Category Archives: Pro-Life Philosophy

These articles tend to be more substantive than our other pieces. Some pro-life arguments are more persuasive to pro-choice people than other arguments. We aim to teach arguments that are both persuasive and philosophically sound.

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Autumn in the Sovereign Zone: Why “It’s My Body, I Can Do What I Want” Won’t Do

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SovZone

Estimated reading time:18 minutes.

This post was first published at EvangelicalOutpost.com. I wrote it while on staff with Justice For All, and it wouldn’t have been possible without JFA’s excellent staff and generous supporters.

Autumn in the Sovereign Zone[1]

Anyone who has ever heard a conversation about abortion has heard pro-choice statements like:

  • “My body, my choice.”
  • “You can’t tell another person what she can’t do with her own body.”
  • “The fetus is part of her body.”
  • “The fetus is inside her body.”

When a pro-life advocate hears statements like these, a common impulse is to respond by saying, “But it’s not her body; it’s another body!” or “If the fetus is part of her body, does she have two heads and twenty toes?” or, perhaps, “But the unborn is a human being, here’s some evidence for that…”

Not so fast.  The pro-choice statements above are ambiguous.  If the pro-choice advocate is confused about whether the unborn is a separate organism from the mother, then graciously giving him an impromptu biology lesson might be helpful.  In many cases, though, the pro-choice advocate is intending to communicate that the woman can do what she wants even if the fetus is a human being.  Many pro-choice advocates don’t know how to articulate this argument in a way that helps pro-life advocates understand.  The pro-life advocate hears, “The fetus is not human,” but the pro-choice advocate means, “It doesn’t matter if the fetus is human.”

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Why it Would Be Wrong for Pro-Lifers to Drive Abortion Clinic Vans Under False Pretenses

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If your idea of pro-life activism involves tricking women into this van, you need to rethink your strategy.

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes.

Abolish Human Abortion (AHA) has been accused of encouraging pro-lifers to kidnap abortion-vulnerable women. I’m going to explain why this is a false accusation against AHA and argue that it would be morally wrong to kidnap people, even if it resulted in saving lives.

If you are familiar with the tone of the work that Abolish Human Abortion does, then it won’t surprise you that I’m not one of their biggest fans. I agree with them that human abortion should be abolished and I think their graphic design is stellar. That’s just about the limit of our common ground though. I don’t think we should picket churches with graphic abortion signs. I don’t think we should use fake Facebook accounts. I don’t think we should have a hostile or juvenile tone when debating people online. I had a discussion with one of AHA’s leaders once, and after it went about as well as you would expect, I decided that future discussions with them would probably not be worth my time.

If you haven’t read it yet, my friend Clinton Wilcox, who I’ve mentored for several years, wrote a very damning piece about AHA, showing that by their own definition William Wilberforce was not an abolitionist! He’s written a few other pieces about them as well that I think are worth reading.

Having said that, I’m going to defend AHA today because a lot of people are accusing them of encouraging pro-lifers to kidnap abortion-vulnerable women, when a simple understanding of how Facebook works will plainly show that this is a false accusation.

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The Most Undervalued Argument in the Prolife Movement

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Editor’s Note 12/15/20: We’ve now published an in-depth explanation of how to make the Equal Rights Argument, entitled “Arguing from Equality: The Personhood of Human Embryos.” It has a few important revisions based on how we’ve updated the argument over the years, but it also does a better job of teaching people how to use the argument. The new article is the best way to introduce someone to the Equal Rights Argument, but everything we wrote in this original post about how effective the argument is still holds true. For an even fuller treatment of the Equal Rights Argument, as well as many other arguments and skills for pro-life outreach, visit our Equipped for Life Course.

UPDATE 6/25/2015: This is one of the most widely-read posts I’ve ever written, in which I gave a basic introduction to the Equal Rights Argument. It isn’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.

The JFA philosophy team has been utilizing an argument that should be used by the entire prolife movement because the results have been amazing.

One of the best parts of my job is the work I do partnering with Justice For All. I’ve spent four years being trained by Steve Wagner to do many of the things he does for JFA in Wichita, from facilitating seminars and outreaches to coaching mentors.

Steve shared an argument with my brother Tim last year that he heard from J.P. Moreland and is featured on page 67 of Scott Klusendorf’s book, “The Case for Life” that I haven’t seen very many pro-life advocates utilize. So the three of us have been emphasizing it in campus dialogue, and over the last year we’ve been discussing how we might train our volunteers to use it.

The results have been amazing. Equal Rights Institute and Justice For All are now teaching this argument in all of our seminars.

It’s called the Equal Rights Argument.

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Refuting Those “After-Birth Abortion” Philosophers

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Refuting Those After-Birth Abortion Philosophers

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes.

 

Bioethicists Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva have caused a firestorm by publishing an article in the Journal of Medical Ethics stating that fetuses and newborns “do not have the same moral status as actual persons.”

I’m personally surprised, but happy that this article is getting so much attention. The surprise is because there isn’t really anything new in this article. Philosophers Michael Tooley and Peter Singer argued along a similar line more than 30 years ago, both biting the bullet and arguing that infanticide is morally permissible.

So while the arguments are not new, I think it’s a good thing that some people who had no idea that some philosophers believe that infanticide is permissible have seen this story and are talking about it. This is a good opportunity for pro-life people to ask their pro-choice friends what they think about the “after-birth abortion” article to start a conversation about abortion.

I want to briefly explain why Giubilini and Minerva believe what they do, and then I’ll offer brief refutations to their arguments. I recommend reading the works of Francis Beckwith and Christopher Kaczor for a fuller explanation of these ideas.