Author Archives

Andrew Kaake

Director of Content & Research

Andrew Kaake (pronounced like “cake”) is the Director of Content & Research at Equal Rights Institute. He holds a bachelor’s degree in classics and political science, cum laude, from Amherst College, where he wrote a thesis on the topic of C.S. Lewis and natural law philosophy. He completed his master’s degree in bioethics at Trinity International University, studying the philosophical underpinnings of controversies about life, death, and technology and trying to create ways to communicate that information to others. During his studies at Trinity, he worked as a research assistant for The Center for Bioethics & Human Dignity.

Andrew wants the pro-life movement to help foster a culture that seeks truth and embraces logical consistency. “What I believe about humanity and personhood clearly impacts what I think about abortion, but it also holds implications for how I should (and, more importantly, shouldn’t) dialogue with other people who disagree with me.”

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Banning Post-Birth “Abortion”: Why the Born-Alive Act Matters

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I’ve said before on this blog (and I’m not the first to say it) that the “right” to abortion is not the “right to choose” but the right to a dead baby. That is to say, for all of the pro-choice hand-wringing about “unplugging” and maternal safety, pro-choice advocates are not satisfied if pregnancy is ended but the baby survives the abortion attempt. Their ideal right to abortion is the right to an effective abortion, a lethal one.

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
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Pro-Choice Is Pro-Violence

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Pro-choice is pro-violence.

If you’re pro-life, this probably feels obvious to you. You might be surprised I even bothered to type it out.

If you’re pro-choice, though, this is likely an explosive, even offensive, statement to you. But this statement happens to be accurate, and it doesn’t depend on a single pro-life premise in order to be true. Said another way, I don’t need to convince you of the pro-life position in order to demonstrate that you’re committed to the public support of violence against other humans.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
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Illinois Trying to Shut Down Pregnancy Centers with Compulsory Disinformation

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Right now, the Illinois House and Senate have just passed a bill which would go after pregnancy centers in a way unmatched even by California and Massachusetts. SB 1909 attempts to criminalize, as fraud, attempts by a PRC to convince a woman to choose them over an abortion facility or not to have an abortion.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
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Selective Reduction: Abortion by Another Name

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Newborn twins with mother on table
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Recently, we’ve gotten comments asking us to address whether or not “selective reduction” is an ethical practice (or perhaps more to the point, to explain why it is not). On one hand, this makes sense; we don’t have material specifically addressing selective reduction or assisted reproductive technologies, and it’s worth talking about those things in detail. On the other hand, I’m a bit surprised, because selective reduction is just an abortion being performed in a specific context that still fails to provide a justification for killing.

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Abortion and Medical Necessity: Improving the Pro-Life Approach

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Ambulance going with lights on and blurb background to show it's going fast

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

Pro-life people really don’t like abortion. Shocking, right? But I don’t just mean that pro-life people believe abortion is morally wrong, which we do; pro-lifers have a strong emotional reaction—a moral aversion—to abortion which is often right and healthy.