Are pro-lifers devaluing women when they defend the unborn? We’re going to take that question up in this episode of the Case for Life podcast. Welcome, friends. Great to have you with us. I want to remind you that our primary sponsor is Life Training Institute. You can see their web information on the screen there. If you have a chance to go to that site, you can book a speaker from our organization to come to your event. myself or the other speakers we have, Janique, Leslie, and Brittany, we’d be glad to come and be part of your event and help equip your people to defend life. I’ve been in a conversation with a pastor on abortion, and it’s been a good chat. We’ve had very civil dialogue, the way it should be, but I want to read you his most recent response to me after we’ve gone back and forth on the question, what is the unborn? Now, you’ve heard me say on this podcast that the 3 most important words in pro-life apologetics are these, syllogism, syllogism, syllogism. And the reason why is people love to change the topic on you. The morality of abortion comes down to one issue. What is the unborn? Can we kill the unborn? My answer is yes, if. If what? If the unborn aren’t human. As I’ve said many times, I am vigorously pro-choice on women choosing their own husbands, choosing their own careers, choosing the wardrobes they wish to purchase, the pets they wish to own, the cars they wish to drive, unless they’re Priuses, of course. But some choices are wrong. like intentionally killing an innocent human being because he’s in the way of something we want. That’s a choice a civil society does not allow. And then, of course, as pro-lifers, we present our actual argument, and our argument goes like this. Premise one, it’s wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. Premise 2, abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being. Conclusion, therefore abortion is wrong. Then we defend that syllogism by pointing out that the science of embryology is clear that from the earliest stages of development, from the one cell stage, Each of us was identical to the embryo we once were. We didn’t evolve from an embryo. We once were an embryo. That means that me, Scott Klusendorf, the adult, is identical to the one-celled embryo I once was. We then argue philosophically that there’s no essential difference between the embryo I once was and the adult I am today that justifies killing me back then. The differences of size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency, you can think of the acronym SLED to remember those 4 differences if it helps, that those 4 differences do not justify killing me then, but not now. Now, here’s what’s interesting. That is an argument. There’s premises, premises, and a conclusion. Arguments can be valid or invalid, sound or unsound. And to disprove them, you need to show that the argument fails the validity test, meaning the conclusion doesn’t follow logically from the premises, or it fails the soundness test. meaning one or more of the premises, are untrue. Now, I want to read you the response from this pastor. In the previous exchange we had, he had made the claim that embryos are no different than ordinary somatic cells. In other words, if you could clone a cell from my hand, which in theory you can do, and make that cell become a new human being with my genetic code, that therefore there is no difference in kind between ordinary bodily cells or what we call somatic cells and embryos. And I wrote back and explained why he was confusing parts with holes. These cells on the back of my hand are merely part of a larger human being, me. They are not distinct, integrated, living human organisms the same way an embryo is. Yes, these cells are alive, but if you take one of my somatic cells and pop it into the uterus of a woman, it does not become a child, okay? It remains a somatic cell. And even in a cloning procedure, we need to act on this somatic cell externally to have it become an embryo. In other words, we’ve got to strip the female egg cell of its DNA, slap donor DNA in there, add electricity and chemicals, and while we have somatic cell nuclear transfer or cloning that takes place. Notice, though, that these cells must be acted on externally. They are not intrinsically developing themselves the way an embryo does, even at the earliest stages of development. Well, after explaining that, he did not reply to the rejoinder I gave him that there is a difference between ordinary bodily cells and an embryo that is already a living human organism. He ignored that, and here’s his reply. He says, thanks for your thoughtful reply. I will respond. I wish I had time to respond to every point. As it is, I hope I can paint with a few broad strokes. He says this then, in your desire to value the unborn, it seems you devalue women. Your logic is dismissive of perspectives they may have about their situation that don’t align with your formula. I’ve provided some examples, but you brush them aside. He goes on to write here, for example, if a woman does not believe that an embryo has a soul, you say it doesn’t matter, but it certainly matters to her. Now, let’s stop for just a moment here. Let’s say that my arguments were dismissive of women. Let’s say that I don’t care a rat’s behind what women think about their pregnancies, about their situation. Let’s say I’m an insensitive bigot. Could my argument that the unborn are human still be sound and valid, even if I’m a bad guy? And the answer is yes. So what we have here is not a refutation of what I’ve presented. Rather, what we have here is a classic example of an ad hominem fallacy, where you attack the person rather than the argument they’re making. Suppose I am dismissive. Could my arguments still be good ones? And the answer is yes. Bad people can make good arguments. And there seems to be in the culture today a total inability of people to recognize arguments stand or fall on their merits, not the person making them. And I don’t know why this is so hard for people to get. Maybe we quit teaching logic in 7th grade the way we used to, and now nobody knows how to argue. But I don’t know why it always turns personal when I encounter people who are typically very progressive in their politics and worldview. It will inevitably usually sooner rather than later switch from the argument to the personal. In other words, instead of engaging the actual syllogism or the argument being presented, we end up with, well, you know, you’re just dismissive. Oh, you don’t value women. Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. It has nothing to do with the argument that’s being advanced here. Now, he goes on to say, you don’t care about what these women feel about their perspectives. And he says here, you may think that it doesn’t matter what they think, but it matters to them. And he goes on to suggest basically that I’m taking my absolute perspective and forcing it on them. That’s the gist of what’s being said here. But let’s look at this for a moment. When you present an argument, it’s not your perspective. You’re dealing with logic. You’re dealing with something outside of yourself. I’m not right because it’s my perspective. My having a perspective doesn’t mean anything in terms of truth content. What matters is whether or not I am advancing good arguments. So it’s really not my perspective. And this is something that my colleague Megan Allman has pointed out very well. When we submit ourselves to logic and we present formal arguments for what we believe, it’s actually very much an act of humility because we’re saying to the people we’re conversing with, here’s my argument. And I am submitting it to you to be evaluated. If you can point out where it goes wrong, I’m going to adjust my argument. And that’s actually an act of humility. What’s not humility is to say, well, I have my perspective and how dare you challenge it? And that’s exactly what’s going on here with this argument. critic is basically saying to me is, well, these women have their perspective. You devalue them by challenging it. Well, wait a minute. Since when does their believing something is so make it so? How does their believing that their unborn children are not human mean that their kids aren’t human? they’ve got to make an argument. Their believing it so doesn’t make it so. This is a very postmodern view of knowledge, that knowledge is not external to the individual. Rather, we create truth by our speech, by our beliefs. My believing something so is what makes it so. I call this Benny Hinn epistemology, that somehow my speaking something makes it true. That’s what word of faith teachers do in Christendom. They go around and tell everybody, if you speak health, you’ll be healed. If you speak healing, people will get well. As if my speech creates reality, and it doesn’t. Truth exists independent of the person. In other words, if I believe the moon is made of green cheese, it doesn’t become made of green cheese because I happen to believe it or I speak it. It either is true that the moon is made of green cheese, meaning my statement corresponds to reality, to the world as it really is, or it doesn’t. My speaking it so doesn’t make it so. So the fact that there are women who believe their embryos are not human does not mean those embryos, in fact, are not human. We have to use arguments. In fact, it’s very arrogant to say, I believe this is so. How dare you challenge me? As if all of us here have a kingdom of self that is above challenge. No, logic actually is the humility way to go. It’s the humble way to go because you’re saying, here are the objective rules we all have to follow regarding logic. Is it valid? Is it sound? And I’m humbly submitting what I believe according to the dictates of sound reason and argument. And if my logic is bad, I’m open-minded. I will change it. But when you say that we can’t challenge women because they have a perspective, and if we challenge them, we devalue them, that’s not a biblical worldview. The biblical worldview says every human being has value because that value is intrinsic. It’s grounded in the image of God. They’re not valuable based on what they believe. They’re not valuable based on having a point of view or a perspective. They’re not valuable based on traits that may come and go like rationality or the ability to feel pain or maybe the ability to interact with your environment. Rather, all humans have value because they’re image bearers. All human beings, period, have value and equality because of whose image they bear. Now, when you start saying that we devalue women simply because we challenge something they believe, you’ve strayed not only from a biblical view of knowledge, you’ve strayed from biblical anthropology because you’re suggesting that we can actually devalue someone by disagreeing with them? I mean, this is crazy. Suppose we were living two hundred years ago and Christian missionaries show up in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and they tell Aztec and Mayan warriors, you can no longer do child sacrifice. It is morally wrong for you to kill your children and sacrifice them to unholy deities that you believe in. Now, if we said that to these cultures of that day, would it be devaluing their personhood or their value before God because we’re telling them they can’t do something based on logic, based on sound theology, based on biblical truth? Well, if you answer no when you say, well, that’s different, then we come to the real issue that I think is in play here. What’s really going on here is My critic does not believe the unborn are human. He’s assuming they’re not. And as a result, he’s going to protest on comparing apples and oranges. Only if you assume the unborn aren’t human. If it’s not devaluing Aztec culture and Aztec women to tell them they can’t kill their born children, why is it devaluing women today to say, You can’t intentionally kill your own unborn offspring. That’s morally wrong. If it’s not devaluing those women to tell them there are moral truths that apply to their decision making, why is it devaluing women today who want to intentionally kill their own unborn offspring? Here’s the key takeaway. Over and over again, when you engage people, you’re going to find yourself being tempted to get distracted by the stuff they throw up, the flack they throw up that is designed to knock you off course. There’s one question to resolve here. What is it that is killed in an abortion? If it’s not a human being, I don’t care how many abortions you have. You can have a billion abortions if you were capable of it, and I don’t care. The question is, what kind of living thing is that in the womb? It’s clearly something that’s alive. Dead things don’t grow. So we need to answer the question, what kind of living thing that is, and then we can answer the question, is it morally permissible to kill that living thing? Got to answer the first question, what is the unborn? And distractions about who loves women, who hates them, who values them, who doesn’t, are completely beside the point. Don’t fall for the attempt to deflect from the real issue. Thanks for joining us, friends. I hope you’ll join us on our social media sites. We’d love to hear you. And if you’d like to be a sponsor of this podcast, we’d be happy to talk to you and get your name out there in the work that you’re doing. If you’d like to be a sponsor, contact us on our social media sites and we’ll reach out to you. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you next time.