We have added eight new lesson videos to the Equipped for Life Course that will help you take the pro-life defense of fetal personhood to the next level. This 90-minute module is the result of a four-year research project that our philosophy team has been working on behind the scenes. In these videos, we teach an advanced version of the Equal Rights Argument that gives a philosophically thorough explanation as to why human embryos should be considered valuable persons with serious moral status.
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An Overview of the Lessons:
- Lesson 1: Sometimes You Need an Advanced Argument – We explain why seasoned pro-life advocates should have the second version of the Equal Rights Argument in their tool belt for abortion dialogues, even though the first version is more straight-forward and easier to understand.
- Lesson 2: The Problem – We identify the problem of a simplified argument, even though it is more straight-forward and easy to understand and show why some people will need a more sophisticated explanation of personhood.
- Lesson 3: Higher-Order Capacities – We introduce a hierarchical system of capacities that provides a philosophically precise understanding of potential.
- Lesson 4: Moral Agency – We argue that moral agency is fundamental for serious moral status and that other possible explanations, such as rationality and others that pro-choice people use in the original Equal Rights Argument, don’t work.
- Lesson 5: Responding to the Critics: Tooley’s Cat – We respond to the strongest objection to our claims about personhood made by pro-choice philosophers like Michael Tooley, David Boonin, and Jeff McMahan. We also address what philosophers call “marginal cases” and answer why we think it is philosophically consistent to say that children with anencephaly are valuable people, too.
- Lesson 6: What about Imago Dei? – We consider the biblical argument that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God as an alternative to our approach.
- Lesson 7: Review – We summarize these lessons for quick reference later.
- Lesson 8: Example Dialogues – We provide three example dialogues for you to see how both versions of the Equal Rights Argument could be used in real-time.
