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Rebecca Carlson

Rebecca is the Director of Scholarship at Equal Rights Institute. She is a PhD candidate and former teaching assistant in philosophy at the University of Southern California, where she also cofounded and co-led the student pro-life club.

A sought-after speaker, Rebecca frequently delivers lectures all across the country at academic conferences, colleges, churches, high schools, and other events.

Rebecca’s favorite part of her work at USC was teaching both her philosophy students and her pro-life club members how to cultivate mutual, respectful dialogues with people they disagree with. That work has led her to the strong conviction that if we can teach one side of an issue how to approach dialogues well, people on the other side will very often follow suit, so that we really can radically transform the state of public discourse on abortion just by helping the pro-life side to have a better approach: we can create a culture where people on both sides value each other more and perceive the truth more clearly, and ultimately we can change more minds and save more lives. At ERI, Rebecca uses that passion and experience and her philosophical expertise to train and inspire pro-lifers through writing, video content, live speaking and interviews, academic research, and individual consulting for pro-life advocates and politicians.

“You can’t fix a dialogue single-handedly—it takes two good-faith interlocutors to make a good-faith dialogue. But what you can do is make the first move. You can clearly communicate and demonstrate your care for the other person, your genuine desire to understand where they’re coming from, and your openness to considering their point of view, even while they’re not doing the same for you. It takes a little bit of work and a lot of charity, but if you do that, far more often than not the other person will meet you halfway—even people you think of as crazy extremists.”

Rebecca expects to complete her PhD in philosophy at the University of Southern California in May of 2026. Her dissertation is in metaethics; her other areas of research include philosophy of law, epistemology, and philosophy of religion. She has earned an MA in philosophy from USC, as well as a BS in philosophy, summa cum laude, from Hillsdale College, with minors in mathematics and theatre.

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Beauty and Brokenness in the Pro-Life Movement

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Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

A couple weeks ago, we asked our awesome subscribers to email us and tell us how they’re feeling about the current state of the pro-life movement, and we were blown away by your responses. 77 of you replied, and it was so encouraging for our team to hear from you and connect with you. A bunch of you shared that you felt:

  • Excited that we have more access to great pro-life arguments 
  • Frustrated because good dialogue—the courage to speak up at all, and the calm to stay kind when you do—is really hard
  • Excited because Dobbs gave us the ability to pass state laws against abortion
  • Frustrated because the pro-choice side has a much bigger microphone and budget
  • Excited by the dedication, passion, and commitment they see in the pro-life movement, no matter the obstacles, no matter how laws change over time
  • Frustrated because some pro-life leaders talk in a way that makes it easy for pro-choicers to paint the whole pro-life movement as the pro-everything-Trump-does movement
  • …and many other excitements and frustrations
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Were Horton’s Friends Guilty of Attempted Murder?

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Photo: A milk thistle blooming in summer

Have you read Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who? If you’re pro-life, you might have quoted its most famous line: “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” But the story as a whole is…kind of intense. Horton the elephant is in the middle of a relaxing swim, when he hears a very soft voice calling for help. He looks around, but all he sees is a small speck of dust, and he realizes he’s actually hearing a microscopically tiny person (a Who, as it turns out) on the speck calling for his help. The speck is floating toward the water, and the tiny person is afraid he’ll drown. So Horton carefully picks up the speck and places it on a soft clover—because, as Horton says, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

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What We All Have In Common

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Charlie Kirk was shot and killed yesterday. His wife, Erika, lost her husband yesterday. His two children, both under the age of five, lost their daddy yesterday. Lord, have mercy.

I was on Twitter yesterday between when he was shot and when he was pronounced dead, looking at how people were responding, and I saw exactly what I expected. There were a few left-leaning people saying really ugly things—celebrating that he got shot, or saying that he deserved it. There were some right-leaning people saying ugly things about left-leaning people as a whole—that they’re all celebrating this, that shooting people for their ideas is what the left does. But the vast majority was left-leaning and right-leaning people both saying that nobody deserves to be a victim of political violence, naming Charlie’s and his family’s humanity, and hoping he would survive.

We have real, weighty disagreements with one another in this country—on abortion, and on any number of other extremely important things. It’s important not to minimize or ignore that. But it’s also vitally important to see what we do have in common. If you lean right politically, hear a fellow conservative say: Left-leaning people abhor shooting people for their political beliefs just like we do. That’s not a left thing or a right thing, that’s a human thing.

There are a few crazy people on the left who like political violence, and a few more who say things that sound like they like it because they want to be edgy and get views. There are also a few crazy people on the right who like political violence, and a few more who say things that sound like they like it because they want to be edgy and get views. Don’t let the crazy people pit the rest of us against one another. We have enough things to be divided over without adding this one vital thing that we’re actually on the same side on.

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Is This Pro-Choice Thought Experiment Cheating?

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Imagine you wake up one day and find yourself in a hospital bed. You have no idea how you got there, and there are cords running out of your body and into the body of a person who’s lying back to back with you on the bed. You understandably start to freak out a little. A doctor rushes in and explains: “It’s okay, you’re safe. Here’s what happened. That man on the hospital bed with you is a world-famous violinist who has a rare, typically deadly disease. He needs to be hooked up to someone’s kidneys so they can filter his blood, and it turns out you’re the only match in the world. So the Society of Music Lovers, which is obsessed with this guy and really doesn’t want him to die, kidnapped you, brought you here, and hooked you up.”

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

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Yes, Abby Johnson, We Do Care About Ending Abortion

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Abby Johnson said in a recent interview that organizations like ERI (and like most other pro-life organizations) that do want to prosecute doctors who perform abortions but do not want to prosecute women who have abortions must not really want to end abortion. Her exact words were, “I just find it hard anymore to pretend that these groups actually are interested in ending abortion.” She’s wrong. Let’s talk about it.

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes