive. He is on the political left, argues for almost all of the leftist positions. He’s theologically progressive, meaning he doesn’t hold to the key doctrines of the Christian faith. He rejects substitutionary atonement as being divine child abuse. He thinks that, the gospel needs to be repackaged in ways that, appeal more to progressives.
And of course he is not pro-life, he’s pro-choice on abortion. Now some of you might be thinking: why would I even have a friend like that? Shouldn’t I just cut those people off? No, listen to me very carefully. It does you no good to cut people off who disagree with you. Keep the relationship channel open, be willing to sit down and have some conversations. And actually he and I have gone back and forth on abortion, both in print and in person, and I think the discussion is evolved in a very healthy way, because now we didn’t start off this way, but now we have agreed that the issue of abortion comes down to the status of The Unborn.
Are they human beings? Are not, and there’s no way to escape that issue. And the good thing is he now recognizes that, based on our discussion. But the reason we’ve been able to progress that discussion is because both of us and I give him credit here too he and I have both gone out of our way to be civil, to be charitable to each other, to say: let look, let’s try to build a friendship here, even though we disagree at the idea level, because what happens so much in discussions on abortion, everything gets personal.
You know the pro-abortionist comes to you and says: you just hate women, you want them to die. You don’t respect their dignity, you’re the worst person in the world. And the pro-lifer says: well, you’re just a baby murderer. How can I even talk to somebody who supports killing babies? That isn’t going to advance the conversation, I believe, and ask very tough questions at the idea level, but doing your best to be charitable at the personal level. Greg kokal teaches this very well at stand of reason when he teaches his ambassador skills, material of learning to be gracious to individuals but be tough on the ideas you’re advancing and I agree with that.
That’s exactly the way to go. But one of the things my friend was arguing is that we need a more nuanced position on abortion, that the beginning of human life is really a mysterious thing. After all, the Bible doesn’t directly teach The Unborn or human, or it doesn’t even mention the word abortion. Therefore, it seems to him that there should be some mystery involved as to when life begins and what the child in the womb is. He isn’t comfortable with the hardcore pro-abortion view that that’s just a hunk of meat in there and you can you, can you know, stab it through the heart and dismember it no big deal.
But he doesn’t want to acknowledge the clear science of embryology. And I want to stress it is clear. There is no debate here that from the earliest stages of development you have a distinct living and whole human being. There’s no mystery here. Now I think here’s what’s happening. I’ll just tell you what I think is happening here. I think what’s happening is is that, because of the direction of our conversation moving in a very positive way, meaning him coming to recognize that you cannot escape the central question: what is The Unborn?
That now he has to make an argument that somehow that thing in the womb might not be fully human the way you and I are. And he is stared to grapple with that. And he has rightly recognized that these arguments people try to come up with for saying it’s not human really don’t work. That the whole person human divide, that Peter Singer, Michael Tully and others put forward that, yeah, The Unborn are biologically human but they’re not persons. He’s cogniz, cognizant of the fact that those arguments fall apart.
So what he’s done is he’s punted to mystery to say, well, we just don’t know what that early human is. The Bible doesn’t teach directly they have souls. It doesn’t mention, abortion outright. Therefore, there’s room for mystery and therefore it could be the case that the decision should be left between a woman and her God, because we just don’t know. Well, we do know, and in previous episodes we have talked about the overwhelming scientific evidence for this. In fact, we’re going to come back at a future episode very shortly here and we’re going to look at one question, just science.
What does the science of embryology say? I’ll give you a preview that from the earliest stages, The Unborn are members of the human family, and every embryology textbook in the world is going to back me up on that, and I’ll actually bring the sources with me. Hold them up so you can see them. This is not a mystery. It’s only a mystery to people who are looking for a way to kind of nuance their views so they can still justify abortion somehow in light of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
We’ll talk about all of that in a future episode coming up. Meanwhile, be sure to visit the sites that we are on social media. I want to thank our primary sponsor, the Life Training Institute, for being part of this and I hope that you have found this show to be helpful in engaging others on The pro- lifee view. Like I said, in an upcoming episode we’re going to deal directly with the scientific evidence, as we have on earlier episodes, but we’re going to bring that into sharp focus.
Look forward to seeing you the next time.