Making a pro-life argument

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LtTony

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I generally don’t get into debates with pro-choice people, but got caught up in one. On a story about abuse of children in a for-profit foster facility for difficult children, a person posted, “This is why all pro lifers should have to have a couple of foster kids in their care for anyone to listen.”
I objected, of course, to a connection between being pro-life and a dysfunctional foster care system.
The stubborn reply has been, “How many (foster) kids are you currently taking care of?” rather than evidence of a connection. We have all heard it: “Pro-lifers are pro-life, until the baby is born. They don’t care about children after that.”
I have a few thoughts on a reply, but would be interested in your thoughts, since this is such a common trope in the abortion rights crowd.
I have never been a foster parent, and don’t do near enough to protect the born and unborn.
 
The only way to counter this argument is to become foster parents or support groups and policies that give aid to mothers who choose to go through with a pregnancy or to support good orphanages and that kind of thing. It is an argument that exposes our hypocrisy. We should take the criticism and improve instead of trying to counter it.
 
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How about the simple answer, that God designed sex to be within marriage and family, and it’s a great plan. When people go off the rails, it’s bad for women, for men, and certainly bad for babies.

That answer should get you run out of town pretty quick.
 
That was my initial reaction; I need to do more. That is the best reply. But I also had the same thought as (name removed by moderator): “Throw it right back at them and ask how many foster children they have taken in?”
But if I am to recognize my own failings, I want to address the meme that pro-lifers do not support children after birth. Many, many do; and I want to defend them. I have asked that poster several times to produce data that supports the allegation.
 
So people who are homeless or are in poverty cannot be prolife?

“Unless you adopt all the animals you cannot be against animal abuse.”
“Unless you go to multiple court cases to support rape victims you cannot be against rape.”
 
LtTony said:
“This is why all pro lifers should have to have a couple of foster kids in their care for anyone to listen.”
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This is called the Ad Hominem fallacy and is meant to deflect attention from the main issue. Get them back on the focus of what abortion is and what it does to the unborn.

“It sounds like you care a lot about foster children. That’s certainly admirable, but why don’t you also extend that same concern to children before they’re born?”
 
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Guest1 said:
So people who are homeless or are in poverty cannot be prolife?

“Unless you adopt all the animals you cannot be against animal abuse.”
“Unless you go to multiple court cases to support rape victims you cannot be against rape.”
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Those are among the type of things I was thinking of. The story was about children abused in the foster care system, not about abortion. I wanted to ask the poster "Then what have you done to support abused foster children?’
The approach is valid in some respects: I’m a bit of a hypocrite. I should do more. But if one is going to use that as a test, then do it in every argument and to themselves.
 
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blackforest said:
This is called the Ad Hominem fallacy and is meant to deflect attention from the main issue. Get them back on the focus of what abortion is and what it does to the unborn.

“It sounds like you care a lot about foster children. That’s certainly admirable, but why don’t you also extend that same concern to children before they’re born?”
Click to expand...
Yes, it is a deflection, because there is no basis for the allegation that pro-lifers (or Christians) do nothing to support children after delivery. Quite the opposite is true.
Your question is a good one, but I know what the answer would be: the unborn aren’t children. They are fetuses.
 
avemariagratiaplena said:
The only way to counter this argument is to become foster parents or support groups and policies that give aid to mothers who choose to go through with a pregnancy or to support good orphanages and that kind of thing
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Of course these are good things to do but like others above, I disagree that it’s the only way to counter the argument. Abortion is right or wrong regardless of people’s actions in other areas, even if they might be related to the topic. The problem with these arguments are that they are red herrings. They detract from the key issue.

I watched a talk by Trent Horn and found the basic strategy he used interesting. I think he called it the 4 As… Agree, Apply, Ask why, and Ahhh.

In this case, it might go something like this:
  1. Agree: I agree with you that there can be severe abuse in the foster system and it’s a terrible tragedy when any child is abused by someone charged with taking care of them. It’s particularly hard for older foster kids because so many potential adoptive parents would prefer to adopt infants and their chance for adoption decreases as they get older.
  2. Apply: what would you think of this solution instead? What if, instead of aborting a fetus, we aborted one of the older children in foster care? Perhaps this would even reduce foster abuse since once the baby is born, there is a very high chance he will be adopted right away as many adoptive parents wait years for a chance to adopt an infant.
  3. Ask why: (most people see the obvious moral problem with killing the older kids and may say “no, we can’t kill the older foster kids”). But Why can’t we?
  4. Ahhh…: (A reasonable response to the question in 3 might be, “because we can’t kill innocent human beings”). Ahhh… so what is a fetus? This is the fundamental question. If a fetus is no different than a clump of skins cells, like a mole, there’s no moral problem with removing it. But if it’s a human being (spoiler, it is), it doesn’t matter how old it is, where it’s located, how weak and helpless it is. It’s morally wrong to kill an innocent human being.
 
As rough as growing up in the foster system can be, it’s better than being dead. Letting children be born at least gives them a fighting chance. And of course it’s false dichotomy to suggest that you need legal abortion in order for the children who are born to have good childhoods; it’s possible to guarantee all children get to be born while still also trying our best as a society to give them good childhoods and equip them for surviving in the world.
 
Why heck, it’s better to be in a foster home than butchered to death and thrown into the trash!

It’s simple, tell the pro choice person to go ask the very people they are condemning and using as examples to justify evil. They may have mentioned abuse victims, but really they group all foster children as a reason to justify abortion.

Tell them you will gladly drive them to the nearest foster home to meet the children they think should have been aborted, then you ask the children in front of the pro choice persons face if they have hopes and dreams. Even if they have been abused they still have hope that life will get better. The pro choice person has the very flawed notion that foster children are worthless and a waste of space and better off dead. That’s simply not true!

You know, maybe these kids are missing a family, a mom and dad, but they do have a roof over their head and are fed, they are not murdered and discarded as trash because their parents were irresponsible. They are loved and cared for, they even have each other.

A harder life is better than no life at all. And something else, maybe we can do better as Christians, maybe we should all find ways to include these children in our lives even if we can not adopt. I think most of us get on with our lives and don’t even give it a passing thought until some pro choice person calls us out on it. I challenge everyone, myself included, let’s see if we can get more involved and share the same love Christ has for them.
 
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