Thinking to Believe

I posed a moral dilemma to a few Christian thinkers, but none were able to provide a fully satisfactory answer. While I think most ended up at the right conclusion, no one could really articulate the moral principles used to come to that conclusion. So I thought I would pose the dilemma to AI and see what it had to say. Could it provide any additional insights into Christian moral reasoning? I chose to use ChatGPT and Gemini. I will reproduce the chats below for your reading pleasure, but I would like to make several observations first.

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One of the things I find most frustrating is the fact that most conservatives in America don’t consider abortion an important issue, particularly when it comes to how they vote in the political realm. Fox News, in partnership with the Associated Press, issued a 2024 voter analysis that reveals just how little Republicans care about the abortion issue. Consider the following data points:

• Only 11% of Americans considered abortion to be the most important issue facing the country. Ironically, 85% of those who considered it to be the most important issue voted for Kamala Harris. In other words, the vast majority of the 11% who considered abortion to be the most important issue in America are for abortion, not against it. Only ~2% of Republicans considered abortion to be the most important issue facing America this election:

• Not surprisingly, the issue of abortion caused more Harris supporters to vote in this election than Trump supporters:

• When asked specifically about how important abortion policy was to their vote, 27% of Americans said it was either not a factor or only a minor factor. More than ¾ of that 27% cohort were Trump voters:

• While Trump voters do not consider abortion to be that important of an issue, they are much more likely to think government policy should be pro-life. More than 1/3 of Americans think abortion should be illegal in most or all cases. Trump voters make up ~82% of those who take that position. This means that while Trump voters are more likely to think abortion should be illegal, that political viewpoint does not exert much influence on how or why they vote.
• It’s also interesting that of the 38% of Americans who think abortion should be legal in most cases, 40% of them voted for Trump. Anyone who thinks that Trump supporters, or those who vote Republican more broadly, are all rabid pro-lifers, is (unfortunately) mistaken:

If we ever hope to outlaw abortion in this land, not only do we need to convince more people that abortion is wrong, but we must help them to understand why it matters so much and encourage them to translate their moral ideology into political action.