Six Bad Arguments from the Pro-Choice “Reversing Roe” Documentary

Reversing Roe

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes.

On September 18th, Netflix released a documentary about abortion called “Reversing Roe.” I watched it, hoping that it was made in an unbiased way, fairly showing both sides of the debate. Unfortunately, as with most documentaries about abortion, this one was edited in a very slanted way, I think to intentionally manipulate the audience. As someone who studies video editing in his spare time (I know, I’m fun, aren’t I?), I recognized lots of subtle editing tricks the filmmakers were using to make people feel comfortable with pro-choice people and uncomfortable with pro-life people.

I decided that the best way for me to equip pro-life advocates to have productive conversations with their pro-choice friends about this documentary was to make a series of videos showing clips from the film and then provide commentary, both on the biased editing tricks as well as responding to the more substantive pro-choice arguments in the film. I spent the next few weeks doing a careful analysis of the film, shooting about 90 minutes of footage of me responding to the documentary, and then working with a new volunteer on editing them into shorter clips to post on YouTube. I’m modeling a video style that’s become very popular lately, where an expert (like a doctor or lawyer) watches clips from a show or movie and then comments about it. I haven’t seen any other pro-life advocates use this style, and I think these videos came out so great that we might do more in the future.

Click on the embedded playlist below to watch the clips for yourself, but I’ll make a few of my points below to give you a sneak peek.

Reversing Roe: Exposing the Bias

Reversing Roe: Exposing the Bias

Estimated reading time: 1 minutes.

Josh Brahm analyzes the documentary “Reversing Roe” and exposes the biased editing tricks and responds to the pro-choice arguments made.

Click on the embedded playlist below to watch the video series, or click on the button on the top left of the player to pick and choose which sections to watch.

Videos in the Playlist Above:

  1. Editing Tricks
  2. More Editing Tricks
  3. Gender Bias
  4. Pro-Choice Christians and False Stats
  5. Personhood, Bodily Rights Arguments, and Roe vs. Wade
  6. Did Pro-Lifers Make Up Partial-Birth Abortion?
  7. Do Tax Dollars For Planned Parenthood Help Fund Abortion?
  8. The Worst Pro-Choice Arguments in the Film

Question for pro-choice people: Do you see this documentary as being fair to both sides, or is it just something that in the end might be useful in motivating inactive pro-choice people?

Question for anybody: Should documentaries attempt to be neutral? Tell us in the comments below!

Share this video series with your friends using this link: EqualRightsInstitute.com/ReversingRoe

Five Lessons for Pro-Lifers from the Women’s March

Whether you are participating in legislative efforts, sidewalk advocacy, volunteering at a Pregnancy Resource Center, or leading a Students for Life group, you should be talking about your pro-life work. Pro-lifers need to talk more about what we are doing for the movement because building awareness is half the battle of grassroots mobilization efforts. Successful social change comes from recruiting those who agree and reaching out to those who disagree.

Let’s take a look at how pro-choice people discuss their activism. I am going to use the Women’s March of January 2017 as a case study for how we as pro-life advocates can improve our own messaging by examining the March’s approach and identifying what we can learn from it. The second Women’s March took place this year on January 20th, but, for the sake of simplicity, I am only going to reference the first march in this post. The march this year was less clear and consistent in its messaging, so it isn’t as useful a case study.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes.

Women’s March in Washington in January, 2017.
Photo credit: Roya Ann Miller

When the Women’s March took place last year, it was discussed all over social media, news sites, and in our communities: the kind of buzz that every social protest hopes to create. People talked about why they were going, how they planned on getting there, and what their experience was like after they came back from either the national or local march. If activism sparks discussion, it is a sign that the activism achieved some level of success. These marches were not just public demonstrations which took place on one day and were over the next. The people participating talked about it openly before, during, and after with anyone that they could reach.

Here are my takeaways after closely studying the success and shortcomings of the pro-choice movement’s participation in the Women’s March:

PODCAST: Live Q&A at Stonebridge Church (1 of 2)

Download Audio MP3 | 00:34:59

I spoke at Stonebridge Church in Charlotte last month after they finished going through the Equipped for Life Course, to offer some practical tips on relational apologetics and take their questions. This is the audio from the Q&A portion of that event.

I’ll list the topics below in case you want to jump around:

Planned Parenthood’s Absurd Position on HIV Disclosure

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes.

This morning I saw an article on DailyWire and I couldn’t decide if I was surprised or not. Kimberly Ellis points out that in Matt Lauer’s recent interview with Charlie Sheen, they were operating under a clear assumption that it is morally obligatory to disclose your HIV status to a sexual partner. Then Ellis points out that Planned Parenthood disagrees with Lauer and Sheen in their booklet for teens with HIV, Healthy, Happy and Hot.

Should I be surprised? On one hand, finding out that Planned Parenthood thinks HIV people have a moral right to not tell their sexual partners of their condition ought to be shocking. It’s a horrible, evil, destructive view. But on the other hand it shouldn’t be surprising because it coheres with what I already know about Planned Parenthood: they think the rights of some people to live (like the unborn) are less important than the rights of other people to have sex.

Two months ago I wrote an article about my conversation at the University of Michigan with a student I called Brent. Brent was honest enough to admit that he was pro-choice because he believed that the right to have sex was absolute, and without the right to kill unborn children, women wouldn’t be able to exercise that right.

Brent and Planned Parenthood (and many other pro-choice people) are making the same mistake: believing that the right to have sex is absolute. They are wrong. Your right to have sex is less important than another person’s right to live. Your right to live is more important than another person’s right to have sex.*