Someone help my pro-life arguments

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Timbothefiveth

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For me politics is not just important, you could say it’s a hobby. Even though I can sometimes logically win against abortion supporters, I can’t actually convince them. Anyone got any tips?

Here are my arguments : A fetus is scientifically human life. Therefore, it deserves to be protected. I will then often quote the British journal of medicine as saying that a fetus can feel pain at, I think it was 11 weeks.

At this point “seperation of church and state” is the argument they’ll use. To this I say that abortion laws are not specifically religious. I think it’s also good to note that if laws are unconstitutional just because most of their supporters are religious that makes the civil rights act unconstitutional.

Finally they’ll say that I shouldn’t have a say in it because I am not affected by it, to which I think the best answer is “by that standard, only abortion survivors should have a say, and most of them are pro-life.”

Unfortunantly, I’m still not sure how many people I’m convincing.
Any tips?
 
Here is the direction I would use. You first have to agree on this basic premise – the taking of an innocent life is wrong. If you cannot agree on that then there is no point in continuing the discussion since no matter what you say the other person will be able to justify their position.

Next, give them this scenario. Suppose a woman comes in for an abortion. Before the abortion procedure starts, she goes into labor and delivers the baby. The nurse, knowing that the woman was their for an abortion decides to quickly kill the baby. The nurse is charged with homicide. Sounds too unrealistic? That very case happened in Florida a few months ago.

So, ask the pro-abortion person, when did life begin in this case? If the abortion would have started 5 minutes earlier, then everything would have been nice and legal. So at what point in that 5 minutes and at which point in the birth canal did life start? Seriously, I’ve never asked anyone this question so I would be curious what the pro-abortion answer is. This little exercise removes any arguments about trying to equate that just because it’s the law it’s moral.

At this point you should have the person in a corner. They can’t logically say that killing the baby was moral because you already agreed that killing an innocent life is wrong. And saying that the baby was not alive 5 minutes earlier does not pass the laugh test. From there you can continue to push – did life begin 10 minutes earlier, a week, a month? From a logical point a view, the only reasonable answer is at conception. That is the clearly defining moment when life begins.

Now this is a neat little logical argument. Unfortunately, the most people throw logic out the window on the abortion debate and what to focus on the emotional side of the issue. You could argue endlessly on the other issues surrounding abortion, but I would press the person on the main point that it is wrong to kill an innocent life and life begins in the womb. The other arguments are just excuses and smoke screens.
 
If possible, find a copy of the Philosophy of Life: The Pope and the Right to Life, copyright 1989. One of the references that they use is the United Nations Bill of Rights written by Eleanor Roosevelt. The UN Bill of Rights includes the right to life.
One of the argument used by pro-abortionists to legalize the procedure comes from the Bill of Rights “pursuit of happiness.” I take the argument backward. Is it possible to pursue happiness without liberty? Is liberty possible without life? When we deny life to a person, we thereby deny that person, regardless of age, their right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Is there a person alive today whose life did not begin as a zygote?
In the 1956 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, you will find the word aborticide. That is the term that I use for “the destruction of the fetus within the womb” to differentiate between the intentional procedure and a natural abortion, the medical term for miscarriage.
 
Timbothefiveth said:
For me politics is not just important, you could say it’s a hobby. Even though I can sometimes logically win against abortion supporters, I can’t actually convince them. Anyone got any tips?
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Do you really expect to convince them? Let me just tell you this right now – you’re not going to! The best you can hope for is to plant a seed which will then grow.
Here are my arguments : A fetus is scientifically human life. Therefore, it deserves to be protected. I will then often quote the British journal of medicine as saying that a fetus can feel pain at, I think it was 11 weeks.
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There is a great deal of trouble in scientifically determining when life actually begins because even the scientists can’t agree on this. Is it when blood forms, when the heart first beats, when brain activity is registered, when the fetus can feel pain. Of course, you and I know, that it begins at conception but this is a theological stand-point and thus invalidated in the United States for an argument for or against a law. So I find the best tract to take here is to research all the differing opinions held by scientists. Then present an erring on the side of caution argument.
At this point “seperation of church and state” is the argument they’ll use. To this I say that abortion laws are not specifically religious. I think it’s also good to note that if laws are unconstitutional just because most of their supporters are religious that makes the civil rights act unconstitutional.
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Develop arguments that are not based on religion or theology. Then when they bring this up, just say my argument does not depend on religion or theology. It depends on science and logic. Last time I checked there was not a separation of science and state, though you could make a really good case for common law supporting a separation of logic and state. To this they will usually laugh and move on.
Finally they’ll say that I shouldn’t have a say in it because I am not affected by it, to which I think the best answer is “by that standard, only abortion survivors should have a say, and most of them are pro-life.”
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I am assuming you’re not affected because you’re not a female. This is flawed logic. To this I respond with, it takes a man’s semen and a woman’s egg to begin the process of a child growing in a woman’s womb. If I impregnate a woman I have no say in whether or not she gets an abortion. If she gets an abortion, I may very well be robbed of the opportunity to raise my child – an opportunity I may have wanted. If she decides not to get an abortion, I will be held financially responsible for that child – a child I may not have wanted. Decisions which effect the man’s future are unilaterally placed with the woman. Sure I decided to have sex, but so did she. Her options continue beyond this point and mine do not. Therefore abortion is a men’s rights issue too.
Unfortunantly, I’m still not sure how many people I’m convincing.
Any tips?
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Now, here is my favorite argument to make. I will ask them this. If I hold an object up can you, or a doctor, definitively tell me if this object is a human? After they answer this with a yes I ask. Can any object be both a human and not a human at the same time? After they answer this with a no, I start pointing out cases where someone was charged with murder for killing an embryo young enough to be aborted in the state the crime happened in. Then I ask them, so if the embryo is a human when someone other than the mother terminates it how can an embryo the same age not be a human when the mother terminates it?

Now, they will answer this. It won’t make any sense, but they will answer it. However, I know I’ve planted seeds with this one.
 
Perhaps you could ask the pro-death person you are arguing with, the names of 5 very famous people with vast accomplishments. People that he greatly admires. Then, ask him how the world would be if those people had been aborted. Ask him/her how life would be for people he /she knows if he/she had been aborted. Dr. Tiller aborted at least 60,000 babies, human beings. Can we even imagine the great people he destroyed? Perhaps one of these babies would have found a cure for cancer…etc…but, we will never know. 60,000 is a small city. What if Mary decided she didn’t wish to carry a baby, especially since she was not married…Much food for though!

Love and peace,
Mom of 5
 
Mom_of_5 said:
Perhaps you could ask the pro-death person you are arguing with, the names of 5 very famous people with vast accomplishments. People that he greatly admires. Then, ask him how the world would be if those people had been aborted. Ask him/her how life would be for people he /she knows if he/she had been aborted. Dr. Tiller aborted at least 60,000 babies, human beings. Can we even imagine the great people he destroyed? Perhaps one of these babies would have found a cure for cancer…etc…but, we will never know. 60,000 is a small city. What if Mary decided she didn’t wish to carry a baby, especially since she was not married…Much food for though!

Love and peace,
Mom of 5
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Pro-death? LOL! You’re so ignorant. 😃

Perhaps I’ll ask the Pro-lifer to name 5 mass murderers and then to imagine what the world would be like without those people. Your probability argument doesn’t work, as there are more evil people than “great” people in the world even now.
 
PrayHarder said:
Here is the direction I would use. You first have to agree on this basic premise – the taking of an innocent life is wrong. If you cannot agree on that then there is no point in continuing the discussion since no matter what you say the other person will be able to justify their position.
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I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but perhaps someone could tell me why it’s okay to kill weeds, which are also innocent lives? You’d seem quite biased if you only applied this principle to humans. What about a roach living in my house; to stomp or not to stomp?
 
Oreoracle said:
I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but perhaps someone could tell me why it’s okay to kill weeds, which are also innocent lives? You’d seem quite biased if you only applied this principle to humans. What about a roach living in my house; to stomp or not to stomp?
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Then I should rephrase my original premise. The taking of an innocent **HUMAN **life is wrong. Thank you Oreoracle for making me use more precise language. It’s very hard to have a logical argument if the premise is weakly defined.
 
Drawmack said:
Of course, you and I know, that it begins at conception but this is a theological stand-point and thus invalidated in the United States for an argument for or against a law.
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But that is not a theological standpoint; it is a biological standpoint. Theology has nothing to do with it.

The issue, biologically, is this: when does a new individual of the human species have its beginning? There is no other reasonable answer, from a biological standpoint than, at conception. That’s when a new individual of the human species begins. It is a new, developing, human being, distinct from its mother and father, and containing all the instructions needed to complete development up to birth and beyond.

The only remaining question is, why don’t all human beings deserve legal protection against being killed?
 
JimG said:
The issue, biologically, is this: when does a new individual of the human species have its beginning? There is no other reasonable answer, from a biological standpoint than, at conception. That’s when a new individual of the human species begins. It is a new, developing, human being, distinct from its mother and father, and containing all the instructions needed to complete development up to birth and beyond.
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Well said. That’s what I was trying to get at in my original post. If someone tells you that life does not begin at conception, then ask them when he/she thinks life begins. You gave them a perfectly reasoned argument that they reject, so what’s their alternative argument? And if it is “I don’t know”, then wouldn’t they want to error on the side of caution and not potentially kill a human life?
 
PrayHarder said:
Well said. That’s what I was trying to get at in my original post. If someone tells you that life does not begin at conception, then ask them when he/she thinks life begins. You gave them a perfectly reasoned argument that they reject, so what’s their alternative argument? And if it is “I don’t know”, then wouldn’t they want to error on the side of caution and not potentially kill a human life?
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Yes; as a matter of biolgical and embryological science, everyone really does know when a new human being begins.

Biology does not address “personhood” which is a philosophical and legal concept.

All human beings, in my view, are persons by nature. If “personhood” is to be something conferred by the government, outside the fact that one is already a human being, then no one is really safe.
 
Timbothefiveth said:
Here are my arguments : A fetus is scientifically human life. Therefore, it deserves to be protected. I will then often quote the British journal of medicine as saying that a fetus can feel pain at, I think it was 11 weeks.
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You can cite medical textbooks, and embryology books to prove that scientifically speaking, the unborn child is a human being.

sfuhl.org/n_sources.htm
At this point “separation of church and state” is the argument they’ll use. To this I say that abortion laws are not specifically religious. I think it’s also good to note that if laws are unconstitutional just because most of their supporters are religious that makes the civil rights act unconstitutional.
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Well, using that argument of theirs, according to the doctrine of “separation of church and state” we must then be pro-life, otherwise, the government is promoting a religion - one that sacrifices children. Examples: The Moloch religion. The Mayan religion. Many pagan religions sacrificed children.

Besides, I can defend pro-life beliefs without having to touch a Bible or Catechism. I’ve argued from reason, science and secular sources.
Finally they’ll say that I shouldn’t have a say in it because I am not affected by it, to which I think the best answer is “by that standard, only abortion survivors should have a say, and most of them are pro-life.”
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Well, it will affect you eventually. Think of it from a human rights perspective, and history.

Abortion is prejudice against the unborn. It is the 100% denial of human rights to one part of the human population. If we can do that to one group, why not another group? Why not then add yet another group to that? And so on and so on. We’ve seen this before time and time in history.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came…

I like saying "First they came for the unborn, but I was already born so I didn’t say anything. Then they came for the severely disabled (like Terri Schiavo) but I was not disabled so I said nothing. Then they came for the ill (Euthanasia) but I was healthy so I said nothing. Eventually they came for me and there was nobody to speak up for me.

The culture of death will keep “progressing”…backwards to the same scene of the crime - dead people.

I like to use this argument for the pro-life cause.

HUMAN RIGHTS FOR ALL, NOT JUST FOR THE CHOSEN.

By supporting “abortion rights” one is saying that human rights are only for the chosen. Only those chosen by their mothers to live, get to have human rights.

Imagine how just a society is when human rights are only given to the chosen. We did that before when we chose not to give human rights to blacks. We saw the bloody result of that (Civil War)
 
JimG said:
Yes; as a matter of biolgical and embryological science, everyone really does know when a new human being begins.

Biology does not address “personhood” which is a philosophical and legal concept.

All human beings, in my view, are persons by nature. If “personhood” is to be something conferred by the government, outside the fact that one is already a human being, then no one is really safe.
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We’ve already been there. There is the 20th century example pertaining to Jews which has been used so many times that it is interpreted as hyperbole and only leads to heated arguments, which is what we want to stir clear off.
The slave was given fractional personhood in the Constitution in order to determine population for representation purposes.
The Pony Express only hired orphans because they were expendable. Nobody would know if they were killed.

Whenever somebody discovers I am pro-life, the first thing they ask me is if I’m Catholic. I used to say, “Yes, I am Catholic but that has no effect on why I believe as I do.” I no longer say that. Instead I do acknowledge that my faith informs my conscience. It is partly why I take the position that I do take. If my faith tells me life begins at conception, am I not being forced to accept another person’s moral values when the government says that life is not worth protecting? Isn’t the purpose of law to codify shared cultural and moral values? We have laws against theft, a shared moral value. As Americans, don’t we place a premium value on liberty? How can a person enjoy liberty if he/she is denied life from the very onset? Does a human embryo develop into anything other than a human? As already mentioned, the DNA that stamps our individual physical charateristics has already been stamped when we were conceived. What is conceived? Is it not a human? Do you know any person alive, whose life did not start as a zygote?

I did have a person become defensive when I presented the “The human embryo cannot develop into a snake” argument. Her argument for life beginning later than conception went into the viability argument. This leads to scientific progress in the ability to keep a person alive as the determining factor for when life begins. It is a variation of the “life begins at birth” argument which is where she started. So machines determine when life starts?
 
Oreoracle said:
Your probability argument doesn’t work, as there are more evil people than “great” people in the world even now.
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I agree, the probability argument does not work.

It is a purely subjective argument, there is very little if any fact it can be based upon, and the obvious answer will be a ‘fact’ made completely up like “there are more evil people than “great” people in the world”

There is absolutely no fact behind such a statement concerning the numbers of ‘evil’ people, but one would appear disengenuous demanding references to back up such a statement after having brought in probability as a backing.
 
If we knew the answer on how to convince people that abortion is wrong, the world would be a much better place.
 
I have found some success with a few arguements. Not that they have turned people around but they have gotten people to rethink their point of view.
  1. If you believe that the morning after the woman has a right to get a procedure done that will eleviate any negative reprocusions from her act, then do you believe that the father should have the same right to say I don’t want to be responsible for this new life and avoid any obligations to the child? If you don’t believe the father should have that right then why should the mother?
  2. What makes these babies less than human? If so what’s stopping society from saying group… is also less than human and it is ok to kill them?
  3. Don’t you liberals want to save the kangaroo rat and turtle eggs? Why is a baby less worthy of protection?
  4. What about the babies that are developed enough to live on their own? (Most pro abortion people at least concede to this point)
  5. Per the life of the mother arguement: If it is to save the life of the mother and an effort is made to also save the baby it isn’t an abortion?
  6. What should we do about people who consistently have abortions? Shouldn’t there be some limit?
  7. In the case of rape or incest, aren’t you destroying evidence?
  8. Shouldn’t the father have a right to be notified and at least say good bye to their child or have a priest offer last rights or some other prayer?
  9. They could at least fill out a death certificate so they can track cause of death.
  10. If she is a minor, shouldn’t they find and punish the man who got her pregnant in the first place?
These are very situational dependent but thoughts you may want to have in your quiver. I have found that trying to debate the absolutes does not lead to much success. finding a point of common ground and working out from there seems to work better. libs tend to always portray it as the morning after an incestial rape where the mother’s life is in imminent peril. It is up to us to highlight the use of abortion as irresponsible birth control in later stages of pregnancy.
 
vz71 said:
I had never considered that before.

But if the proper documentation is taken, evidence can be destroyed…can’t it?
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I don’t know how evidence is collected. I have heard accusations of Planned parrent hood covering up sex crimes by rushing girls through abortions.
 
royal_archer said:
  1. If you believe that the morning after the woman has a right to get a procedure done that will eleviate any negative reprocusions from her act, then do you believe that the father should have the same right to say I don’t want to be responsible for this new life and avoid any obligations to the child? If you don’t believe the father should have that right then why should the mother?
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Most “pro-choice” types don’t want the man to have a choice. Sexism is OK there.
  1. What makes these babies less than human? If so what’s stopping society from saying group… is also less than human and it is ok to kill them?
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Amen. “First they came…” The culture of death is already moving forward (or is it goose-stepping forward?) - they’ve already dehumanized those who are too disabled (Terri Schiavo) and are moving to dehumanize the elderly. It all started with dehumanizing the unborn throughout all stages.
  1. In the case of rape or incest, aren’t you destroying evidence?
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Good point! Aiding and abetting a criminal is also a crime.
  1. Shouldn’t the father have a right to be notified and at least say good bye to their child or have a priest offer last rights or some other prayer?
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Sexism is good if it against males 🙂 (According to certain leftists)
 
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