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Humanize the Pro-Life Position—“Come Out” as Pro-Life

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The abortion-choice lobby has moved on from just dehumanizing unborn persons. They’ve now shifted their primary focus to dehumanizing pro-life people.

It sounds ridiculous for me to say that pro-choice leaders are less concerned about arguing that the unborn aren’t valuable persons. Here’s the thing: unborn humans aren’t visible, and planting doubt or apathy is quite often enough to get pro-choice people to empathize with the visible woman rather than the invisible child. If someone doesn’t seem to be present, if they can’t or don’t speak up for themselves, it is no major challenge to ignore them.

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

Men speaking at table.

Why We Must Be Openly Pro-Life

Pro-life people have a pesky tendency to be visible and audible. The most effective way to counter this “problem” is to render pro-life people as something other than persons. If pro-choice leaders are successfully able to “other” pro-life people, then the public can ignore us because we are made into something noxious, detestable, beneath consideration. In short, pro-choice leaders are attacking the character and credibility of the pro-life movement in order to force pro-life people into hiding.

This is why pro-life people are so frequently painted as religious crazies or terrorists. Take the recent AKA Jane Roe documentary: a clinic worker refers to pro-life people as “terrorists” because they yell at people and block clinic entrances (things which…aren’t terroristic), but this claim is made out to be respectable because the director displays a clip of actual anti-abortion violence—a person bombing an abortion facility. People don’t listen to what a terrorist has to say because a terrorist’s message is automatically considered violent and evil. If to be pro-life is to be an “anti-choice terrorist”, to use the term my colleague Rachel heard used during women’s studies classes, then it doesn’t matter if we say that pro-choice people are supporting a massive human-rights violation, because good people should avoid being contaminated even by hearing us.

If this strategy succeeds, the pro-life position will be a thought crime. Pro-life people will become political untouchables. We can’t convince people who won’t listen to us; even though we have better arguments, pro-choice leaders won’t have to give an answer if they can silence those who question their position.

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Responding to the Slogan “Don’t Like Abortion? Don’t Have One!”

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“Don’t like abortion? Don’t have one!” We’ve probably all heard this evergreen slogan before from a pro-choice advocate. There are even shirts and bumper stickers for it. Just like “no uterus, no opinion,” it’s short, it’s snappy, and it can catch new or young pro-life people off-guard in how to respond. It’s a popular comeback I’ve personally heard many times when discussing abortion in-person or online. And it frustrates me to no end because it’s a terrible pro-choice argument. There are many far better pro-choice arguments that can be made, yet this is an easy go-to for many pro-choice advocates. It also frustrates me because by using it, the pro-choice person has revealed they not only have a fundamental misunderstanding of the pro-life viewpoint, but also that they are probably not interested in serious discussion—they are just seeking to shut down the conversation by pulling out this slogan.

Man holding sign with slogan, "If you're against abortion, don't have one."

Picture by Charlotte Cooper source Flickr is licensed under CC By 2.0

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
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The Immorality of Harming an Unaware Victim

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Download Audio MP3 | 00:44:19

Content warning: This conversation necessarily includes some thought experiments that relate to sexual abuse, as well as the real-world example of Jeffrey Epstein. As usual, the discussion isn’t graphic, but we want our listeners who are survivors of sexual assault to know that and make an informed decision of whether they want to listen to this episode or not.

It’s Rachel’s last episode! She and Josh discuss how pro-choice people are often inclined to believe that adult women should be prioritized over fetal humans because adults have thoughts, dreams, and relationships. They offer some talking points for pro-lifers including some thought experiments that might help the conversation become more productive. Josh also tells a story about a related dialogue he had with a philosophy professor about prison reform, and how pro-life advocates tend to be primarily motivated by different things, especially when they first become passionate about this issue.

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4 Tips for Changing More Minds

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White House press briefing room
“White House Press Briefing” by The White House is marked with CC PDM 1.0
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

The other day, I saw a clip from an old White House Press Briefing. Reporters were barraging the press secretary with leading questions, reciting statistics that directly challenged the effectiveness of the new policy, and presenting contradictory quotes that the press secretary had said literally the day before.

But the press secretary calmly took in the critiques, acknowledged the flaws, and ended the event by saying “Thank you so much for bringing these problems to my attention. You all have made some really great points today, and maybe we should be rethinking this policy!”