Tag Archives: responding to rape

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When a Hypothetical Story Isn’t Hypothetical After All

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Sometimes when I talk about abortion with strangers, it feels like I’ve already had that conversation before, because they’re making familiar statements. But the truth is, I haven’t had that conversation before, because I haven’t heard that statement from that person before. Even though some statements are very common, different people mean very different things by them. A recent conversation I had with a hotel shuttle driver named “Mark” reminded me that while I may have heard the same words before, I hadn’t heard his story before. I think there’s a lesson you can learn from this situation that will help you have better dialogues with pro-choice people.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes.
Photo Credit: Prayitn via Compfight cc

Photo Credit: Prayitn via Compfight cc

I was in town to speak at a conference when Mark picked me up, and after we exchanged some pleasantries, he asked me what I do for a living.

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VIDEO: 6 Practical Tips for Having Good Dialogues

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My speech from the 2015 Students for Life of America conference in D.C. has been posted! These are six practical tips for having good dialogues with pro-choice people.

Six practical tips for having good dialogues:

  1. Silence your inner monologue.
  2. Rephrase what they said.
  3. Find genuine common ground when possible.
  4. Acknowledge the horror of rape.
  5. Be intentional with your body language.
  6. Be willing to jump to another topic.

Resources:

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Why Pro-Life People Should Watch “After Tiller”

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This is a guest post by my formerly pro-choice friend Deanna Unyk. Read more about how she became pro-life here.  Read about our upcoming event in Portland here.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes.

“After Tiller” is a documentary that follows the lives of the remaining four late-term abortion providers in the United States.  It chronicles their family lives, what they were doing before they started performing abortions, as well as the kinds of harassment and threats they have been the victims of at the hands of pro-life activists.  The documentary also interviews women who came in for late-term abortions.

Watch the trailer below:

This is a very pro-choice documentary, but there are several reasons why I think it is important for pro-life people to watch it with compassion.

After_tiller_filmThe compassionate thoughts that this movie encourages can help us to interact in a compassionate manner when we encounter abortion providers and post-abortive people.  Acting compassionately towards others is both a pragmatically wise and the morally good thing to do.  It is pragmatically wise for the pro-life movement to treat abortionists and post-abortive women with compassion because we want pro-choice people to hear us out, consider our reasoning, and eventually agree with us.  Nobody is going to want to do that if they think we’re all jerks.

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My Speech at the 2014 Students for Life Conference: “I’m Pro-Life, But…”

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I was asked to give an apologetics speech at the Students for Life of America 2014 West Coast National Conference. I was given a title, “I’m Pro-Life, But…” that I was allowed to do anything I wanted with, so I chose to respond to these four common statements and questions:

  1. “I’m pro-life, but people tell me I come across like a jerk. What can I do about that?”
  2. “I’m pro-life, but I don’t know how to convince people that abortion is wrong.”
  3. “I’m pro-life, but I think it should be legal.”
  4. “I’m pro-life, but what about rape?”

Download Audio MP3 | 00:49:02

Thanks to Secular Pro-Life for providing their video to me.