Apologetics Q & A
“I’m personally against abortion, but I can’t impose my religion on someone else.”
I don’t understand. Our shared religion defines morality. It tells us it is always wrong to kill an innocent human being.
By contrast, the other side’s ‘religion’ proclaim there’s nothing wrong with killing a unique, innocent human being if she is unwanted. One side or the other is going to impose their religion. Their side ends lives. Our side saves lives.
That’s something to fight for, don’t you think?
“Abortion is but one of many important issues. I refuse to be a single issue voter.”
What other issue would you like to talk about? Immigration? The environment? The minimum wage? They are all important issues.
Here’s what bothers me about your thinking: none of these issues matter if you’re dead.
That is what abortion does: it leaves people dead by the millions
These other issues really matter to me, too. And honorable people can approach these issues with different solutions.
But a single issue, the dignity of the human being, transcends them all. If our laws don’t protect something as basic as a human life, what’s the point of passing more laws?
“A man can’t tell a woman what to do with her own body.”
Why do you say that? That sign over there tells women they can’t smoke in this room. That’s telling them what they can’t do with their body, because smoking hurts other people.
By the same token, if she’s pregnant, men AND women tell a pregnant woman she shouldn’t smoke, because science tells us it causes birth defects and low birth weight. That’s telling a woman what not to do with her body, because it affects someone else’s body.
I guess that’s the whole point: we’re talking about two bodies, not one.
“Well, what about rape? Would YOU force a woman to have her rapist’s baby?!!”
I think that’s the wrong question. A better one is: would you encourage her to have an abortion following a rape knowing it will make her pain worse?
It does, according to doctors who asked rape victims about their experience. According to the doctors, women who had abortions were usually pressured into it which increased their sense of isolation and shame.
By contrast, the women who carried their rapist’s child to term said the child actually brought peace and healing to their lives.
I appreciate your concern on this sensitive subject. May I send you info on a great book with more detailed info?
“Women are going to have abortions whether they’re legal or not. If you pro-lifers have your way, there will be more back alley abortions than ever, putting women’s lives at risk.”
Not according to Planned Parenthood. Before Roe V Wade, the former Planned Parenthood director, Mary Calderone, admitted that 90% of back alley abortions were already being done by doctors, not back alley butchers, so very few women were dying from abortion.
The Centers for Disease Control confirms this. Thirty-nine women died from illegal abortions the year before the Roe V Wade ruling.
The value of each of those lost lives is beyond calculation, as are the lives of the 60,000 million unique human beings killed by abortion since the Roe decision.
“If abortion isn’t legal, women will be forced to get them from untrained back alley abortionists. Is that what you really want?”
I believe that’s the wrong question. The better question: Is that what women really want? After all, 3 out of 4 women who had abortions admitted they were pressured by others to go through with it.
And another 28% said their abortion did more harm than good.
That’s a lot of women hurt by abortion. Knowing you as I do, I know that’s not what you’d want for any woman.
“A fetus isn’t a person.”
Is there a difference between a person and a human being? I ask simply because scientists assert that you and I were fully human at the instant of fertilization.
And I ask because the greatest atrocities in human history took place by those who dehumanized certain segments of our population, such as the handicapped, Jews, or Blacks.
Skin color, race, or intelligence certainly don’t define personhood. What does define it, though, is human nature. That is what binds you and I together from the instant of fertilization until our natural death: a shared human nature.
“A fetus isn’t a person until viability.”
That doesn’t make sense, because viability is such an arbitrary standard.
A person with dementia isn’t viable without outside care. By the same token, a baby would die fairly quickly without care. No one disputes either’s personhood.
Viability is especially arbitrary when discussing a person in the womb. When Roe was decided, the age of viability was 28 weeks. Today, it is 24 and in some cases, the markers have been moved to 21 weeks.
So viability is an illogical standard to use to define personhood. The better standard is our shared human nature, imparted at the instant of fertilization.
“If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one. It’s that simple.”
If you don’t like murder, don’t murder someone. It’s that simple, and the same absurd logic.
“Why don’t you pro-lifers care about the baby after it’s born?”
We do.
Two of the biggest pro-life groups in the world, Catholic Charities and the Knights of Columbus, invest blood, sweat, and tears, not to mention millions of dollars, into helping babies and their moms after they’re born.
Most pro-life crisis pregnancy centers do the same on a smaller scale.
I guess my question is, what does Planned Parenthood do to help babies after they’re born?
“What about the 14 year old girl who becomes pregnant?”
What a tragedy. I guess it comes down to this: her baby in the womb is just as human as she is. They both deserve love, respect, and support.
What makes things worse is if the girl is pressured to have an abortion. Instead, she needs practical info about adoption, and a safe place to live if her family is unable to provide it.
Pro-life communities throughout the country provide that support.
“My candidate is pro choice, but they support all of the other important social justice issues.”
Yes, there are many important social justice issues. I have opinions on many of them, just as you and your favorite political candidates do.
Honorable people can reasonably address them with constructive ideas that differ in approach.
But none are as basic as the very issue of life. If we refuse to protect something so fundamental, all of the other social issues become irrelevant.
Any candidate who opposes a right to life opposes social justice.
“The right to abortion is vital for gender equality.”
You’re looking at this backward. Men and women are biologically different. Men can’t have babies. Women can. When they freely engage in sexual intimacy, each has a responsibility for the potential human life that may be created by their union.
Killing this new human being doesn’t make a woman more equal. In fact, it diminishes the very gift that makes her special.
I suggest that fetus equality is the actual issue.
“The right to abortion is vital for a women to attain her full potential.”
Not at all. It is birth that is vital for a woman to attain her full potential. How can anyone, man or women, ever amount to anything if they were aborted?
“Women need a right to abortion in order to have the same freedoms as men.”
Women already have those same freedoms after a century of progress. They have the power and rights to act, speak, vote, and think as they’d like without hindrance or restraint.
But abortion takes away those for very rights from the unique human being carried in a woman’s womb.
So abortion is a cruel, unreasonable, and arbitrary use of power over another. In other words, abortion is tyranny, the very thing women have relentlessly fought to overcome.
“Abortion rights are fundamental to a woman’s reproductive health concerns.”
What does killing a healthy baby being carried in the womb of a healthy woman have to do with health? That’s what abortion does, end life, not cure disease or illness.
Abortion involves physical risk, such as clotting, bleeding, infection, and injury to a woman’s cervix and uterus. So it is potentially unhealthy to women.
If you take a look at what actually happens to a fetus in the process of the abortion, it makes you sick. Limbs are torn apart as it’s little body is sucked out of the womb. Abortion has nothing to do with health.
“It’s not fair to bring a child into the world that is going to be unwanted.”
Have you ever heard of adoption? Did you know that there 36 couples waiting to adopt for every child that is aborted?
Love awaits children who come into this world in crisis pregnancies.
Think of great men and women like Steve Jobs, Nelson Mandela, and Eleanor Roosevelt who were adopted and made the world a better place.
What’s not fair is take away their chance to know love and make their mark on the world.
“Children born into bad situations are being set up for a life of poverty and social pathology.”
If you’ve read the news, you’ve seen plenty of people born into privilege who have made a mess of their lives.
By the same token, we both know people born in pretty undesirable situations who lead productive, happy lives and make the world a better place.
No one can predict life’s outcome. No one should have the right to deny another human being the adventure of life.
“It’s not fair to bring a child into this world with serious defects.”
Do you know what makes us truly human? Our ability to love. Our disabled family and friends have something huge to offer us: their love. They can teach us to love more fully.
If you think about it, their struggle to overcome their limitations inspires each of us to be more than we ever dreamed possible.
Frankly, the world needs the flawed, the defective, and the disabled. Their love and inspiration make us feel more fully alive.
What is unfair is to deny them of their life, and the world of their gifts, because of some subjective standard.
“Even if a fetus was alive, the "right to life" doesn't imply a right to use somebody else's body. People have the right to refuse to donate their organs, for example, even if doing so would save somebody else's life.”
When a man and women make the choice to have sex, they are responsible for the consequences of their actions, not the unique person conceived from that act.
At fertilization, she has all chromosomes and all the directions (DNA) she needs for the rest of life.
And not to be flip, but don’t you think there’s a difference between a gall bladder and a baby?