A few weeks ago I posted the link to an interview that Soulation recorded with me about how pro-lifers can love pro-choice people better while discussing an emotional issue like abortion. We had decided during that interview to record a bonus mock debate, with Jonalyn playing the pro-choice position, but it was lost due to technical difficulties. We decided to record again after several Soulation readers requested to see the debate.

I’m glad we did. It was a good chance to show in real-time what my conversations on college campuses usually look like. They’re usually a little different than this, as Jonalyn played both a very inquisitive pro-choice person, (so I spent more time talking than I usual do on campus,) and Jonalyn also played a very philosophically savvy pro-choice person. I think most pro-choice people are very smart, but I don’t talk to a lot of people on campus that have spent a ton of time thinking and reading about this issue. Jonalyn managed to combine a bunch of the best arguments that I think exist, including a pro-choice biblical view that I’d never heard of. So you can watch me do my best to respond thoughtfully to every challenge Jonalyn came up with, while keeping the way the arguments interact with each other clear in my mind.

As I said before, I highly recommend you follow Dale and Jonalyn’s work. It’s both important and unique.

I was talking with a Life Report fan recently about one of her family members who claims to be pro-life, but doesn’t care very much about abortion. I suspect this is a relatively common thing and can be very confusing for pro-life people who believe that the unborn child is fully human and worthy of legal protection. I offered her four possible explanations why somebody who claims to be “pro-life” may not care about abortion very much. I suspect that you know at least one person that would fall under each of these categories, and I want you to have some tools for engaging each of them. I’ll cover the third reason in today’s post.

1. She is pro-life, but falsely thinks that all social issues are equal.
2. She is pro-life but thinks that other social issues are more important than abortion.
3. She only thinks the unborn are semi-valuable, like a golden retriever.
4. She believes that while the unborn are fully human, abortion shouldn’t be made illegal because of women’s bodily autonomy rights.

#4: She believes that while the unborn are fully human, abortion shouldn’t be made illegal because of women’s bodily autonomy rights

As I said in part three, there are some pro-choice people that completely agree with pro-life people about the humanity of the unborn. Most of the time, this pro-choice person’s sole or primary reason for believing that abortion should remain legal has to do with women’s bodily rights. They feel like a law making abortion illegal would be tantamount to forcing women into slavery, unless there was a way to end her pregnancy without having an abortion, like transferring the child to an artificial womb. They feel like losing the option of abortion means a pregnant woman is now forced into nine months of forced pregnancy, having her body used against her will by her child.