Good Pro-Life Arguments

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Mary67

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I’m trying to form good pro-life logical arguments and I came up with this: “pro-choice” is the notion that a woman’s beliefs, feelings or hardships change the ontology/ metaphysics of the human being in her womb in contrast to scientific evidence/fact.

I’m not sure if ontology or metaphysics is the best word choice, but I want a more specific word than “substance”. Thoughts?
 
Nature?

The true nature of the being inside her is both spirit and body.
 
Mary67 said:
Thoughts?
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Logically, your argument is a classic case of petitio prinicipii, and therefore invalid. More specifically, it is a classic example of a spherical cow.

Rhetorically, it has zero persuasive value. You would be more likely to turn someone off with that sort of argumentation than convince them.

Sorry.
 
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Mary67 said:
I’m trying to form good pro-life logical arguments and I came up with this: “pro-choice” is the notion that a woman’s beliefs, feelings or hardships change the ontology/ metaphysics of the human being in her womb in contrast to scientific evidence/fact.

I’m not sure if ontology or metaphysics is the best word choice, but I want a more specific word than “substance”. Thoughts?
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I assume the point you’re trying to make is that the woman views the baby differently depending on whether or not she wants it. I call that the Schrodingers Baby argument.

I’ve never used it but think it’s worth a go. I think it’s more likely to work on someone who has children and phrased like this.

Did you keep the scan pictures? (Expected answer: Yes)
Why?
What did/would you tell the child if they saw their scan picture and asked about it? (Expected answer: That was you in Mom’s tummy or similar).
 
Mary67 said:
Are you a troll? That was excessively harsh.
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There was nothing harsh about it. You asked for an evaluation of your argument, and I provided an honest answer, and provided you with the reasons why.
 
I always ask someone who is pro-choice how they felt about their mother choosing life.
 
If you are looking for good pro-life arguments, I would encourage you to get this book:

https://www.amazon.com/Pro-Life-Answers-Pro-Choice-Arguments-Expanded/dp/1576737519/

All of the most common pro-choice arguments you encounter in the public sphere are full of logical fallacies and contradictions. I always tell people about my experience in college taking a class on the morality of abortion. It was taught by an atheist who thought that abortion was morally permissible, yet he spent the first three weeks of class totally demolishing all of the standard pro-choice arguments that are used in popular discourse. They just aren’t logical.

Logic is on the pro-life side here. Of course, not everyone thinks through things logically, so whether or not you can persuade someone with such arguments is a different question.
 
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What troubles me though is how “pro-choice” people can see the horrors of abortion and still have such a hardened heart so as to continues lauding abortion. A normal person should be made sick, but instead they become even more vicious or hard hearted.
 
Mary67 said:
What troubles me though is how “pro-choice” people can see the horrors of abortion and still have such a hardened heart so as to continues lauding abortion.
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Mary, you’re really barking up the wrong tree. First of all, you are assuming that pro-choice people share your belief that a fetus is a human being. Most don’t. For most of them, it is a blob of tissue like tonsils or an appendix, or at least, not fully human yet. An abortion is no more troublesome for them than a tonsillectomy or appendectomy. They see no “horror” in it, and find it weird that you do.

That is the thing that you have to change when you argue with them, and there are already plenty of good arguments to use.

Starting a discussion with “you are not a normal person” and “you are vicious and hard hearted” is going to end up with that being a very short discussion, without you convincing anyone.

Your big mistake is in attributing malicious motives where none exist.

Again, not to be harsh, but using the faulty arguments based on false premises is not going to persuade anybody. If you are not a vegetarian, then think how you would respond to a vegetarian calling you a callous, heartless monster for eating meat. That’s exactly the same type of response you can expect to get with your argument.

Really, your argument is just a variation of screaming “baby killer” at someone, and you know how that works.

If you really want to make a difference, then seek out someone in the pro-life movement in your parish or diocese who can mentor you in how to argue effectively, and who has experience with what arguments work, and what ones don’t.
 
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Pro-life is great, but what good arguments does one have for the babies who are saved?
 
Joe_5859 said:
🤨 What do you mean?
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As in how do you propose to care for them? I’m not being anti-abortion here, but it’s a serious question I have asked many times here. The best responses I tend to get is, well there’s this program I know of. However there is nothing near the scale needed to handle babies that parents would put up for adoption. There is not often a desire to financially support parents who don’t want a baby for true financial or situational reasons. The majority of what I have seen, in my opinion. focuses on bodies saved, shaming women, and avoiding making the men take some real responsibility. I await your answer if you’d like to go further.
 
adamvandyck said:
I always ask someone who is pro-choice how they felt about their mother choosing life.
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I hear this a lot as a suggested strategy. I am pro-choice. Honestly, that is a bad argument. My mom chose life and I am here. Cool. If she had chosen to terminate, I would be fine with that too. I believe if I was meant to exist (my spirit, in a human body) then I would have just been delivered to someone else.

Thought I would just weigh in. Truthfully, I don’t know one Pro-Choice person who has ever changed their mind based on a pro-life person working on them.
 
Mary67 said:
What troubles me though is how “pro-choice” people can see the horrors of abortion and still have such a hardened heart so as to continues lauding abortion. A normal person should be made sick, but instead they become even more vicious or hard hearted.
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Most “Pro-Choice” people are just that. They don’t laud abortion. Many wouldn’t have an aborition if in that situation. They aren’t “Pro-Abortion” as many Pro-Life people try to paint them. If they were, they would lobby to force people to have abortions. They couldn’t be further away from that. They believe they should choose for themselves. They believe you should choose for you (if you are a woman) and they believe all women should be able to choose for themselves.
 
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Pardon, but what response have you to those who, like me, have become disillusioned with the Pro-Life movement? If the Pro-Life movement were exclusively about peacefully and kindly comforting and counselling women, and giving them the resources they needed to go to term, and did not seek to change laws, I would be an ally.

However, recent data shows (and I am sure some articles have been posted on this forum before, and I cannot link anything right now since I am on break at work and typing this on my phone) that the countries with legalized abortion have a significantly lower rate of abortion than those countries which ban it. And when you consider that with the structures of the US economy there are personal economic incentives to having an abortion, because of the immediate and long-term financial hit which occurs with having a child, it makes it even more clear that if you want to realistically impact abortion rates, you would focus on economic policy rather than abortion itself. And before someone makes a comparison with legalizing non-fetal murder, the difference should be obvious to honest actors: there is, and always has been, proof that murder being illegal dissuades a certain portion of the population from murdering. There is no corresponding evidence for abortion, and in fact, as has been said, evidence points, though counter-intuitively, to the opposite outcome.

Now, I generally run in fairly left-leaning circles, and not a single person I know has ever lauded abortion. The reasoning set forth above is, while my own view but simplified, the general tenor of opinion now expressed in my regular circle.

In conclusion, it seems that if the trends in other countries play out, if pro-life politicians get their (supposed) way, there will be more abortions, not fewer, in spite of any arguments about metaphysics, anthropology, ontology, or morality. And no one actually wants that. There is no way to completely eradicate abortions, so we should be focusing on how to reduce them as much as humanly possible and without raising the toll of non-fetal lives. That is possible.
 
I like the method Peter Kreeft uses, saying that ignorance as to where life begins is the best argument for those who believe in choice. He proposes two considerations and lays out all possible positions. We believe the fetus to be a human person, or we do not believe the fetus to be a human person.
The fetus really is a human person, or the fetus really is not a human person. So look at all for cases where a person has an abortion.
  1. A woman believes the fetus is a human person, and in reality it is, and then she has an abortion. This is the worst case and is the definition of premeditated murder. You ended the life of another person.
  2. The woman does not believe it is a human person, but in reality it is, and then she has an abortion. Since she really ended a human life, but did so without knowledge of the outcome, this is involuntary manslaughter. The possibility existed that she was wrong, but she acted any way. This is like the hunter that sees movement in the forest, he does not know if it is a person, but he shoots anyway, and he was wrong.
  3. The woman believes it is a human person, but in reality it is not, then she has an abortion. The intent was still to commit an action that would end a human life, even though it did not. This is attempted homicide.
  4. A woman does not believe it is a human person, and in reality it is not. This is the most favorable outcome of an abortion and probably represents the position of the pro-choice person, that is, if they are right, which they cannot know. It is the only one that is not some type of homicide. But under the law, such an action would still be considered reckless conduct. It is the person that shoots the gun at the movement, or shoots a bullet in the air, or a window, and the bullet strikes no one.
So the summary of this argument is that unless one knows that an action will not take a life, that is knows with moral certainty that which is aborted is not a human being, then the only moral action is to not have an abortion. Since this is not a matter that can be known with moral certainty, there is no path for abortion being moral.
 
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MiserereMei said:
In conclusion, it seems that if the trends in other countries play out, if pro-life politicians get their (supposed) way, there will be more abortions, not fewer, in spite of any arguments about metaphysics, anthropology, ontology, or morality. And no one actually wants that. There is no way to completely eradicate abortions, so we should be focusing on how to reduce them as much as humanly possible and without raising the toll of non-fetal lives. That is possible.
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That is one significant argument for voting for a pro-choice candidate, though a dicey one. Despite the increase in population, the total number of abortions has been steadily dropping since the end of the Clinton era, including through the Obama administration. It remains to be seen if the current administration will do good or ill.
 
Certainly we need to look towards caring for children and parents that are in difficult situations, but that’s really a separate discussion from whether or not abortion is immoral. The morality of abortion does not depend on whether or not we have a plan in place to care for children.

It always confuses me to see the argument brought up so often when discussing abortion. I don’t know any pro-life people in real life who fit that description—people whose MO is shaming women and only seeking to bring the child to birth whereupon they disengage and say, “Sorry, you’re on your own.” And I have friends that work in crisis pregnancy centers, and friends who operate other pro-life apostolates.

But even if that were the attitude of most pro-life people, that doesn’t therefore make abortion moral. As I said above, the morality of the act does not depend on the ability to care for the children once they are born.

This argument seems to come down to: Give to me right now a fully developed, logistically sustainable plan for caring for every single child that would otherwise be aborted (because we’re operating under the assumption that every single victim of abortion would receive absolutely zero help and care from their biological parents). And if you cannot articulate this plan right here on the spot, that means you don’t really care about people and you should pretty much just keep your mouth shut about abortion.

I’m not saying that’s what you are saying. But this is the impression I get from many people who raise this issue. It seems to me to be a dodge so that we don’t have to actually grapple with whether or not killing unborn children is wrong.
 
Ending an innocent human’s life is wrong, and an unborn child is an innocent human, therefore ending it’s life is wrong.

That’s pretty much where my stance on abortion stems from.
 
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