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Stand for Life
A Student's Guide to Making the Case and Saving Lives
By John Ensor, Scott Klusendorf Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLC
Copyright © 2012 Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLC
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61970-084-0
CHAPTER 1
Defending Your Pro-Life Views in Five Minutes or Less
There is no relevant difference between the embryo you once were and the young adult that you are today that would justify killing you at that earlier stage of development.
Suppose that you have just five minutes to graciously defend your pro-life beliefs with friends or classmates. Can you do it with rational arguments? What should you say? And how can you begin simplifying the abortion issue for those who think it's hopelessly complex?
Here's how to succeed in three steps:
1. Clarify the issue.
Pro-life advocates contend that elective abortion unjustly takes the life of a defenseless human being. This simplifies the abortion controversy by focusing public attention on just one question: Is the unborn a member of the human family? If so, killing him or her to benefit others is a serious moral wrong. It treats the distinct human being, with his or her own inherent moral worth, as nothing more than a disposable instrument. Conversely, if the unborn are not human, killing them for any reason requires no more justification than having a tooth pulled.
In other words, arguments based on "choice" or "privacy" miss the point entirely. Would anyone that you know support a mother killing her toddler in the name of "choice and who decides?" Clearly, if the unborn are human, like toddlers, we shouldn't kill them in the name of choice anymore than we would a toddler. Again, this debate is about just one question: What is the unborn? At this point, some may object that your comparisons are not fair—that killing a fetus is morally different than killing a toddler. Ah, but that's the issue, isn't it? Are the unborn, like toddlers, members of the human family? That is the one issue that matters.
Remind your critics that you are vigorously "pro-choice" when it comes to women choosing a number of moral goods. You support a woman's right to choose her own doctor, to choose her own husband, to choose her own job, and to choose her own religion, to name a few. These are among the many choices that you fully support for women. But some choices are wrong, like killing innocent human beings simply because they are in the way and cannot defend themselves. No, we shouldn't be allowed to choose that.
2. Defend your pro-life position with science and philosophy.
The science of embryology tells us that from the earliest stages of development, the unborn are distinct, living, and whole human beings. Leading embryology books confirm this. For example, Keith L. Moore and T. V. N. Persaud write, "A zygote is the beginning of a new human being. Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm ... unites with a female gamete or oocyte ... to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual." Prior to his abortion advocacy, former Planned Parenthood president Dr. Alan Guttmacher was perplexed that anyone, much less a medical doctor, would question this. "This all seems so simple and evident that it is difficult to picture a time when it wasn't part of the common knowledge," he wrote in his book Life in the Making.
Philosophically, we can say that embryos are less developed than newborns (or, for that matter, toddlers), but this difference is not morally significant in the way abortion advocates need it to be. Consider the claim that the immediately exercisable capacity for self-awareness bestows value on human beings, and embryos lack that capacity. Notice that this is not an argument, but an arbitrary assertion. Why is some development needed? And why is this particular degree of development (i.e., higher brain function) decisive rather than another? These are questions that abortion advocates do not adequately address.
As philosophy professor Stephen Schwarz points out, there is no morally significant difference between the embryo that you once were and the adult that you are today that would justify killing you at that early stage of development. Differences of size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency are not relevant such that we can say that you had no rights as an embryo but you do have rights today. Schwarz suggests the acronym SLED as a helpful reminder of these nonessential differences:
Size: True, embryos are smaller than newborns and adults, but why is that relevant? Do we really want to say that large people are more human than small ones? Men are generally larger than women, but that doesn't mean that they deserve more rights. Size doesn't equal value.
Level of Development: True, embryos and fetuses are less developed than the adults they'll one day become. But again, why is this relevant? Four-year-old girls are less developed than fourteen-year-old ones. Should older children have more rights than their younger siblings? Some people say that self-awareness makes one human. But if that is true, newborns do not qualify as valuable human beings. Six-week old infants lack the immediately exercisable capacity for performing human mental functions, as do the reversibly comatose, the sleeping, and those with Alzheimer's Disease. Like the early embryo, a man in a reversible coma has the natural capacity for mental functions even if he can't presently exercise them.
Environment: Where you are has no bearing on who you are. Does your value change when you cross the street or roll over in bed? If not, how can a journey of eight inches down the birth canal suddenly change the essential nature of the unborn from non-human to human? If the unborn are not already human, merely changing their location can't make them valuable.
Degree of Dependency: If viability makes us human, then all those who depend on insulin or kidney medication are not valuable and we may kill them. Conjoined twins who share blood type and bodily systems also have no right to life.
In short, it's far more reasonable to argue that although humans differ immensely with respect to talents, accomplishments, and degrees of development, they are nonetheless equal because they share a common human nature.
3. Challenge your listeners to be intellectually honest.
Ask the tough questions. When critics say that birth makes the unborn human, ask, "How does a mere change of location from inside the womb to outside the womb change the essential nature of the unborn?" If they say that brain development or self-awareness makes us human, ask if they would agree that those with an IQ below 40 or perhaps 60 should be declared nonpersons? If not, why not? True, some people will ignore the scientific and philosophic case you present for the pro-life view and argue for abortion based on self-interest. That is the lazy way out. Remind your critics that if we care about truth, we will courageously follow a good argument wherever it leads, no matter what the cost to our own self-interests.
Let's toughen the job. Suppose you only get one minute to make your pro-life case. Now what? Don't panic. Just summarize what's stated above. Here's how:
Either you believe that each and every human being has an equal right to life or you don't. The science of embryology tells us that from the earliest stages of development, the unborn are distinct, living, and whole human beings. Sure, they have yet to mature, but they are whole human beings just the same. Philosophically, there is no essential difference between the embryo you once were and the adult you are today that would justify killing you at that earlier stage. Differences of size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency are not good reasons for saying you could be killed then but not now.
CHAPTER 2
Understanding Why We Speak of the Sanctity of Human Life
There is no relevant difference between the embryo you once were and the young adult you are today that would remove your life from God's love and protection.
Dr. Bernard Nathanson (1926–2011) wrote, "I am personally responsible for over seventy-five thousand abortions." He was one of the main architects of the strategic plan to dehumanize the unborn child and legitimize abortion across the country. He succeeded beyond all his own expectations.
Then something happened that forced him to see abortion for what it is and to renounce all that he had done and advocated. Ultrasound technology arrived in his office in the midseventies. Ultrasound provided a true "window to the womb" and revealed the humanity of the unborn child. Nathanson wrote:
From then on we could see this person in the womb from the very beginning—and study and measure it and weigh it and take care of it and treat it and diagnose it and do all kinds of things. It became, in essence, a second patient. Now a patient is a person. So basically I was dealing then with two people, instead of just one carrying some lump of meat around. That's what started me doubting the ethical acceptability of abortion on request.
Dr. Nathanson's acknowledgment of the humanity of the unborn child had no conscious religious tone to it. He was an atheistic Jew. "I had not a seedling of faith to nourish me," he wrote. Embryology itself, confirmed by ultrasound, led him to acknowledge that there was no significant difference between the humanity of the mother and that of her unborn child, that would justify killing her baby.
In 1983, The New England Journal of Medicine reported that ultrasound was reshaping the whole medical profession; that doctors need to see the unborn child as a patient.
Ultrasound imagery will probably change the way in which we view the fetus with a diagnosed and treatable disorder.... Indeed, surgeons already regard the fetus with a correctable congenital defect as a "patient."
The same report also indicated that ultrasound examinations were turning ambivalent mothers toward parenthood and away from abortion.
One of us pointed to the small, visibly moving fetal form on the screen and asked, "How do you feel about seeing what is inside you?" She answered crisply, "It certainly makes you think twice about abortion! ... I feel that it is human. It belongs to me. I could never have an abortion now."
"The truth will out," wrote Shakespeare. The truth of our humanity in the early stages of our development, along with all of its beauty and wonder, has been outed by ultrasound. Opening this window to the womb is clearing away the obfuscation and moral fog required to justify abortion. As a result, the tide is turning.
Opinion polls taken in the U.S. over the past twenty years have shown a tick, tick, ticking swing toward the pro-life position. A May 2009 Gallup Poll found 51 percent of Americans calling themselves "pro-life" on the issue of abortion and 42 percent "pro-choice." This was the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking the question in 1995. Another national survey by the Pew Research Center taken about the same time, showed an 8 percentage-point decline from a survey taken in 2008, among those saying abortion should be legal in all or most cases. This view went from a majority 54 percent to a minority of 46 percent. The percentage saying abortion should be legal in only a few or no cases increased from 41 to 44 over the same period.
Forty years after the right to abortion was identified in the "penumbra of the constitution" by a few men on the Supreme Court, the practice is by no means settled. In fact, it grows more unsettling to us with each passing year. Why? Part of the answer is that every day thousands of women and couples show up for their routine ultrasounds. They go home clutching pictures of their own unborn children and then sending them to family and friends.
Yes, the child is small. It definitely has a big head in proportion to the rest of its body. It's less developed than it will be, a week later, a month later and certainly ten years later. It's moving about in an environment common to us all, yet strangely new for us to look in and observe. Though it's dependent on mom for nourishment, as it will be after birth, yet what we see on the ultrasound, even to the untrained eye, looks near enough to us as human that our sympathy and love are naturally aroused.
We respond as normal, healthy people always do—with a tender and willing desire to provide and protect this little one. (We always protect what we love.) Ultrasound is helping us think more clearly and react the same way we would respond if we were watching a two-year-old toddler on a security camera and then saw someone coming at her with a knife. We would run to her aid and defense.
Ultrasound, however, is not the only window to the womb. The Bible, too, is a source of revelation. It, too, reveals the truth of our humanity. It, too, confirms that there is no relevant difference between the embryo you once were and the young adult that you are today that would justify killing you at that earlier stage of development. And it, too, reveals how God protects what he loves.
Since many of your fellow students do not accept the Bible as an authoritative source of truth, simply quoting Scripture will not settle the matter. On the other hand, you can bet your Starbucks chai macchiato latte that if the Bible did make a distinction between the embryo you once were and the young adult you have become that would justify killing you in the early stages of development, they would quote it to you. So consistency is important.
It's important for at least four reasons. First, it's important for you to know. You need to know that some things rest on an even firmer foundation than human reasoning. Some ethical demands come from a higher authority than any government laws or executive order or judicial decree. Human rights come from above. When the two are in conflict, sides must be taken and courage must be found. Very few things in this world are worth fighting for. But oh! How precious those few things are! Innocent human life is one of them.
This is why we speak of the sanctity of human life. We assert that all human life is sacred and belongs to God because all people are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Since every human being is created by God and in his image, every human being has intrinsic rather than relative value. Every human being has a natural right to life that is to be respected within a community and protected by the laws of a just society. "Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the rights of the afflicted and the destitute" (Psalm 82:3). A just society does just that. Herein lies the offense of abortion. It devalues and dehumanizes into "a product of conception" what God calls his most treasured gift—human life made in his image and designed to reflect his glory and goodness.
So there is no relevant difference between the embryo you once were and the young adult you are today that would remove your life from God's love and protection. Nor is there anything then that should remove our love and protection from our neighbor's life.
There is a second reason for us to see the humanity of the unborn child affirmed in the Scriptures. For every student who dismisses the Bible out of hand, there is another that is fully persuaded that it's the authoritative word of God. Those who take their Christian faith seriously will be interested in learning how and where God affirms the value of every human life, at all stages of development. Otherwise they are apt to think of abortion as merely an issue rather than an affront to the integrity of God.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Stand for Life by John Ensor, Scott Klusendorf. Copyright © 2012 Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLC. Excerpted by permission of Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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