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Josh Brahm

President

Josh has worked in the pro-life movement since he was 18. After 12 years of full-time pro-life work he launched Equal Rights Institute to maximize his impact on the movement.

A sought-after speaker, Josh has spoken for more than 29,000 people in six countries and in 25 of the 50 states.

Josh’s primary passion is helping pro-life people to be more persuasive when they communicate with pro-choice people. That means ditching faulty rhetoric and tactics and embracing arguments that hold up under philosophical scrutiny.

He has publicly debated leaders from Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), Georgians for Choice, and one of the leading abortion facilities in Atlanta.

Josh also wants to bring relational apologetics to the pro-life movement. “Some pro-choice people will not change their mind after one conversation on a college campus. Some of them will only change their mind after dozens of conversations with a person they trust in the context of friendship.”

Josh is formerly the host of a globally-heard podcast turned radio/TV show, Life Report. He now hosts the Equipped for Life Podcast. He’s also written dozens of articles for LifeNews.com and the ERI blog. He has been interviewed by the Washington Post, NPR, and Focus on the Family.
He directed the first 40 Days for Life campaign in Fresno, resulting in up to 60 lives saved.

Josh has been happily married to his wife, Hannah, for 19 years. They have three sons, Noah, William, and Eli. They live in Charlotte, North Carolina.
David Bereit, the National Director of 40 Days for Life, sums up Josh’s expertise this way: “Josh Brahm is one of the brightest, most articulate, and innovative people in the pro-life movement. His cutting-edge work is helping people think more clearly, communicate more effectively, and — most importantly — be better ambassadors for Christ. I wholeheartedly endorse Josh’s work, and I encourage you to join me in following Josh and getting involved in his work today!”

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Question: What Would Be a Better Word Than “Abortionist”?

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I’d like to host a discussion in the comments below. The question is: what would be a better word to use than “abortionist”?

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes.
I imagine the discussion going a little bit like this, except it will be online and it won't be a stock photo.

I imagine the discussion going a little bit like this, except it will be online and it won’t be a stock photo.

UPDATE 7/13/15: There’s been lots of great discussion in the comments, from both sides of the debate, exactly what I was hoping for! My conclusion at this point is that “abortion practitioner” does the best job of not being rude and also not removing all stigma from abortion, both things I think are important. You can also read my thoughts on how we ought to think of “shame” as it relates to this discussion here.

We’ve talked a lot about language choices we make and our dislike of labels like “pro-life” and “pro-choice,” because people are more complicated than the labels we give them. Having said that, sometimes using labels is necessary, especially when writing.

Our general principle is that we try to use neutral terms, at least in public articles and at the beginning of our conversations with pro-choice people. The goal is to avoid hurdles that distract us from the most important questions in the abortion debate, what are the unborn and how should we treat them?

So you’ll notice even in this post as well as the rest of this blog, much to some pro-lifer’s great frustration, we use the term “pro-choice” when we need to use a label, as opposed to a more derogatory label like “pro-abortion” or “pro-abort.” I don’t think those labels are helpful nor accurately descriptive of most people on the abortion rights side of the debate.

“Abortionist” is a word that never seemed offensive to us, but others have recently said it is to them. This is a problem because needlessly offensive words can distract from the important questions of the debate. Any time we’ve used that term we haven’t been trying to be rude. We would like to find a better word for the medical practitioner who performs the abortion that is less offensive but still clear enough that people know what we mean when we say it.

For example, one common phrase is “abortion provider,” but that seems too vague. Planned Parenthood is an abortion provider. We’re trying to find the best word for the person who carries out the abortion. Help us out in the comments below.

As always, I want to hear opinions from both pro-life and pro-choice people, so a quick reminder about our comments policy: I will be deleting snarky and disrespectful comments.

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Announcing Our Major Project This Year…

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UPDATE: This is the post we wrote announcing the Equipped for Life Course. That course came out in August of 2016. You can learn more about it and purchase the course for you or your group at https://EquippedCourse.com.

There’s a need.

Right now there are approximately 900 pro-life clubs on high-school and college campuses across the country. One of our partners, Students for Life of America, has done a fantastic job starting these clubs and providing them with coaching and logistical support they need to be effective. This is where the mission of ERI comes in to help students make their groups even more effective, by partnering with SFLA, we are training their club members to have productive conversations with the pro-choice students on their campuses.

Here’s the problem.

No pro-life organization can physically go to every club and train them in person. Several pro-life groups are going to one or two dozen a year. Those that get to more don’t typically spend much time training the pro-life students from that university. But it’s those students who have the best opportunity to change hearts and minds on their campus, because they are the ones who will have the most long-term exposure to local pro-choice students.

There are hundreds of campuses with pro-life clubs where no pro-life apologists go, but there are students there who are killing their babies every month. The pro-life students are there and are organized, but they desperately need to be equipped to create the kinds of dialogues where people actually change their minds. Who’s going to train them?

We have a solution.

We’re creating a comprehensive online training course that any pro-life club can take together. Our course will be designed for pro-life college clubs, but will be available to any person or group who wants to take it. When a club registers for the course, they will get a login to a website that will feature more than a dozen primary training modules, broken down into smaller units. The club will watch short videos together of an ERI staff member explaining a topic. They will also have access to optional bonus videos of us roleplaying these ideas, for those students who learn better by watching people demonstrate in real-time the concepts they just learned. Then the club leader will pass out training handouts she printed before the meeting so that everybody else can put the idea into practice, and eventually use it without the handouts!

If you’re like me, you need to hear concepts explained multiple times to really digest it. This makes our live seminars challenging for people who learn that way, because they can’t go back and listen to the seminar over and over again. We are designing this course so that it’s helpful to different types of learners. For example, we’ll help audible learners by making all of this material available as MP3 downloads, so they can listen to the course as many times as they want.

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Our vision is for every pro-life college student in the world to have access to a course that trains them in the art of gracious, persuasive conversations.

We’re the right people to create this course.

“Josh Brahm is a great ambassador for the pro-life movement, and we’re excited to work with Equal Rights Institute on campuses nationwide to help train the next generation of pro-life activists. It’s not only their arguments that are effective, but also the innovative and creative ways they present them.”

Kristan Hawkins, President, Students for Life of America

Responding to Advanced Personhood Arguments

One of the most widely-read posts I’ve ever written is “The Most Undervalued Argument in the Pro-Life Movement,” in which I gave a basic introduction to the Equal Rights Argument. It wasn’t a thorough explanation of how my colleagues and I use this argument in dialogue, but at the time I was planning on giving a more thorough explanation soon after. While I’ve been teaching the argument in more depth to live audiences, I’ve refrained from blogging about it for a variety of practical reasons. Before the end of the year, we will finally post a more detailed analysis of how we respond to personhood arguments.

beyondIn the meantime, there is a place you can find the same basic argument in written form, and that is in chapter 2 of Charles Camosy’s book Beyond the Abortion Wars. We explain it differently and we use our terms a bit differently, but substantively, it’s the same argument. We were really pleased when we read it, because we think it is the most persuasive way to respond to personhood arguments.

Whether or not you are struggling with how to respond to personhood arguments, you really should read Beyond the Abortion Wars. We don’t always agree with his conclusions, but even the places where we disagree are well-researched, well-argued, and well-explained, and they help me to think more clearly about my own beliefs. Charles Camosy is a very unusual, very interesting voice in the pro-life movement and any pro-life advocate would benefit from wrestling with him.