Abortion


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.

We have a hard time understanding how the Germans allowed the Holocaust to take place. How could people so easily and so readily disregard the humanity of an entire group of people? How could they so callously kill millions of people? How could so many people who disagreed with the actions of the state stand by and do nothing? It’s not that hard to see how, really.
We are also guilty of killing millions of people. Over 60 million, in fact. Each year in the United States, we murder approximately one million babies. Our law and our people have dehumanized them. We have taken away their right to life, and allow them to be murdered at will. We call it a “choice.” We call it a “right.” We call it “healthcare.” We call it “reproductive freedom.” The euphemisms never end, and all are necessary to hide our evil and barbarism.
In some ways, what we are doing is morally worse than what transpired in Nazi Germany. Unlike the Nazis, it’s not our government who is in control of the slaughter. It’s ordinary citizens! And we’re not murdering strangers, as they did. We are murdering our own children. Moms and dads are killing their own children. Arguably, that makes us more evil than Nazi Germany. We are guilty of our own holocaust: a holocaust of the unborn.
We are not morally enlightened. We are morally blind. We need to repent.

I’ve argued that pro-lifers should vote for Trump and the Republicans this November despite their recent backpedaling on the pro-life cause, because allowing the Democrats to win will result in many more babies being murdered. We should always act to save the most babies possible. Since more babies would be saved under Trump than under Harris, we should vote for Trump and the GOP.

However, some pro-lifers have a different perspective. They argue that if we vote for Republicans next week simply because they are better than the Democrats, and they win, they’ll have little reason to revert the platform back to its strong pro-life position in 2026. If the GOP knows they can win elections without the pro-life vote, or if they know that pro-lifers will always vote for them because they are better than the Democrats on abortion, they will have no motivation to reverse course and re-adopt their former platform on abortion. Indeed, they are likely to deprioritize the issue going forward and continue making concessions to Leftists. So as a strategic move, these pro-lifers suggest that we let the Democrats win this election to teach the Republicans a lesson, namely that they need to be a strong and principled pro-life party if they ever hope to win another election.

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Many Christians believe abortion is morally justified in cases of rape and incest – what I call “pro-life with a footnote.” I spoke extensively on this in part 16 (episode 23) of my podcast series on abortion, but wanted to say a bit more about this here.

This position fails to understand the logic of the pro-life position. We are opposed to abortion because the act of abortion (1) unjustly (2) takes the life of an (3) innocent, (4) valuable (5) human being. All five of these points are still true when a baby is conceived via rape or incest. The circumstances under which a human being is conceived does not change what is conceived, so the unborn is still human, still valuable, and still innocent even if he was conceived by an act of moral violence. Abortion would still take the life of the human conceived under such circumstances in the same manner it takes the life of humans conceived under other circumstances. As such, it would still be unjust to kill the baby conceived by rape or incest. Pro-lifers are opposed to murdering all innocent, valuable, human beings no matter how they came into being, and thus pro-lifers ought to be opposed to abortion under all circumstances.

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My podcast series on abortion is now complete. There were 17 episodes in the series, plus the intro episode. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out, you can listen wherever you get your podcasts or from thinkingtobelieve.buzzsprout.com.

Much of what I covered in the podcast series is contained in my abortion paper. And if you want to read all of my abortion-related posts on this blog, you can do so here.

Here’s a dilemma for those who support abortion.

Imagine that an IVF embryo was inserted into the wrong womb. The clinic notifies both parties. The biological mother wants the baby, but the gestational mother wants to abort the baby because it is not hers. What do you do?

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June 24, 2022 will go down in history as one of the most important days in American history. I have longed for the day when I would read the headline, “Roe v. Wade Overturned.” That day has arrived, and much sooner than I ever imagined! It was made possible by God, Trump, and SCOTUS justices who care more about interpreting the Constitution than legislating from the bench.
This is not the end of the fight, but just the beginning. The reversal of Roe simply returns the issue of abortion back to the states. Now we need to work at the state level to outlaw abortion in every state of the union. It will happen, eventually. There is coming a day in this country when kids will be just as shocked to learn that we permitted mothers to murder their own children as they are to learn that we permitted people to own other people.
I published a podcast episode on the overturning of Roe after the initial leak. If you want to hear more about the implications of the decision, check it out.

People act as if there is no connection between sex and babies, such that when they get pregnant they have the right to abort their baby because they didn’t want a baby. Amy Hall observed that this is like thinking there is no connection between food and calories. The fact of the matter is that if you eat too much, you’ll get fat. That’s the natural consequence of eating too much. You can’t choose to eat without also consenting to the calories. Likewise, each time we engage in sex, we consent to the possibility of creating a child because that is what the act is designed to do.

Euphemisms can be helpful. They allow us to talk about difficult topics in a sensitive way. They lessen the emotional impact. That’s why we have euphemisms for sex, excretions, and death.

However, sometimes, euphemisms are created to deceive. They are meant to make something that is evil sound good. They are distortions of language. The Nazis were masters at this. “Special treatment” meant execution. The “final solution” meant killing all Jewish people.

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Texas is on a roll! First, Texas reported zero Covid deaths for May 15, despite having lifted all Covid restrictions on March 10. When Texas announced they were lifting their restrictions in March, our president called it “Neanderthal” and the media went into a frenzy about how this would lead to untold deaths. They were all wrong. Texas (and freedom) got the last laugh, and demonstrated (once again) that lockdowns are not effective.

And now, Texas has banned all abortions after a heartbeat can be detected. Surely it will be challenged, so we’ll see if it goes anywhere.

Is abortion moral? It’s rather telling when one side of the moral debate wants to ignore the most important question – what is being killed? – and focus on the will of the mother instead. It’s equally telling when that same side invents a host of euphemisms to obfuscate the issue including “women’s health, reproductive rights, choice, and termination of pregnancy.” When people avoid the main issue and use euphemisms to hide the truth of their actions from the public, you can pretty much bet that those people are on the wrong side of that issue.

If you think the only argument against abortion is a religious argument, please examine the pro-life case more closely. While a religious argument can be made, it is not necessary. The pro-life argument stands or falls on biological facts plus philosophical/moral reasoning. It’s very simple:

(1) It’s morally wrong to kill innocent human beings without proper justification (the philosophical/moral premise)
(2) The science of embryology demonstrates that a new, distinct human being comes into existence at conception (the scientific premise)
(3) It follows from (1) and (2) that abortion kills an innocent human being
(4) Therefore, abortion is morally wrong

If you are going to argue for abortion, you’ll need to falsify one of the first two premises above. Will you deny the moral truth that it’s wrong to kill innocent human beings, or will you deny the scientific facts of embryology?

Abortion is often compared to the practice of child sacrifice practiced by many ancient cultures, including those in OT times. It is not a 1:1 comparison, of course. Those who get abortions are not doing so for religious reasons, and the age of the children are different. However, in both cases, human beings are choosing to kill their own children. God hates murder, whatever the reason or the age of the victim.

I find it interesting, then, that God not only condemned those who committed child sacrifice, but also those who stood by silently and did nothing to those who sacrificed their children. Consider Leviticus 20:1-5. God begins with a condemnation of those who commit child sacrifice:

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Some claim that abortion is just an ordinary medical procedure – just the removal of some tissue from a woman’s uterus – and thus no more morally significant than getting a tooth pulled. However, I’ve never known anyone who experienced angst when contemplating the decision to remove a tooth. They’ve never talked about how difficult the decision was for them, or wondered whether it was the morally right thing to do. They never experience depression after the procedure, and none of them have ever claimed that it was their biggest regret.

Clearly, there is a moral difference between abortion and other medical procedures, and everyone knows it. Abortion doesn’t remove tissue from a woman’s body – it kills an innocent human being who is developing in a woman’s body. That’s why people struggle with the decision. They understand the moral weight involved.

Abortion is a very simple issue, morally speaking. We should not kill innocent human beings. Abortion kills innocent human beings. Therefore, abortion is wrong. We can do better. Let’s protect the most vulnerable human beings among us. Let’s be pro-life.

 

If humans have value, then abortion must be immoral. Here’s why:

Value is either intrinsic (part of the nature of the thing itself) or extrinsic (conferred on a thing by an external source). If value is intrinsic to human beings, then humans are valuable the moment they come into existence. Since it is a scientific fact that human beings come into being at conception, then unborn humans have the same value that you and I have from the moment of their conception. As such, it would be just as immoral to kill an unborn human as it is a born human. So if you believe humans have intrinsic value, then you should be opposed to abortion.

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“Abortion” is a euphemism. “Abort” means to stop. What are we stopping? The life of a human being. If I kill my neighbor, we would say I murdered him. So why do we have a different term to describe the killing of unborn human beings? It’s simply to disguise what we are doing. Abortion could rightly be called preborn murder, fetal murder, embryonic murder, etc., but it is murder and we should call it such.

The euphemisms for preborn murder don’t stop at “abortion.” The list of euphemisms also includes “choice,” “women’s health,” “reproductive freedom,” etc. Abortion is not about choice, health, or reproductive freedom. Abortion is about the killing of a preborn human being because it is convenient for us to do so.

Abortion is the greatest moral atrocity of our day. One day, future generations will be just as shocked to hear that abortion was legal in this country as we are shocked today to hear that slavery was once legal in this country.

In the abortion debate, pro-choice advocates often argue that no one should have the right to tell a woman what to do with her own body. I agree. No one has that right. But this is a red herring because pro-life advocates are not telling women what to do with their own bodies, but rather what to do with someone else’s body.

While an abortion takes place within a woman’s body, the act of abortion is targeted toward the body of a separate human being. The goal of abortion is to end the life of that human being – often by cutting his/her body into pieces. Since it is morally wrong to take the life of an innocent human being, the act of abortion is morally evil.

The bodily autonomy argument makes as much sense as saying “You don’t have a right to tell me not to murder someone.” All homicide laws aim to take away our right to murder another person. Pro-life advocates are merely applying this same logic to abortion since the object of the abortion is also a human being.

The pro-life argument in a nutshell: It is a scientific fact that a new human being comes into existence at fertilization. It is a moral fact that it is wrong to intentionally take the life of an innocent human being. Abortion intentionally takes the life of an innocent human being. Therefore, abortion is morally wrong.

when-life-beginsWhen someone supports abortion on the basis that “nobody knows when life begins,” my immediate reaction is to immediately correct their misinformation with the facts of biology.  Doing so, however, does not always end up with them becoming pro-life.  People will often move the goalpost, offering another justification for abortion.

To prevent this, you could ask: “Does this mean that if we knew when life began – and we found that it began at conception – that you join me in opposing abortions?”  If they say yes, then they commit themselves to becoming pro-life once you have provided them with the biological evidence.  Of course, they could always say no, in which case you might ask them, “If it’s not our ignorance of when life begins that justifies abortion, then what does?”  While this may prevent you from being able to provide them with the biological evidence to demonstrate their error, at least it will refocus the conversation to the reason(s) they think justifies abortion – which allows you to be more pointed in your apologetic, and provides a better chance of them changing their mind.

biology-denierLiberals love to label those who have ethical objections to cloning, doubts about man-made global warming, and the like as “science deniers” and “climate change deniers.”  Matt Walsh suggests that we start calling those who deny that one’s biological sex determines their actual gender as “biology deniers.”  And in this case, the term is an accurate description rather than a derogatory, non-descriptive insult.  Those who want to normalize transgender thoughts are truly denying biology.  They affirm that someone who is biologically male is actually female.

Transgender advocates aren’t the only biology deniers.  So are abortion advocates.  They deny the biological fact that the unborn are human beings from the moment of conception.

So the next time you meet someone who is arguing for abortion or transgenderism, ask they why they are a biology denier.

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