Pro-Lifers, Don’t Let Critics Rewrite Your Job Description
Hello friends. I’m sitting here today with a deep sense of urgency, waiting for something I know is about to erupt across the op-ed pages of our nation. It is a concerted, intentional effort by forces both external and, sadly, internal to our ranks, aimed at nothing less than gutting, bankrupting, and driving the pro-life movement off message and off principle. We cannot, and we must not, allow this to happen.
Welcome to this vital discussion on the true nature of the pro-life mission and the insidious threats seeking to redefine it. The very core of our work – the defense of the unborn – is under assault, not just from the obvious adversaries like Planned Parenthood or political parties that champion abortion, but from those who seek to broaden our mandate beyond recognition.
The Battle to Redefine “Pro-Life”
You’ve heard the headlines, or you will soon: “You can’t be pro-life if you don’t support protesting immigrants,” or “You can’t be pro-life if you want the border closed”. These are not isolated incidents. I’ve seen countless articles online claiming that pro-lifers are inconsistent. They say you cannot be pro-life if you don’t support government programs for immigrants—meaning illegal immigrants—or if you oppose government assistance for families with children. The claims extend further: you’re supposedly not pro-life if you support gun ownership, or if you opposed COVID policies that aimed at shutting down the economy. The argument here is that “lives are more important than economic value,” and therefore, true pro-lifers would support locking down the economy. Even more recently, as riots have unfolded in cities like Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, and Austin, we are being lectured that if we support sending in the National Guard or Marines to keep order, we are somehow not pro-life. The logic presented is that if you were “really pro-life, you would want all humans to flourish because Jesus cared about all people who were marginalized, not just those in the womb”. Thus, to be “consistently pro-life,” we are told, one must support open borders and allow rioters to have their way.
It is critical to note that many of these articles are written by Christians who claim a biblical worldview, yet they are lecturing us on what it means to be pro-life. This push to “retool what it means to be pro-life” seeks to shift our focus away from protecting children in the womb and ensuring their right to life, towards being more concerned with the quality of life for people already outside the womb.
This leads to what I call a “stew of moral equivalency”. You’ll hear pro-life leaders, even some Christians, argue that we need to show equal devotion not only to the unborn, but to immigrant families, the poor, the needy, women not paid a living wage, and oppressed peoples all over the world. The insidious implication is that if we are not devoting equal concern and equal resources to addressing all these other problems, we are not truly Christian or pro-life; we are merely selective in our respect for human life.
The Unfair Demand and the Dangerous Premise
As Christians, yes, we care about a multitude of issues. But it is fundamentally incorrect to assert that because pro-lifers oppose the intentional killing of innocent human beings in the womb, we are therefore responsible for fixing everything wrong with society. This is an unfair demand, and it is one that no other group faces. Does anyone go to an anti-poverty organization and demand to know what they are doing about disease or sex trafficking? No, they don’t. The only advocates who hear this kind of impossible ultimatum are pro-life advocates. And I am deeply concerned that many within our own movement are buying into this premise from our critics.
This dangerous trend reminds me of a critical moment in American history, right after the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. President Abraham Lincoln urged General George Gordon Meade to pursue and destroy the Confederate army, to drive the enemy into the Potomac. But Meade’s disheartening reply suggested that driving the Confederates from Union soil should be enough. Lincoln’s powerful response was, “When will my generals understand that the whole country is our soil?”. Meade had unwittingly adopted the premise of the Confederacy—that there were two legitimate governments, Northern and Southern—and believed that clearing them from “our” soil was sufficient.
Similarly, many pro-life leaders today have adopted the premise of our critics: “If you are really pro-life, you care about all life and every life issue is yours to solve”. Instead of pushing back against this flawed premise, our side has begun to think, “Well, maybe they’re right. If we’re not discipling people, if we’re not caring for their needs after they’re born, if we’re not making sure humans flourish at all stages of life, then who are we to call ourselves pro-life?”. This is absolute nonsense.
Consider this practical reality for a moment: how many pro-life groups have the abundant resources to fight every issue under the sun? The answer is none. All pro-life groups I know, even those doing tremendous work, are flat broke. We struggle monthly to make ends meet. If we were to take on every other issue that other, better-funded groups with more activists are better suited to address, we would bankrupt ourselves and spread our resources so thin that we would be effective nowhere. As Frederick the Great wisely said, “He who fights everywhere fights nowhere”. Yet, this is precisely what our critics, and disturbingly, many within Christian circles, are advocating.
This insistence that pro-life means involvement in “all extensions of human life,” not just care for the unborn, is the most dangerous threat to the attempt to save unborn lives that I have witnessed in my lifetime. We absolutely must resist it.
A striking example of this insidious redefinition is the concept of “pro-abundant life” being pushed by the leader of a major pregnancy resource center organization. While I applaud their wonderful work ministering to women in need and helping them care for their children, this leader suggests that the entire pro-life movement must shift from being “merely pro-life” to “pro-abundant life”. This means pro-life groups must programmatically use their scarce resources to address issues such as fighting for religious liberty, strengthening families, ensuring fathers do their job, discipling believers, and helping Christians flourish in their church environments.
While these are all undeniably good issues, and as Christians, we individually care about them, it is ridiculous to demand that pro-life groups use their limited resources to invest programmatically in these other causes. Imagine the absurdity: spending Monday fighting abortion, Tuesday on discipleship, Wednesday on strong families, Thursday on fathers’ roles, and Friday on religious liberty. This is an absurd, back-breaking job description that not even Superman could fulfill.
Calling Their Bluff and Reclaiming Our Mission
It is high time we look our critics in the eye and say, “No, we are not going to do what you are asking”. We must ask them two critical questions:
- For the secular critic not concerned with saving unborn lives: “How does it follow that because I oppose the intentional killing of an innocent human being, I must fix everything else wrong with society?”.
- And the follow-up: “Tell me, if I do everything you imagine me doing—taking on poverty, helping immigrants (even illegal ones), caring for refugees, supporting women’s higher pay, addressing every item on your laundry list—will you now join me in opposing abortion?“.
I can tell you, 100% of the time, the answer will be an emphatic “no”. Their comeback will be, “Women have a fundamental right to an abortion, and I will never back off that right”. If their true position is that there should be no restriction on abortion whatsoever—because a fundamental right cannot be infringed upon—then they should argue for that instead of bringing up a myriad of other issues that have nothing to do with their actual stance. We must call their bluff.
To my fellow Christians who genuinely desire to care for other issues beyond the unborn’s right to life, I appreciate your good heart and applaud your virtue. However, you are not in a position to tell the pro-life movement, which already operates with scarce resources, that it must take on all these additional causes. As my good colleague Marc Newman rightly points out, pro-life groups striving to save children from a culture intent on butchering them do not need additional causes; they need additional support. I hope you are supporting your local pregnancy center and local and national pro-life efforts, for these groups are budget-strapped and desperately need your vital help.
We have seen this pressure before. A few years ago, in the wake of the George Floyd incident and the COVID outbreak, there was immense pressure on pro-life groups to “prove their credentials” by endorsing movements like Black Lives Matter, an organization that, as we now know, operates from a Marxist worldview fundamentally inconsistent with a biblical view of human flourishing. We were told that if we didn’t call out racism or embrace critical theory—which imputes guilt based solely on skin color—we were somehow not truly Christian and pro-life. While much of that particular nonsense has largely abated, I remain concerned about those within our own movement who seek to push us off task and off mission.
So, what then, should pro-lifers be doing? Our focus must remain razor-sharp. I propose four essential actions:
- Work to limit the evil of abortion politically. This means supporting bills that reduce abortion and protect as many unborn humans as possible. If the intentional butchering of a million unborn humans a year doesn’t compel us to political action as Christians, I don’t know what will. Imagine being a slave in 1860, praying for your fellow Christians to politically advocate for your freedom. Why should we think it’s any different for the unborn? We must advocate for them.
- Support our pregnancy care centers. We must back these centers with our time and money, protect them legally from hostile states, and ensure they have the resources needed to minister to women facing unplanned pregnancies.
- Present a compelling case for life. We must articulate a straightforward argument: it is wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings; abortion does that; therefore, abortion is wrong. This case must then be defended with both science and philosophy. Scientifically, we argue that from the earliest stages of development, the unborn are distinct, living, and whole human beings. Philosophically, we assert that there is no essential difference between an embryo and an adult that justifies killing a human being at an earlier stage of development. This is a case we can communicate effectively in a minute or less. If you wish to master this, our Prolife 101 course, available through Life Training Institute, can equip you in just seven days to make and defend this case persuasively, even with non-Christians.
- Engage our churches on this issue. We must show our churches their responsibility to minister to those wounded by abortion. Our congregations are filled with men and women who have been party to abortions, carrying guilt, and they need to find resolution through the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Leveraging Cognitive Dissonance: Fetal Homicide Laws
To further sharpen our arguments, I strongly commend the use of cognitive dissonance. This is a powerful tool to expose the absurdity of the pro-choice position and reawaken people’s moral intuitions. The strongest example of this lies in fetal homicide laws.
In most states across this country, if you kill a fetus before birth, you are charged with homicide. The only exception, of course, is abortion. Consider this: if you drive intoxicated and hit a pregnant woman’s car, killing her and her fetus, you are typically charged with vehicular manslaughter on two counts—for both the mother and her child. Many will recall how Scott Peterson was charged with two counts of murder, not just one, for the deaths of his wife, Laci, and their unborn child, Connor, even in a liberal state like California.
Now, let me make it even more peculiar. Imagine a woman driving to an abortion clinic. En route, she is involved in an accident with the very doctor who is going to perform the abortion, because he ran a red light and plowed into her car, killing her fetus. In a majority of states, that doctor would be charged with vehicular manslaughter. Yet, if that same woman had made it to the abortion clinic just minutes later, unharmed, that doctor could have killed her child with no penalty at all.
This situation makes no sense. How does the nature of the child change simply because the doctor was going to intentionally kill it versus it being accidentally harmed on the way there? It doesn’t. The child is a human being in both cases. Yet, people bifurcate their minds, saying it’s terrible if an unwanted child is accidentally harmed, even to the point of imprisonment, but “no big deal” if a wanted child is aborted. As if somehow, your desire for the child transforms its essential nature.
Imagine two pregnant women, both 24 weeks along. Woman A does not want her child, viewing it as a hindrance, even a “disease,” and is seeking an abortion. Woman B wants her child, has even picked out a name. Does it logically follow that Woman A’s child is not a human being, while Woman B’s is? This is the very absurdity that cognitive dissonance effectively highlights. Why was it not okay for Scott Peterson to kill his unborn child, but it would have been perfectly fine, even legally permitted and taxpayer-funded in many states, if Laci had wanted to kill their child through abortion, even without his consent?.
We must continually point out these absurd conclusions that the public, who often claims to dislike abortion but wants it to remain legal, is forced to embrace. Using cognitive dissonance bypasses people’s normal excuse filters and forces them to look at the issue at a more basic level.
In closing, my friends, while the recent violence in our cities and other social issues are important, my central message today is this: You must be very alert to people trying to rewrite your pro-life job description. The abortion debate always, always, always begins with one fundamental question: What is the unborn? Can we kill the unborn?. The answer is yes, if the unborn are not human. But our critics bear the burden of presenting an argument to show they are not human, not merely assuming or asserting it without evidence.
We must keep the main thing the main thing. Our primary mission is to protect the unborn, and we must resist any attempt to distract us, dilute our resources, or redefine our sacred cause. Your support for this singular, critical mission is vitally needed now more than ever.
Thank you for joining us today.
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.
Hello friends. I’m sitting here waiting for something I know that is about to come and will hit the op-ed pages any day now. I’ll tell you what that is in just a minute. Welcome to The Case for Life program. We’re delighted to have you with us. I want to remind you of two things. First of all, I want to remind you that our primary sponsor, Life Training Institute, is a resource you want to be aware of. If you’d like to have one of our speakers address one of your events, a school, a training seminar, a conference, we’ve got people there knowledgeable on this issue.
Myself and my speaking team can come help you with those events so that you can make a persuasive case for life. And secondly, I want to remind you, and you’ll see why this is so important after today’s episode. I want to remind you that we have a course up that you can take called Prolife 101. In just 7 days, you can be a master of the pro-life view and know how to communicate it effectively and persuasively. You can see our websites for more information on this.
Okay, it’s all over the news. You’ve heard it. There are riots going on in Los Angeles, New York, Dallas, Austin, Texas, over ICE agents arresting illegal immigrants. Now, I’m not really going to get into a debate here about whether that’s morally permissible or not. I’ll just tell you upfront my own view it is. The nation has a right to enforce its laws, to close its border. Immigrating to the US is not a right. It is a privilege and it depends on the American people as expressed through their elected officials to decide who and who can’t come to this country legally.
So I really don’t want to have a big debate about that today. I want to draw your attention to something else. Count your words on this. You won’t need many of them to say that it’s only a matter of time before you’re going to see headlines that read like the following. You can’t be pro-life if you don’t support the protesting immigrants or you can’t be pro-life if you want the border closed. Now, if you think I’m kidding, I just did a quick search before the show started and came up with a bunch of headlines here that are currently online about pro-lifers being inconsistent.
One says, “Hey, you cannot be pro-life if you don’t support programs for immigrants.” by which they mean illegal immigrants. If you oppose government assistance for family for families with children, you’re said not to be pro-life. You’re said not to be pro-life if you support gun ownership. The other headline here says you can’t be pro-life if you opposed COVID policies aimed at shutting down the economy. That lives are more important than economic value. And therefore, if you’re really pro-life, you would support locking down the economy.
Now, I want you to notice something. You may you may notice I’ve put two or three asterises here. Each of these articles was written by Christians who claim to have a biblical worldview. And they are lecturing pro-lifers on what it means to be pro-life. And I know it’s just a matter of time. Just looking at the news feed today, the riots are all over the place. That’s all you read about is the riots and what’s going on with them and how bad it is that we’ve sent Marines in.
And I know what the articles will be. They will be if you support sending in the National Guard, you support Marines to keep order in the city, you’re somehow not pro-life. Because if you were really pro-life, you would want all humans to flourish. Because Jesus cared about all people who were marginalized, not just a few, those in the womb. He cared about all of them. So, if you’re going to be consistently pro-life, you have to support an open border. You have to support letting these rioters have their way in the city or you’re not really pro-life.
Now, I say this to you because there is a concerted effort. It’s intentional by people outside of the pro-life movement and sadly a few within our own ranks who are trying very hard to redefine what pro-life objectives look like. And I am convinced that none of these people doing this, those certainly outside the pro-life camp and those within our own ranks, do not understand either the gravity of abortion or what it means to reason using the logic of morals. Because what they’re proposing will do nothing less than gut the pro-life movement, bankrupt it, and drive us off message and off principle.
And we cannot allow this to happen. The biggest threat I see to the pro-life movement today is not Planned Parenthood, believe it or not. It’s not even the Democrat party, though. Those are two very evil institutions. What I see as the biggest threat are those who want to retool what it means to be pro-life. And they want to move us away from being concerned about children in the womb and making sure they get a right to life to being more concerned about the quality of life for people already outside the womb.
And so you’ll hear pro-life leaders, some of them Christians sadly, engage in a stew of moral equivalency that goes something like this. Well, we need to show equal devotion not only to the unborn, but to immigrant families, to the poor, to those that are in need, to women who are not paid a living wage, to oppressed peoples all over the world. And if we’re not devoting equal concern and equal resources to addressing those other problems, we’re not really Christian and pro-life.
We may talk a good game, but we’re really not. We’re very selective in our respect for human life. That’s the way their argument goes. And here’s the problem with it. Yes, it’s true as Christians, we care about a lot of issues. But as we have tried to remind you on this program many, many times, it is not correct to say that because pro-lifers oppose the intentional killing of innocent human beings in the womb, we have to fix everything wrong with society.
That is an unfair demand. No other group is asked to do this. Nobody goes to anti-poverty organizations and says, “Well, what are you doing about disease? That also harms people. And what are you doing about sex trafficking? You say you care about poverty, but I don’t see you doing anything to stop sex trafficking.” No, nobody goes to those other organizations who are addressing other legitimate issues and said says to them, “Oh, you’re not really concerned about human flourishing because if you were, you’d take on all these other issues.” No, the only ones who hear this are pro-life advocates.
That’s it. And I’m very concerned that a lot of our own people are buying the premise of our critics. And it reminds me of something that happened historically right on the heels of the Battle of Gettysburg in July of 1863. Abraham Lincoln, President Abraham Lincoln sent a message to General George Gordon Meade, who was commanding the Army of the PTOIC that had fought at Gettysburg. And as you may remember, Gettysburg was an epic three-day battle. And the Union forces, the federal forces prevailed.
They won on day three decisively and they not only held the field, they drove the Confederates off the field. And me received a message from President Lincoln that said, “Hey, listen. Don’t stop now. Drive the enemy into the PTOAC.” In other words, destroy the Confederate army now while you have them on the run. And me sent back a very disheartening reply to the president that said essentially this. Mr. President, you should be satisfied that we’ve driven the enemy from our soil.
And Lincoln was not at all amused with this reply. His response was to say, “When will my generals understand that the whole country is our soil? What me had done is assume the premise of the Confederacy that there was a legitimate southern government and there was a northern government and as long as we got the Confederates out of the north, our government, we were okay. And Lincoln would have none of it. And what a lot of pro-life leaders have done is they have assumed the premise of our critics that goes like this.
If you are really pro-life, you care about all life and every life issue is yours to solve. And instead of pushing back and challenging that premise, our side has said, well, you know, maybe they’re on to something there. If we’re not discipling people, if we’re not caring for their needs after they’re born, if we’re not making sure humans flourish at all stages of life, then who are we to call ourselves pro-life? This is nonsense. But a lot of our own people are buying into it.
Now, I want you to think about something for a moment. How many pro-life groups have an abundance of resources to fight every issue under the sun? And if you said none of them do, you’re correct. All pro-life groups that I know of, even the ones doing great work, are flat broke. We struggle monthto-month to make ends meet. We have very thin line budgets and if we were responsible to take on other issues that other groups with greater funding and more activists are better suited to take on, we would end up bankrupting ourselves and spreading ourselves so thin we’d be effective nowhere.
It’s what Frederick the Great once said, “He who fights everywhere fights nowhere.” But that seems to be what not only our critics are saying we need to do, but many in Christian circles are saying that because you’re pro-life, you have to be involved in all extensions of human life, not just care for the unborn. And I want to say as clearly as I can, this is the most dangerous threat to the attempt to save unborn lives that I’ve seen in my lifetime. And we must resist it.
And to give you an idea of how insidious this can be, one of the leading pregnancy resource center or centers organizations, a good group, by the way, that has a network of pregnancy care centers throughout the US. They minister to women in need. They minister to those who have a pregnancy they weren’t counting on and who worry about how they’re going to take care of the child. And this group does a wonderful job of meeting their needs and I applaud them for that.
I can salute that. But the leader of that organization is pushing a concept called pro-abundant life that I’ll summarize for you this way. We should shift. Now, by the way, when he says we, he does not mean pregnancy centers only. He means the pro-life movement as a whole must shift from being merely pro-life to what he has labeled pro-abundant life. And he makes it very clear that what he means by that is pro-life groups must use their resources to programmatically address other issues.
And here’s the issues he says we have to be engaged in to be legitimately or what he would call pro-abundantly pro-life. We not only have to be opposed to abortion, we need to be involved in fighting for religious liberty, making sure that families are strengthened, that fathers do their job, that believers are discipled, and that Christians are flourishing in their church environment. Now, I get it. Those are all good issues. I’m not disputing the legitimacy of those issues. And I could make a very good argument that as a Christian individually, I will care about those issues.
But that’s ridiculous to say that pro-life groups like mine and others must programmatically use their resources to invest in those other causes. I mean, what does that look like on the in the real world? I mean, I love it how people enjoy sitting around in their offices and thinking up all these abstract theories that have no chance of working in the real world. So let’s just test this with a real world test. So what does it mean then? If I’m to be pro-abundant life, I spend Monday fighting abortion.
Tuesday, I got to focus on disciplehip. Th Wednesday, I got to focus on helping build strong families. And Thursday, I work to make sure fathers are doing their job. And then on Friday, I work to ensure religious liberty. I mean, this is absurd. And yet this is what’s being pedled to proifers. And it’s high time we look these critics in the eye and say, “No, we’re not going to do what you’re asking us. You are trying to give us a backbreaking job description that not even Superman can fulfill.” So we should look our critics in the eye and ask two questions.
For the secular critic that is not at all concerned about saving unborn lives, we should look them in the eye and say, “Okay, why does it follow or how does it follow that because I oppose the intentional killing of an innocent human being, I have to fix everything wrong with society?” And then there’s a second question you should follow up with, and it goes like this. Tell me if I do everything you imagine me doing. I take on poverty. I take on helping immigrants, even illegal ones.
I care for refugees. I support women getting higher pay in the workplace. I do everything on your laundry list you said I must do. Will you now join me in opposing abortion? And you can bet your last dollar 100% of the time the answer will be an emphatic no. And the comeback will be women have a right to an abortion that’s fundamental. And I will never back off that right. Okay. If that’s your true position that there should be no restriction on abortion whatsoever.
Because after all, if a right is fundamental, you can’t infringe upon it at all. If that’s your view, why don’t you argue for that instead of bringing up all these other issues that have nothing to do with what your true position really is? In other words, call their bluff. Now, what I would say to the Christians listening to this, I appreciate your good heart if you want to care for other issues beside just are the unborn given a right to life.
I can applaud your virtue, but you are not in a position to tell the pro-life movement that already has scarce resources that they have to take on all these other issues. As my good colleague Mark Newman points out, pro-life groups that are trying to save children from a culture hellbent on butchering them do not need additional causes. They need additional support. And by the way, I hope you’re supporting them. I hope you are supporting your local pregnancy center. I hope you are supporting local and national pro-life efforts.
Those groups are budget strapped and they need all the help they can get and your help is vitally needed. So, I hope you’re doing that. We don’t need additional causes. We need additional support. So, this is something we need to push back on. And I’m hoping that the tide is beginning to turn on this. A few years ago, in the wake of the George Floyd incident and the whole COVID outbreak, there was a lot of pressure on pro-life groups to prove their credentials by endorsing Black Lives Matter, which by the way is an evil Marxist organization that does not even have close to a biblical worldview on human flourishing.
And we now know that the evidence for that is clear. We were told that if we were not involved in calling out racism and embracing critical theory, which impuges guilt to people solely on the basis of their skin color, that if we did not embrace wokeness or critical theory, we were somehow not being truly Christian and pro-life. And that was all over the place on social media. People were being pressured to put the black fist in the air as their identity pick on social media.
We were being told on one hand, you do you, and on the other hand, if you don’t support these racial demonstrations, you’re somehow not really Christian and probably not pro-life either. I think that nonsense has largely abated. But I’m concerned about those in our own movement that want to push us off task, off mission. So what should pro-lifers be doing? Let me give you four things we should be doing. Number one, we should be working to limit the evil of abortion politically as much as we can given current cultural realities.
That means we’re going to support bills that reduce the evil of abortion and protect as many unborn humans as possible. We’re going to be politically involved. And if you don’t think as a Christian getting politically involved on an issue where a million unborn humans a year are being intentionally butchered, then I don’t know what issue is going to awaken you if a million deaths a year doesn’t do it. But it should awaken you. Let me ask you this. Imagine you were a slave in 1860 on a slave ship outside Charleston Harbor and you were there waiting to be brought on to land where you would be sold, separated from your family, never to see them again, and you would be bought and whipped and sent off to a plantation for hard labor.
If you were a Christian black slave in 1860, I think you’d be praying very hard that your fellow Christians, your brothers and sisters in the faith, would work politically to do something about your condition. Why should we think it’s any different with the unborn? We must advocate for them. So, that’s the first thing we’re going to do. Second thing we’re going to do, we are going to support our pregnancy care centers with our time and our money. We’re going to get behind those centers, protect them legally from states that want to drive them out of business, and we’re going to want to make sure that they have the resources they need to minister to women and children who are faced are involved in an unplanned pregnancy.
So, advocate politically, support our pregnancy centers. Then, a third thing we need to do is present a compelling case for life. Make a very straightforward case that it’s wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings. Abortion does that. Therefore, it’s wrong. And then defend that case with science and philosophy. Arguing scientifically that from the earliest stages of development, the unborn are distinct living and whole human beings and arguing philosophically that there’s no essential difference between you, the embryo, and you the adult that justifies killing you at that earlier stage of development.
A very straightforward case that we can communicate in a minute or less. And then a fourth thing we need to do is make sure that our churches are engaged on this issue by showing them their responsibility to minister to those wounded by abortion. Our churches are filled with men and women who’ve been party to an abortion, who are carrying guilt, and they need to find the resolution to that through the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, if we’re doing those four things, we’re right over the target of where we need to be.
We’re going to take a very short break. When we come back, I want to talk to you very briefly about how cognitive dissonance can help us explain our pro-life view. I’ll see you on the other side.
Hello friends, welcome back. I got an excellent question last week at a worldview conference I was speaking at and it went like this. Is it okay to bring up fetal homicide laws in defense of our pro-life view? And the answer is yes. And here’s what the questioner was getting at. In most of the states in this country, if you kill a fetus before birth, you get charged with homicide. The only exception, of course, is abortion. For example, let’s say that you are driving intoxicated and you hit a car of a woman who’s pregnant and you kill her fetus and let’s say you kill her as well.
Guess what you get charged with in a majority of ste of states? Vehicular manslaughter, not on one count, that of the mother, but on two, meaning you get charged for the death of her child as well. Many of you will remember that even in a very liberal state like California, when Scott Peterson murdered his wife, Lacy, and that also resulted in the death of his unborn child, he got charged with two counts of murder. Not just homicide, murder in a blue state like California.
He got charged for Lacy’s death and the unborn child’s death that they had picked out a name. I believe it was Connor. So, he got charged for Connor’s death and Lacy’s in a blue state. And you’re scratching your head going, “Wow, this is really weird.” I mean, I can make it even more weird for you. Imagine a woman is driving to an abortion clinic to have an abortion and in route she has an accident with the doctor that is going to perform that abortion.
Let’s say he runs a red light and plows into her car and kills her fetus. Guess what he gets charged with in a majority of states? Yeah. Vehicular manslaughter. Now, if the woman had made it to the pre or made it to the abortion clinic a few minutes later unharmed, he could have killed that child with no penalty at all. And people scratch their heads at this and go, “Wait a minute, that makes no sense. How does that make any sense at all?
How does the nature of the child change based on simply that the doctor was going to kill it intentionally versus it got hit accidentally on the way there? And the answer is there’s no impact on the nature of the child. That was a human being in both cases. But what people want to do is bifurcate here and have they kind of just section off their minds and say, “hey, you know, yeah, really bad. If you hurt a woman who’s pregnant accidentally and harm her wanted child, that’s really really bad.
And we’ll even put you in prison for that. But if you want to abort your child, no big deal.” As if somehow you wanting the kid transforms its essential nature. I mean, imagine two women standing side by side. Woman A does not want her child. She views it as a hindrance, an invasion of her life. And in fact, she thinks it’s a disease and she is out to get an abortion. Woman B is pregnant at exactly the same point that woman A is.
They both, let’s just make up a number, they’re both 24 weeks pregnant, but she wants her child. In fact, she’s already picked out a name for him. Does it follow that woman’s A’s child is not really a human being? The only one that’s human is mother B over here. I mean, that’s the absurdity of this. This is what we call cognitive dissonance. And it’s a very effective way to show the absurdity of the so-called pro-choice position. Why was it not okay for Scott Peterson to kill his unborn child?
But if Lacy had wanted to do it, if she had wanted to kill their child, that would have been perfectly fine if she had had an abortion. Why does he get charged with murder? But if she had wanted to go to an abortion clinic and get an abortion, even without his consent, it would have been legally permitted and by the way funded with taxpayer dollars in many states. So, this is the kind of stuff we should point out to a public that kind of wants to on one hand say they don’t like abortion, but on another hand they want it to remain legal.
These are the absurd conclusions that they end up having to embrace. Use cognitive dissonance. It’s very effective. I think it’s a way to help reawaken people’s moral intuitions. That in using visuals of abortion to show what it really is. When you use cognitive dissonance, you bypass people’s normal excuse filter and it forces them to look at the issue at a more basic a more basic level. So I do commend that method to you using cognitive dissonance in that regard. And some of you have maybe thought of other ways that cognitive dissonance plays a role in the abortion debate and we’ll talk about those on another episode.
But I think the fetal homicide laws is the strongest one where we can point out that hey, you’ll get charged with homicide if you harm a child, but if you go to the clinic and actually intentionally kill him, no problem. Well, that’s just absurd thinking. And yet, a lot of people have somehow bifurcated their moral compass on this and they think that one is terrible and the other’s okay. I want to say one more thing about the violence in LA before we go further.
Again, my point on this episode was not really to talk about immigration, per se. It was simply to point out that you need to be very alert of people trying to rewrite your pro-life job description. And one of the reasons why we’ve put this course together called Prolife 101 is to help you keep the main thing the main thing. The abortion debate always begins with the question, what is the unborn? Can we kill the unborn? The answer is yes. If what?
If the unborn are not human. But our critics need to present an argument to show they’re not human, not merely assume it or assert it without evidence. Thanks for joining us today. I look forward to seeing you on our next show.