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.

So, you thought we were past the craziness of 2020? Well, guess again. Welcome to the Case for Life Show. Great to have you. I’m Scott Klusendorf, your host. We aim to help you think clearly on pro-life topics on this show. Let’s go back to 2020. Ask yourself this question. Those of you that were pro-life back then, how many times did some fellow Christian or some neighbor or someone you know on social media send you a message that basically said, “If you don’t put the Black Lives Matter logo on your pages, you’ve got to surrender your pro-life credentials.

You’re not pro-life.” And they challenged you at a very deep character level about consistency about if you really were pro-life, then you should be outsp speaking against the murder of George Floyd and the other abuses allegedly happening. Or you don’t have any credentials as a pro-life person. And there goes your whole pro-life argument. I had that happen not once, not twice, but several times. In fact, I lost some good friends over this. I even had a pastor friend of mine who basically posted on his social media pages, “Look, if you are pro-life and you’re not willing to support Black Lives Matter, you’re not really pro-life.” And when I responded gently and persuasively, I think, on his page, it was really interesting to watch what happened.

A whole bunch of people from his friends list, some from his church, jumped on there and basically said I had no character at all. I was not pro-life. I was actually a hatemonger. I just was against abortion. I was pro- birth, but I was not pro-life. And then think back to 2020 as well. We had all kinds of headlines going on that went like this. Op-eds written by people, everyone from Russell Moore to other more progressive people saying you can’t be pro-life and fill in the blank.

And usually what they meant is be proun or you can’t be pro-life and not oppose what is happening. Or I should say you can’t be pro-life if you don’t support efforts at woke ideology. I mean, it was just crazy. Well, guess what? We’re right back there now. Now, what I’m not going to do today is comment on the situation in Minnesota in terms of who’s right, who’s wrong. I don’t want to go there. And I think there’s a real tendency in Christian circles to feel the pressure of people pushing us to comment before all the facts are known.

And I’m not going to do it. Look, I’m not saying anything yet about the Renee Good situation or the Alex credit situation. Here’s the thing. Investigations will be done. I’m going to wait for the facts before I comment. And people want to pile on and say, “Oh, your silence is violence.” And I got an email yesterday from someone who said that. Their point was, “You’re exactly what Edund Burke talked about. Good men who do nothing in the face of evil. You’re one of those bad people who was being silent when the evidence is overwhelming that Alex Pred was murdered.” and he was this commenter wanted me to go on my pages and say, “Look, as a pro-lifer, let’s all agree that this man was murdered.” And of course, I’m not going to do that because in order to prove murder, you got to do more than show that a man was killed.

You have to show that there was intent behind it, that there was purpose in the sense of the agent got up that morning and purposefully ordered his day to murder Alex Pit. You’d have to prove that you got malice involved. And look, there’s a lot of things you got to do to prove a murder charge. You could come to the conclusion reasonably, I suppose, that the man was unjustly killed. That is a very different claim. That is a very different claim than saying he was murdered.

And yet what the pressure on pro-lifers right now is that if you don’t come out and agree with a leftist mob that this was a murder, you would have to surrender all your pro-life credentials. That’s what I want to comment on. And folks, that is just nonsense for a lot of reasons. Number one, can we just say that we as Christians above everybody else ought to hold back from rushing to judgment until the facts are known? I know in today’s world, you are challenged by the woke mob and pressured to immediately comment and make a judgment call on something they have deemed to be evil.

And we need to resist that. You don’t need to virtue signal by showing that yeah, I’m a consistent pro-lifer because I’m going to call this murder. Well, you shouldn’t do that. Now, one of the things that this commenter said that was interesting to me was this. I’m just going to read you a little bit about what he said. He said, “If you are serious, Scott, about not supporting the egregious abuses of ICE, then I would strongly encourage you, brother, to speak out forcefully against these draconian actions.” Okay, he goes on.

The victims of ICE, whether illegal aliens who are mistreated during apprehension, legal residents, or even US citizens, are all human beings made in the image of God. This is a human rights issue. It is a sanctity of life issue. I’ve read your book, The Case for Life, and I love it. But that fight to defend the sanctity of life does not end outside the womb. So, I implore you, brother, to speak consistently on this matter. This man, Alex, was murdered, and you need to admit that.

All right, let’s just go back here for a moment. First of all, notice right out of the gate, the guy’s got his facts wrong. ICE was not the party involved in the shooting of Alex. It was Border Patrol, not ICE. So, right away, I’m going, “Wait a minute. I’m being urged to do something by someone who doesn’t even have their facts straight here. But I want to go on to some other things he said here. He said, “This is a human rights issue.

It’s a sanctity of life issue.” Okay, stop right there. Notice something here. Of course, as Christians, there are sanctity of life issues that the Christian worldview will speak to. Agreed? All humans have value and bear the image of God. And that’s why scripture forbids the shedding of innocent blood. No argument there. But there’s an attempt here to redefine what pro-life means. From the beginning of the debate over abortion, here is what traditionally pro-life meant. You are pro-life on the question of intentionally killing an innocent human being in the womb.

And on the other side, you are pro-choice with regards to w a woman having the choice to terminate the life of her unborn offspring. You are pro-choice on the question of abortion. It did not mean you were pro-choice on everything because most people I know who are pro-choice on abortion are not pro-choice when it comes to school choice. They’re not pro-choice on limiting government. They’re not pro-choice on saying you should have the right of a parent to opt your kids out of sex sexually explicit material being taught in public schools.

They’re not pro-choice on that. But nobody looks at them and says, “Oh, you’re not really pro-choice. You’re not consistent because you’re not pro-choice on all these other issues.” It’s only the pro-lifeers who were told you’re not really pro-life. You’re not being consistent because your opposition to abortion entails that you must show equal consideration for these other sanctity of life issues. That’s just an unfair way to characterize pro-lifers. But there’s really something even more fundamentally strange about this. Let me tell you what would make you inconsistent as a pro-life advocate.

And you could be. Here’s how it would be. Let’s say I am very public as I am about the wrongness of intentionally killing an innocent human being in the womb. However, one of my colleagues or friends or even let’s say one of my own kids gets pregnant and I support them having an abortion. Okay, that would be inconsistent because I’m no longer living consistently with the principles that I am advocating. But when somebody comes along from the outside and says, “Let’s redefine what your life should really be about.

If you’re really pro-life, you got to do this, and this, and you have to denounce this, and this.” Well, that’s redefining my job description, and I’m not going to have any part of that. I’m not going to let outsiders tell me what the pro-life mission or definition should be. And this is what troubles me about people who embrace the so-called whole life ethic or they say we got to become pro-abundant life. They’re letting critics redefine our job descriptions. We should not let them do it.

The reality is pro-life means you oppose the intentional killing of an innocent human being in the womb. And this guy here implores me as an alleged brother in Christ to be consistent. And then it the thing he says at the end is really interesting. He says, ‘If you won’t do this, may God have mercy on your soul. Wow, does that sound like someone trying to reason with me or railroad me into doing something they want me to do by redefining what my pro-life work and ethic ought to be.

I’m not going to let them redefine what it means to be pro-life. Now, here is something else. Let’s say pro-lifers were in fact the worst people in the world. And say it could be shown that I was inconsistent because I oppose abortion, but I’m not ready to rush to the microphone to condemn what Border Patrol did in Minneapolis. Okay, let’s say that made me inconsistent. How would that in any way refute my argument that abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent human being?

In other words, how would it refute the three things we always tell you to focus on? Syllogism. Suppose I am inconsistent. Could my pro-life syllogism still be valid and sound? And that syllogism, premise one, it’s wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings. Premise two, abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being. Conclusion, therefore, abortion is wrong. Okay. How does that syllogism get refuted by my alleged misbehavior here? Well, obviously the answer is it does not because the argument for the pro-life view stands or falls on its merits.

Folks, listen to me. Do not let critics try to knock you out of this fight based on your behavior. Your pro-life argument stands or falls on its merits. Period. Now, as I’ve said on this show before, that does not give us license to be jerks. We should not be bad people. But don’t let people try to make the whole thing about you. That is a very Marxist, very leftist attempt at redefining what this debate is about. The debate is not about your behavior.

It’s about is your argument for the humanity of the unborn a good one. That’s what needs to be done. They’ve got to do the hard work of refuting your argument. And so many people today do not want to do this. Now, a final thing he said here that I want to comment on. He says he’s read my book. He says he’s familiar with my work and loves it. And he added this a little later in his thing. He said, “Listen, you pro-lifers like you call abortion murder, but you won’t call this murder.” meaning the shooting of Alex Credit.

Okay. First of all, at that point I knew I was dealing with someone who probably was not telling the truth about being familiar with my work. And trust me, there are a lot of people online and people who don’t have good intention trying to pretend like they hold our view, that they love our pro-life belief, and they’re just trying to call us to be more consistent. But when you dig deeper, you find out these aren’t allies of the pro-life view. Now, let me make this part clear.

Anybody who has read my work know that my pro-life argument does not use the word murder. And by the way, I’ve taken a lot of heat for that from abolitionists and others who have said, “You’re just being unbiblical. You don’t want to use biblical terms. You think the word of God is somehow secondary to your rational arguments.” I mean, I’ve had all kinds of garbage thrown at me by abolitionists and others who have tried to say, “You won’t call abortion murder.

Therefore, we don’t even think your ministry is God glorifying.” I’ve actually had an abolitionist pastor tell me that. Who, by the way, has since been removed from ministry for some egregious ethical violations, but he flat out said to me, “I don’t believe your ministry has biblical credibility because you will not call abortion murder.” Now, what he failed to listen to is my reasoning for not calling it murder. And that is this. In order to show a murder charge that the woman who has an abortion is guilty of murder, just like the abortionist would be, you’re going to have to prove number one that she knows what the abortionist knows.

You’re not going to be able to do that because the abortionist uses ultraography to target the fetus for dismemberment and that fetus on the ultrasound screen is not viewable to the woman at the time. You’re going to have to prove that he and her knowledge are equal when it comes to the heartbeat of the child. In other words, a Doppler device is hooked up to the woman and the abortionist uses the cessation of messages from that Doppler device which is measuring fetal heartbeat to make sure the fetus is dead before it is removed because the abortionist doesn’t want to get charged with killing a fetus that’s already been born.

So right away you got two ways the woman does not know. Thirdly, the abortionist assembles his instruments and has the intent to kill that particular child with those instruments which the woman is not privy to. So there’s a lot of ways you can show that you cannot have a co-conspiracy here to murder with the woman having the same knowledge as the doctor. I also pointed out that no jury in the country right now is going to convict a woman of firstdegree murder.

Now, that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be consequences, but by calling abortion murder, you’re going to make your argument that much more harder for a critic to understand and buy into. Because now you’re going to have to prove not only that the unborn are human, not only that abortion is intentionally killing an innocent human being, which by the way, those things are not hard to prove. But now you got to prove that the woman had malicious intent, that she had the same knowledge as the abortion doctor, that she woke up that morning with the reason for having an abortion, that she wanted intentionally to harm a child she had malice toward.

I mean, these are very difficult things to prove in a court of law. And therefore, it’s much simpler for us as pro-lifers to simply say abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent human being. Don’t let our critics have a way out where they can dodge that by getting off on technicalities and saying, “Well, it’s not murder and now your case collapses.” So, this pastor would hear none of that. Instead, he was just like, “Well, you obviously don’t believe in the authority of scripture because you won’t use the terms scripture uses for abortion.” Well, the first problem is, show me a verse in the Bible where it says abortion is murder.

It’s not in there. We build our biblical case by showing that all humans have value because they bear the image of God. Secondly, that because they bear the image of God, the shedding of innocent blood is strictly forbidden. Therefore, we know because the unborn are human that the commands against the shedding of innocent blood apply to the unborn as they do everybody else. So, I don’t have to use the word murder here to convey biblical truth. I can do it in a way that does not put up unnecessary barriers to my audience accepting my argument.

And if there are Christians that think that’s not good enough, well, fooy on you. I’m not going to worry about you. Okay. So he wanted me to admit this was all murder. And this is exactly the psychological tactic that was used in 2020. You proifers, if you don’t support restrictions on freedom because of the COVID epidemic, if you don’t support mandatory vaccines, if you don’t support you know shutting down all of society, locking everybody into their home, you’re not really pro-life.

And again, this is gorilla tactics, not reason discourse. And pro-lifers, let me encourage you. Number one, you do not need to be judged as being inconsistent if you are living faithful to your pro-life argument. You’re only inconsistent when it comes to you applying a different ethic on a particular case of abortion than you would normally. Like saying, for example, well, I think abortion’s wrong, but in my case or my kids’ case or my friend’s case, I think it’s all right. All right.

Now, you’re inconsistent. But don’t let other people add additional causes to your pro-life stance and say, “Well, you’re inconsistent because you won’t affirm this or condemn this.” No, you’re only inconsistent if you violate the consistency of your own syllogism that we’ve already talked about. All right? So be careful there. Secondly, remember this and never forget it. The legitimacy of your pro-life argument is not on you. It’s about the merits of the argument you’re making. Stick to the argument even though your critics are going to do everything they can to make the case about you.

All right, we’re going to take a break. When we come back, we are going to look at something that happened at the University of Notre Dame that we need to talk about where a pro-abortion professor was just promoted to a very prestigious position in the university. And I want to look at some of what she says and why it’s not persuasive and why we as Christians need to be equipped to refute people like this. All right, I’ll see you at the other side of the break.

Hello friends, welcome back from the break. A couple of things before we move on to the Notre Dame issue. I mentioned some books you may want to read on where our culture is in terms of wokeness affecting how Christians approach ideas. Rod Dreer’s book, Live Not by Lies, is must-reading. And of course a guest we’ve had on this show, Doug Groise’s book, Fire in the Streets. Those two I would recommend to you as a way to understand this woke attempt to force Christians to condemn or affirm things before facts are known.

That’ll give you the worldview background as to why that’s happening and why that woke worldview does not mesh or align with a Christian worldview. Very important. Also want to say one more thing. While I do think it’s very hard to convict an individual woman of murder, I don’t think it’s difficult to convict an abortionist of murder. You can show that he was very deliberate in his actions. You can show that he intended the death of that fetus. You can show that he had malice.

You can show a lot of things you cannot prove with the woman who’s having the abortion. So saying we got to convict her the same way we convict him may not be as easy as some people imagine. So I think there’s wisdom in saying I’m not going to use the term murder here. I’m just going to keep the main thing the main thing. Abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent human being. I’m going to make my opponents argue against that rather than give them a way out by talking about murder.

All right. Next. Now this is really disturbing to me. Notre Dame, arguably the largest and most influential Catholic university in the world, has promoted a professor named Susan Austerman who supports abortion wholesale. And she doesn’t apologize for it. In fact, in a 2022 Chicago Tribune article, she writes this. Almost 90% of abortions occur during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy when there are no babies or fetuses. She goes on to say this. There are only blastois or embryos so tiny they are too small to be seen on an abdominal ultrasound.

All right. Lots to point out here. Let’s just take the first thing. She says they’re not babies. Okay. I agree. A fetus in the womb is not a baby. An embryo is not a baby. But that’s no different than saying a teenager is not an adult or a toddler is not an adolescent. All she’s describing here are stages of development of the living human being that begins at fertilization. She’s attempting to use this in a dehumanizing way. And quite frankly, it’s fraudulent.

But she goes on to say this, these babies are so small. Now, here’s the question. She doesn’t say call them babies. She says these blastoes or embryos are so small they can’t even be seen. Since when does your body size determine your value? She doesn’t argue for that. She just asserts it. I could simply say to her, tell me, how big do I have to be not to be intentionally killed? Argue for size being valuegiving. How does my body size determine what rights I have in terms of living or dying?

She makes no argument for that. It’s just asserted. She also says they can’t be seen. Well, I can think of all kinds of injustices that happen worldwide that we don’t see, but they are still injustices. There are children that are trafficked whose faces we will never see. There are children being abused in privacies of homes all over the world. We’ll never see them, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re human and that they’re being treated unjustly. So, both of these categories are just very weak justifications for abortion.

I can’t believe that Nordreame, a prestigious intellectual hub of Catholic thought, could be fooled by someone who publishes this kind of garbage. All right, but there’s something else here that I want you to know. We can fight back against this kind of dehumanizing rhetoric by showing people these children that others want to dismiss. There’s an organization out there called the education resource fund EFR. Sorry I had a momentary brain lapse there that has put up videotapes of children in the womb using a technology called endoscopy.

Now what’s interesting is this professor Susan Austerman says these children can’t be seen on an ultrasound. Okay, maybe so. But guess what? We can still see them today using technology that inserts a camera through the corionic cavity and literally can film these children in uterero. And I’m looking at their site right now and I’m seeing videos of children at four weeks postconception with their hearts beating outside their bodies. You can see their heart beating. They have sevenw week embryos in the womb.

They’ve got three-week I mean it’s amazing. And you can download this site to your phone and literally show friends what these children look like. As my colleague Greg Cunningham puts it, as long as the culture thinks of these children as mere blobs, we’re going to lose this fight. This is a great way to humanize these kids and appeal directly to the intuitions of those we’re talking to. You know, the great late sociologist Neil Postman made the point that when it comes to epistemology, how we know things, our culture today is entirely visual.

I mean, think about how most friends, you know, learn about the world today. I can tell you how they learn about the world. They learn about the world through their phone, a handheld device where they scroll imagery. They scroll very small amounts of text and they formulate their view of the world based on what they’re viewing. Technology has changed us from a people who think in a linear fashion to people who think with images. All right, that doesn’t mean we abandon rational argument, but it does mean we might need some supplemental help from tools that can bypass people who don’t want to think linearly.

They don’t want to think logically. And taking them to a site like efr.science can do that because now they can have direct visualization of these children in the womb. And I think that’s how we answer people like Susan Austerman here. We point to tools of technology that make these children alive and shows us an image of what they really are. That you’re looking at video of living children in the womb. I hope you’ll take advantage of that. Again, it’s erf.cience. Erf.cscience.

Let’s win the argument with imagery and with good facts and arguments.