Are Pro-Choice Advocates Good at Describing Their Own Position?

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes.

I continue my response to a listener who asks: “Why are we trying to be so careful to accurately describe other people’s positions? They do just fine describing it for themselves.”

Are Pro-Choice Advocates Good at Describing Their Own Position?

This is my second post in a series that responds to follow-up questions about a recent discussion I led on Life Report on what terms to use in abortion dialogues. We focused most of the debate on the labels “pro-abortion” vs. “pro-choice.”

I was joined by Steve Wagner from Justice For All and Gabi Vehrs from the Fresno City College Students for Life club. We all agreed that pro-life advocates should generally use the term “pro-choice” when beginning a dialogue, even though many pro-life people see that as an inaccurate “weasel word.”

If you haven’t seen it yet, I’d encourage you to watch the entire discussion below or download the audio version here.

Here is one of the responses we got to the discussion, from someone named Dallas:

I just want to say that this whole discussion is pretty wimpy. Why are we trying to be so careful to accurately describe other people’s positions? They do just fine describing it for themselves. I am pro-life and not ashamed to be called anti-choice. If the choice is murder, yes, I believe a woman should not have the choice to kill for convenience. Why make a science out of something so simple?

In my last post, I gave principled and pragmatic reasons why we should attempt to accurately describe other people’s positions. I now want to address the point Dallas raises in her third sentence.

I disagree with Dallas when she says that pro-choice people do a fine job of describing their own position themselves. In my experiences on college campuses, I’ve found that many pro-choice people haven’t spent very much time thinking about the issue and really struggle to communicate some of their arguments in a clear and accurate way. Please don’t take the last sentence as an insult to pro-choice people. There are lots of issues that I haven’t thought a lot about as well. The observation is worth bringing up because if we assume that every pro-choice person we speak to has very carefully refined their arguments, our dialogues will be hurt because that assumption is demonstrably false. Pro-choice slogans do not always give the full side or even the strongest side of any given pro-choice advocate’s position.

For example, pro-choice people often say: “It’s part of my body.” But Timothy Brahm and Justice For All‘s Steve Wagner have noticed that that could be referring to at least four pro-choice arguments:

  1. Most pro-life advocates assume they mean that the baby is literally a part of her body, like an organ, so we respond by arguing that the fetus has its own body, separate from the mother. I don’t think most pro-choice people mean this when they say “My body, my choice.” Frankly, most pro-choice people are intelligent enough to see the weakness of this view, and so they mean something different.
  2. They could mean that the unborn is a parasite, and that by nature of it being dependent on the mother’s blood supply, she has the right to do with it as she pleases. This may sound like #1 to you, but it’s not. This argument admits that the unborn is a separate body, and gives a reason for giving the mother the right to abort.
  3. It could be the bodily rights argument that Trent Horn calls the “Sovereign Zone” argument. The pro-choice advocate admits that the unborn is an actual person, yet she has the right to abort anyway because the child lives inside her body. Read Timothy Brahm’s article that devastates this argument here: “Autumn in the Sovereign Zone: Why “It’s My Body, I Can Do What I Want” Won’t Do.”
  4. It could be the bodily rights argument that Trent Horn calls the “Right to Refuse” argument. The pro-choice advocate admits that the unborn is a person, but that a women should have the right to refuse to have her body used as a life support machine, just like you should have the right to unplug from Thomson’s violinist. Read several responses to this argument starting on page 8 of this paper: “De Facto Guardian and Abortion: A Response to the Strongest Violinist,” or listen to me explain the arguments in this speech.
Precision engineers use tools like this. We must use our minds, having researched the issue ahead of time and asked the person we're speaking with a lot of questions to accurately understand their view.

Precision engineers use tools like this. We must use our minds, having researched the issue ahead of time and asked the person we’re speaking with a lot of questions to accurately understand their view.

I have responses to all of these arguments, but I can’t adequately respond as soon as I hear “My body, my choice,” because I don’t have enough information yet. I need to ask some questions to deduce where the pro-choice advocate is coming from.

Here’s another example: Some pro-choice advocates think that the unborn is not a person because it isn’t self-aware yet. Do you feel ready to respond to that challenge as soon as you hear it? Not so fast. Tim, Steve and I have noticed in our conversations lately that we need a lot more information.

What do they mean by “self-aware”? Do they mean an entity being rationally aware of herself existing over time? Do they mean being aware of their own desires? Do they merely mean minimal awareness of the outside world?

How do they think the property of self-awareness interacts with a human being’s value? Do they think that an entity becomes more valuable as they become more and more self-aware? Do they think an entity must be presently self-aware to have value? In that case, do they have a way to preserve the personhood of people in temporary comas? Or do they think an entity must have crossed the threshold of becoming minimally self-aware and as soon as they do, they have an equal right to life with all the other self-aware entities?

You may believe I’m overthinking this, but I have found that I can’t have very good dialogues with people if I have no idea where they’re coming from. If I don’t ask a lot of questions at the front end of the conversation, I’m likely to put the pro-choice advocate in a preconceived box and assume she is just like the last person I talked to who said similar things. I’ll probably “straw man” the poor person, leaving her frustrated that I didn’t care enough about her to learn what she actually believed before responding with pre-memorized pro-life talking points.

The post “Are pro-choice advocates good at describing their own position?” originally appeared at JoshBrahm.comClick here to subscribe via email and get exclusive access to a FREE MP3 of Josh Brahm’s speech, “Nine Faulty Pro-Life Arguments and Tactics.”

President

Josh Brahm is the President of Equal Rights Institute, an organization that trains pro-life advocates to think clearly, reason honestly and argue persuasively.

Josh has worked in the pro-life movement since he was 18. A sought-after speaker, Josh has spoken for more than 23,000 people in six countries and in 22 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 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 15 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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