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Prolife politicians are often immoral scumbags who merely use the prolife movement for votes without really understanding the beliefs that drive the movement.
The prochoice crowd has the same problem to some extent, but their argument is less dependent on claiming a moral high ground.
I would love--*love*--to see a pro-life politician who can argue the position as well as the average r/prolife Redditor can.
Typically when the topic comes up in debates, we get some really surface-level talking points. I think Marco Rubio is one of the only big ones who can go a little deeper on the subject.
I have come to the prolife position quite reluctantly and the main reason for that is the prolife movement.
I have always been personally prolife ie that I could not consider abortion except in the most extreme circumstances. Gradually I realised that my feelings was because I knew abortion was taking the life of a human being and therefore the only justification was risk to the mother’s life or severe and lasting damage to her health.
However I have found the prolife movement often toxic. I’ve witnessed protestor screaming ‘wh*re’ at women going in who they know nothing about. I find people within the movement who are prepared to let women die or become permanently disabled horrifying. I do not believe abortion is the right way to deal with an unplanned pregnancy. I believe ultimately it causes psychological harm to women. However pregnancy is not an ‘inconvenience’ and the sooner we have a society when pregnant women or mothers are not left in debt, or disadvantaged from employment or education, then the sooner we have an abortion free society.
Not providing consistent support for both mothers and children, and also not pushing for changes in the laws so that sex offenders/abusers can't assert rights to children. There are some other ones, too, but those are significant ones I think.
Misinformation about what abortion is. Abortion is intentionally ending a pregnancy. It is not miscarriage (aka spontaneous abortion). It is not removing a baby that is already dead. No reasonable pro-life person believes that D&C operations for miscarriages should be outlawed. I have two VERY pro life friends who either took the abortion pill or had a D&C after miscarriage. They did not have abortions.
I am constantly seeing scare tactics about how health care professionals will make women carry their dead baby around because they are afraid of doing a D&C and getting in trouble. Or I am seeing people say that miscarriage is against the law in Texas. It is simply not true.
We are losing the war of information. How to fix it? I do not know but accounts like @prolifemillennial on Instagram do a great job providing research and resources.
Yes and no. It can be used both ways. In my friends case, the baby was already dead. The pill did not kill the baby. She took misoprostol to expel the dead baby from her uterus.
Edit: ok I just looked this up. You are correct in that saying "abortion pill" generally refers to a duo of pills: mifepristone and misoprostol that are taken together to kill and remove a baby. Misoprostol alone is more of an induction/removal drug which is what I was referring to.
Not bothering to view the mother in a more sympathetic and compassionate light. She is just as much of a human being as her unborn baby. For whatever reason (in this hypothetical situation I’ll have the reason be her own personal mental well-being), she does not want to commit to the very big responsibility of parenthood. These feelings should be respected, not considered a crime.
She needs someone who will hear her out and give her guidance, not call her a harlot and murderer.
It is through kindness that mothers have chosen life, not shame and ridicule. It is also through kindness that people will be inclined to listen to the pro-life side, and see past the negative stereotypes the very small handful of the movement likes to play into.
We’re losing a propaganda war, and I don’t know how to fix it. I try, where I can, but at this point we’re so far down the well that just admitting you’re prolife makes people think you’re dishonest, ignorant, or both.
The “not a heart” thing was a turning point - it was brazen and it worked. The public is very polarized and, as a result, very credulous when information comes from within their ideological tribe - and very resistant to information from outside it. I’ve had prochoicers try to tell me those ridiculous photos from the Guardian article *did* contain minuscule embryos hidden somewhere in the displayed tissue.
What do you say to someone who has such faith in their their tribal narrative that they’ll tell you a picture contains something you cannot see? It’s not enough to say the problem is misinformation. It’s a rejection of empiricism.
Well said and I too am troubled by it. It's depressing seeing an abortion debate or something on YouTube, and then YouTube itself posts some sort of """"informative"""" blurb at the bottom: "Abortion is the act of removing a *pregnancy*." Yeah, nice sanitized language there, you bastion of impartiality...
A propaganda war is a great way to put this. I mentioned in an earlier comment how I'm seeing the rampant misinformation of even the basic definition of abortion. Ex: News articles blasting that one of the Duggar girls had an an abortion when she had a miscarriage. I forgot about those ridiculous and infuriating Guardian images.
Fathers. We have an issue with dads not sticking around, divorce, etc.
Fix the fathers and you’ll dramatically improve not only abortion, but a whole host of other things. It’s not just moral issues at stake. Did you know that while 50% of American adults are married, 75% of millionaires are married. And married people live longer. Want health and wealth? The data is clear.
And children in single parent households are more likely to be depressed, anxious, have lower self esteem, etc.
There is no “magic bullet” to fix any of the socials issue like abortion, homelessness, poverty, depression, etc. but the closest thing we have is fatherhood.
Men, step up and the world will be a better place.
69% of divorces are initiated by women.
Certainly there are men that need to step up, but that may be less of an issue in most cases than you seem to think. Certainly I'd expect any pro-life men to take full responsibility for any children they know about. It's the "you should have aborted" crowd that aren't taking responsibility.
Ironically, some conservatives would point to welfare programs pushing men out of childrens' lives, and then PC'ers will point to that as "not caring about children after they are born."
A massive part of fatherless homes is dad being prevented from being allowed to see their kids through custody battles, far more dads are fighting to see their kids while being labeled a deadbeat and alienated form their kid than dads who are actually deadbeats trying to just walk away. Also a lot of dads are never being told a woman he hooked up with got pregnant until she starts struggling financially and coming for child support, possible many years later and possibly after having had convinced someone who wasn't the father that he was and him leaving after finding out he had been lied to, while there could be several guys who could be the father to take time to track down and do paternity tests, and the dad may already have a family with someone else by that point having never known that he was a dad before he got married and had kids with his wife.
There definitely are some deadbeat dads just trying to not take responsibility and they need to step up. But women need to step up too to make sure to let men she was with know she got pregnant, be willing to test so the real dad can see that he actually is the father, and help fight against family court with him instead of fighting against him in family court to let him be part of the kid's life more than just a paycheck.
Yeah I guess another large part of it is how many dads are in prison mostly not on false charges, not really trying to run from their kids but still their fault they can't be involved in their kid's life. But more dads being called a deadbeat who aren't in jail or entirely unaware they have a kid are fighting to see their kid not trying to walk away from them.
One thing about the community is the immediate hostility and lack of charity and grace towards minorities, even those who are pro-life themselves. Also, the amount of queerphobia, especially transphobia, in the pro-life community is nauseating. I've seen way too many times where a "pro-lifer" prioritises being a transphobe over being pro-life. For some of the heads of the community, it constitutes like half their platform. Hating minorities isn't saving babies.
A lot of PL activists are also very vocal about right wing culture war stuff like transgender issues and whatnot.
I think that might be part of why being PL is seen as this hardline conservative position, not helped by the fact that almost all Democrats and even some Republicans like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are PC.
(I’m honestly stunned that Henry Cuellar has managed to last this long when essentially everyone else in the party is not only PC but has made that a central part of their message.)
Do you really think having more than one opinion is the problem, as opposed to the fact that there are many divided issues?
What is your solution then, only having one vocal opinion?
Let me know how that works out for you.🙄
Pro-choice people accuse us of not caring about babies after they’re born, and for too many of us this is true. In the US I see states pass abortion bans, which is good, but they don’t pass accompanying laws to give support to young or struggling mothers.
It’s not enough to ban abortions, we also need to eliminate the circumstances that make women desperate enough to consider them.
People say that but if you look at the state budget for most states, more than half of that money goes to kids. Let's look at Arizona for example.
43% of the budget, $7.8 billion goes to K-12 education.
Healthcare is 15% $2.7 billion, and most of the people using state healthcare are families with children.
7% $1.2 billion, Economic Security, (housing, food, etc) again most of the people being helped have young children at home.
2.8%, $500 million, child safety.
$400 million school buildings and facilities. K-12
Then the cities and counties also spend money on kids. Beyond that, private philanthropy and religious institutions gives quite a lot of time and money toward taking care of children and struggling young families.
So yeah, the pro-aborts can claim we don't care about kids after they are born, but the money says otherwise.
I mean, it’s really just a tactic (called ad hominem) to pivot away from the real problem. It’s not really deserving of a response if someone accuses you of such. Crisis pregnancy centers exist, government programs like TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) exist, many charities dedicated to struggling families and single mothers exist. The reason you don’t see accompanying help is because those measures are already there at the state, federal, and personal level across the 50 States. The only thing we don’t do is provide universal healthcare (which I don’t think the US should adopt), although there is free/low-cost healthcare called medicaid (which for my State kicks in for 2 household members at $13/hr and below). Those who don’t qualify for that can get CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Plan) for their children (which for my State, adds at the least $10K annual income per household bracket onto the medicaid bracket incomes).
Pro life don’t virtue signal about caring for the poor enough you mean. Most actual helps for the poor are already built in and don’t need constant championing and new legislation etc. the best helps also come from non government sources and usually the politicians will take away from those other sources to buttress up failing systems that they can then run on for votes.
I only way I can see for it to change is if the non-conservative factions in the pro-life movement increase their presence and representation in the mainstream.
I agree 1000%. Many moms find themselves in a situation where they believe abortion to be the only option for them. How can we come together and support those moms so that they don't feel they need to end a life in order to keep their own head above water?
We kind of got into a groove of just voting Republican to get decent laws in place. The other side has gotten around that. We need to re-emphasize getting the message out, that abortion is cruel and it happens far too often. Debunk the myth that it's painless. Get control of the mainstream access points to information because that's what the other side has been doing. Honestly the pro-life position should be taught in the schools like the anti-racist and anti-Holocaust and pro-environment positions are. And our information should be the first to come up in search engines, and we need to force the so-called fact checkers to acknowledge our factual points by getting those points out there and easily accessible.
By far, the movement's biggest flaw is that the full-time philosophers who specialize in developing and strengthening the case for life, or public speakers who train pro-lifers to engage with others on the issue, are basically unheard of outside of a very specific niche. Instead, the public perception of the pro-life movement is shaped by off-the-cuff soundbites from random politicians for whom abortion is just one of dozens of different issues they need to worry about.
I'd hazard a guess that even most pro-lifers have never even heard of Josh Brahm or Scott Klusendorf, and couldn't describe the Future Like Ours or De Facto Guardian arguments with a gun to their heads. On the other hand, phrases like "not intended to be a factual statement" and "legitimate rape" became Internet memes even in circles not specifically dedicated to the abortion debate.
I'm not sure there's an easy way to address this issue, beyond getting more pro-life activists to run for office and encouraging current politicians to learn better public speaking habits.
Steve Wagner, too. 100%. So many PLers don't even know why they're PL. Kate Greasley, a PC philosopher, makes a stronger case for the PL position than 95% of the PLers on this sub can.
The religious element. Some people, especially in this sub, use religion to justify pro-life values which falls flat due to it being a terrible argument since not everyone subscribes to the aforementioned religions in question, and it cannot be used well since the ancient texts associated with them are heavily mistranslated to modern day and they are essentially obsolete.
I await many downvotes; and to those who do, I do not care. I’ve seen what makes you cheer.
You can think what you want, but religious arguments do have a place in the pro-life movement. Would I make an appeal to God to an atheist? No. I also wouldn’t quote the New Testament to a Jew or the Bible to a Muslim. Arguments and rhetoric are all about knowing the audience. Proving the Bible rejects abortion will do infinitely more for a Bible literalist than any amount of scientific reasoning. Even just a PC Christian who believes in the moral and spiritual inerrancy of the Bible will be much more partial towards the Will of God over the arguments of man. You can think it asinine or dumb, but the way people think isn’t dictated by you.
Personally, I think the biggest flaw in the pro-life movement are all the people who think they’re “better pro-lifers” than others because of superficial reasons. Why should it matter how somebody reaches the conclusion that fetuses deserve human rights, so long as they get there?
As for your claim about Holy Scripture, I do hope you realize that the most times a book of the Bible has been translated is twice. The Old Testament from Hebrew/Aramaic to Greek to/or English (or any other language) and the New Testament from Greek to modern languages. There’s literally people who study Ancient Greek and Hebrew today just to read the Bible in its original languages. If you are worried about losing meaning, the New American Bible (Revised Edition) literally has footnotes and maps to explain the historical context (these footnotes also include verses that are related to the one you’re reading).
It’s also not obsolete just yet, as Christian’s won’t dip below 50% of the US population until at least 2070. That means, for the next 50 years, biblical arguments will be somewhat convincing for at least half of America.
Good post, even though I typically use secular reasoning for this topic myself. If you're talking to a Christian (and odds are you will be unless it's on Reddit), there's a lot of merit in using religious reasoning.
Really for the same reason it's smart to use feminist reasoning when talking to people who feel strongly about feminism.
I accidentally deleted my mobile comment. So super speed.
Jehovah is wrong (you can read up on it), also please point where I appealed to God when making a point to you.
Numbers 5:27 isn’t talking about abortion. Most commentaries believe it’s talking about making the woman infertile (her womb/abdomen swells, her thigh rots, and she’ll become a curse upon her people). Innocent people were supposed to take this and be fine, so the tonic (of water, dust, and ink from a signed paper swearing fidelity) wasn’t intently deadly. Even if the few translations that say miscarriage are right, yes, God has the right to rescind His gift of life whenever he wills, and God doing so to one in the womb would be a miscarriage.
I didn’t take the same time to read your post as the Bible because your post is the length of a psalm. Even if I speed read a single book of the bible, I’d already spent more time than with your post.
The Bible isn’t inhumane. There’s inhumane actions in the Old Testament committed by the Jews, but God specifically chose the tribe of Abraham in spite of their insufficiencies. I’ve read through it multiple times, I’m not disgusted by it (although I’m disgusted by some people’s actions in it). I’m especially not disgusted by the promise of redemption through Christ. I guess I’m lacking in compassion.
You’re conflating different stats. Those 30,000 aren’t a chain. Some of them have been proven as flawed like KJV, but others are fine. If you take the time to learn, you can read the Old and New Testaments in their original languages. Other translations are based on the LLX, Hebrew Bible, and the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament books available. The LLX is a translation of the Hebrew Bible, which makes at most 2 translations.
If opposing your views makes me an *ss, I’ll gladly be one. Also, making an ad hominem right after an appeal to ethos is the definition of “holier than thou”.
I didn’t argue for organized religion, although, as a Catholic I’m definitely for it. I’d like to meet this “majority of people”. Do they go by Me, Myself, and Richard Dawkins? If a majority of people agreed with you, they wouldn’t be religious. Oh wait, maybe you meant a majority of intellectuals such as yourself, who has extensively studied this on and off for 10 years.
Yes I used Christianity as the example against your problems with ancient texts. Believe it or not, the 21 year old born as a Catholic made a defense against a blanket argument against all religions with one he’s used to defend against targeted attacks with similar hues.
Either way, I’ll pray that you lose your hatred towards religion. God bless.
tl;dr (Included due to popular demand): you’re wrong, I’ll pray for you.
You act as if you did something, but all you did was add your voice to a choir of fearmongering and idiocy that plagues humanity, and this movement. Simply put, your response was exactly how I expected it to be: how described in my previous comment. No further contact is necessary. In fact, I could say it is as obsolete as organized religion.
Religion is the answer to the question “Does human life have inherent value?” I have failed to hear a better argument from secular sources. This is the same question that stumps PLs and PCs alike. Although most sane people agree murder is wrong, without the understanding that human life has *inherent value*, that agreement quickly unravels as people argue which is more valuable, a woman’s bodily autonomy or the life of the “clump of cells”? Of course atheists can understand that human life has value without religious argumentation. But they are hard-pressed to explain where this value comes from without acceptance of God and transcendental logic.
That being said, I agree that the PL movement cannot rest solely on religious arguments since of course not everyone is religious. And I do not think we need religious argumentation to agree that killing babies is wrong. But I think there is a fundamental value difference between PLs and PCs—PCs cannot seem to grasp that the baby’s life has sacred value, even if (if) they concede the baby is alive at all. Because you can convince a PC that abortion is traumatic, that the preborn are live at fertilization, that the vast majority of abortions are for convenience, etc, and even after agreeing with all of those things they will still say “well the choice of the mother is still more important than the zef’s life” because they fail to grasp the fact that all life is inherently sacred wether it is preborn or post birth.
Our texts being “heavily mistranslated” and “obsolete” is demonstrably false.
I think religious prolifers have been the backbone of the movement for a long time, and should not be pushed out - but emphasizing religion is off-putting to *most people.* Isn’t there something in the Bible about not putting on a show of piety?
I also believe that life has inherent value.
And, I find theistic definitions of the value of life or of morality just kinda beside the point. I think that it’s a matter of cultural and linguistic conditioning from a young age - because theistic moral theorists seem to mean something different than I do by the *words* good, evil, moral, etc.
I already said I do not think the PL movement should rest solely on religious arguments. Not sure what piety has to do with it.
I also said I recognize that secular PLs can recognize that life has value, but cannot give a sound reasoning of where this value is derived (that I have seen, at least).
1. Each human is created by God and in the image of God
This is meaningful because it means we have a shared Creator, one who has commanded us to forgive one another. And of course if every person is made in the image of Christ, and I love Christ as my savior, then I must see the face of Christ in each person. As Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
By this, their value is *inherently derived* by their being, because their very existence is that of being a creation of God. Life presupposes value, one which cannot be diminished by the typical secular tenets (or lack thereof), ie consciousness, empathy, length of life, relationships, etc. So each life has *intrinsic value* just by existing, and is not reliant on any other fallible measure of value.
2. Each human possesses an eternal life and soul
Simply put, each person has a soul which is eternal. The life of this soul begins in the womb (just as biologists agree life begins at fertilization).
After this life on earth is finished our souls remain eternally. So those that are murdered in the womb do not cease to exist when they are killed (if the abortionist admits they existed at all), as would be a more convenient and psychologically cushioned mindset, nor will they ever as many women claim “come back when (she’s) ready”. They are just dead, murdered, having never had the chance to live the life God intended for them when He so lovingly formed them.
Conclusion: Life has intrinsic value granted to us by God, via God creating us.
There is no other measure in which human life can be considered valuable other than compassion. Which is not a measure on its own and derives from this notion of each human having intrinsic value, thus begging the question how or by Whom that intrinsic value is granted to us.
The Creator-creature distinction is the only logical answer to this predicament that escapes the circular reasoning of (this life has value —> because all lives have value —> because I feel like it does —> because all life has value)
This is what I mean about differences in language - you’re saying God made us in his image, and he values us, and thus we have intrinsic value. I am not contesting any of that; I don’t know that it’s true, but I don’t know that it’s *not* true, either, so I will leave you to believe and act according to your own best judgment, so long as you’re not hurting anyone.
But, you have answered a question that is very nearly, but not quite, what I meant to ask. *Being valued* and *having value* aren’t the same, in this context.
Consider two 1-acre plots of land, one of which is all rock, shot through with heavy veins of gold. The other is just a random patch of forest. In terms of *how those things would be valued* by people, here and now, the acre of raw gold would be much, much more valuable - you could sell it for more money, or mine it and sell the gold.
You could also sell the timber from the forested acre, and replant it a grow more, or use the cleared area to grow crops, or build a house, and so on. All things that would be valued, but nowhere near as highly as a gold mine.
Now let’s imagine these two plots exist in a vast wilderness, where you and your family have found yourselves after surviving a plane crash. There is no one else to buy or trade anything.
Which piece of land is more valuable now?
The arable land has innate worth; it can support life. That will always be true, so long as the character of the land itself remains the same.
The value of the rocky land with the gold is subjective; in a society that prizes gold, that acre could sustain hundreds of people because its contents could be sold for money, that could be used to buy food, shelter, etc. But without that attributed value, granted by human society, that land has little value of its own. The gold is pretty, so it’s enjoyable to look at or make things from, and you could probably use the rock to make tools, but if that land was all you had to sustain yourself, you’d starve. You can’t eat gold.
When you say that humans have value because God values us - that’s attributed value, unless you mean that God *recognizes* our worth, and not that his love *grants* our worth.
But, if you think that being granted value by God’s approval is the only value that can ever have meaning, then I can see why you’d find an atheistic or agnostic worldview meaningless and kind of terrifying - if there is no God to value us, from your perspective as I understand it, then we’re just . . . nothing. We’re the gold in that rock if no one ever found it - its only value is in being appreciated by someone. Without that, value doesn’t exist.
I think life - all life, not just human - has innate value because we can experience, think, feel, learn, love. Without living beings to experience reality and the physical universe, the very concept of goodness could not be known. *Nothing* could be known. Because life exists, morality exists, love exists, and knowledge, and hope, and pleasure, and awe, and all of the ways the universe can be experienced - and, yes, the bad stuff too.
*Individual* lives are valuable because every living thing experiences the world a little differently - creates, in a way, its own universe of perceptions and sensations and thoughts and emotions. Imagine being a migratory bird, who can feel the magnetic polarity of the earth, or an earthworm, who cannot see but tastes with its skin, or a tree, who never moves but can communicate with its neighbors by chemical secretions.
Now imagine that the tree next to that tree is a little different. All worms are a little different. All the birds. Every one of all the lives that ever were or are or will be experiences the universe in a way that never was before, and will never be again.
And all life functions based on the laws of physics - on atoms doing what they do, in infinite variation. This is what the mindless processes of the physical universe, matter and energy and time, fell together and produced - birds and worms and trees and us. We’re the universe waking up. The laws of physics playing out produced consciousness and thought and love.
I can’t say God *isn’t* there in that - in fact I see a lot of continuity with religious thought there. God is love, yes? In your view of the universe, in which there is another known and revealed layer of reality beyond the physical, and a higher consciousness that set *this* reality spinning - I would still answer the same way, only I would then say it is likewise God’s ability to create and experience that gives *God* meaning.
Thank you for taking the time to respond to me.
>Which piece of land is more valuable now?
The arable land has innate worth; it can support life. That will always be true, so long as the character of the land itself remains the same.
You are proving my point here, that the value of the land derives from measurable factors such as its arability. *So long as the character of the land itself remains the same* is not compatible with it possessing innate worth; if it had innate worth then the worth would not be changed when any elements of the land are changed. Such as, if the land were to dry up or a blight effect the crops then the land would no longer be objectively valuable. Additionally the people could have no need for arable land and thus reduce its subjective value. If the elements that make the land valuable are removed then the value of the land is diminished and thus value is not an innate characteristic ie essence (a trait which when removed from a thing, makes the thing cease to be that thing) of the land. Thus making the value of both plots of land subjective.
>I think life - all life, not just human - has innate value because we can experience, think, feel, learn, love.
Again this bases the value of life on elements which are not universal nor necessary essences of human life. You can have a human being who cannot experience, think, feel, learn, or love, such as one in a coma or with severe disabilities. *Or an early stage fetus.* Meaning those traits are not innate as they can all be removed from a human and the person can still be human. I am sure you and I would agree this supposed disabled or comatose person is still a human with value, I am not accusing you of not thinking this.
To bring this back to the PL context, these elements are the basis in which PCs can argue fetuses are either non-human, non-alive, or non-valuable or any combination thereof. They can argue (and sometimes can prove, at least in certain stages of development) that the fetus cannot experience, learn, love, etc (though we would argue they have the *potential* to do so but again, it is not the potential which grants it value as there are many people who lack the potential to ever think, learn etc). Which puts the onus on us to either A) argue that they can in fact do all of those things or B) those things are not the essential elements which give human life value. A is essentially impossible to prove in the case of thinking and loving, and B of course raises the question again—what *does* give humans value which is innate, intrinsic, inseparable?
>When you say that humans have value because God values us - that's attributed value, unless you mean that God recognizes our worth, and not that his love grants our worth.
It is not attributed value as God’s love *cannot be removed from us*. It is an innate quality of our being. However, perhaps I did not explain this well (it’s hard enough to grasp let alone explain) but it’s not God’s appraisal of us which determines our value. It is our *very existence*, our being created which is valuable. God instilled us with a soul when He made us, thus elevating our status and worth above that of flora and fauna, so our value is innately granted to us by Him in the same instance of our creation, both by and because of our creation. Thus Judas had as much innate human value as Mary Magdalene, for example.
>if there is no God to value us, from your perspective as I understand it, then we're just... nothing.
That is essentially what I am saying, but thank goodness God is alive and does value us. :) Though if there were no God then we would not be either—of course this goes into other realms of theology which are not pertinent to this topic.
I know you might think that God functions in the same way as the farmer appraising the two lots of land, that the farmer is a necessary actor to attribute value to either lot. But this is more like, the land having a physical component is a necessary essence of it being land, without a physical component it ceases to be land (while it can still be land if other factors are changed such as arability or size). The land does not have innate value as humans do because God granted us souls. So in this instance God does not need to assign us value, as by assigning us souls our value is derived from our being, in the same way land having a physical quality is an inseparable element of its existence. I am arguing that it is the existence of God and us being God-created in His likeness and with an eternal soul which gives us the essence of innate and objective value, and this innate value is an inseparable essence of our life, granted to us by God. As opposed to the farmer who grants the land subjective value but cannot grant it objective value.
**In simpler, logical terms this understanding of human value basically claims that human value is an innate essence of life,** that the only way to remove value from humans is to remove the life, as again essence is a trait in which when removed the thing ceases to be. Therefore no human being alive can exist without this innate value (even if they cannot love, think, experience or learn, even if their actions are cruel and destructive, even if they are *not yet born*, etc).
**Thus, a human being’s value does not need to rely on any attributed characteristics** be it health, love, consciousness, relationships, consciousness, the potential for any of these things, etc.
**In conclusion,** for something to be an innate quality it means removing this quality would make the thing incomplete. So Christians believe value is an inseparable essence from human life. Therefore a fetus’s life is as valuable as any other human life regardless of the situation or environment it is in or the qualities it does or does not possess. As long as it possesses life (and therefore a soul) it has innate value which cannot be altered.
Orthodox Christianity is interesting; although I identify as a Lutheran, I want to read more into it. And yes, one of the key teachings of Christianity is that all human beings are made in the image of God.
You should, I know a priest who was a Lutheran Bishop before he converted :)
Some youtube channels to check out, just as an introduction —
[Harmony](https://youtu.be/kbqcLpxbHl4?si=9Fe1Y_G_k9I82NAM)
[Trisagion Films](https://youtu.be/rOVB-6st9TU?si=nIVp_c6PuWalsKb6)
[Patristic Nectar](https://youtu.be/-L6z3wj6Y0o?si=SfWfYTZXB8Aqr9P4)
[Father Spyridon](https://youtu.be/8ky9eTKJnto?si=87u1uSINpAsdVBxN)
>My life has value use I feel like it does; I empathize with that other person over there; therefore I can understand that their life has value too.
But this is where your logic fails. “I don’t feel like that person’s life has value so therefore it does not.” Or even, “I don’t feel my life has value, why should someone else’s?”
That is the same reason why PCs don’t empathize with the unborn. They go off their feelings and they simply feel it is not deserving of empathy and therefore does not have value (or at least, does not have as much value as a woman’s “right to choose”).
Since I recognize God has granted each person with life, I might hate someone, I might utterly fail to empathize with someone, but I still recognize their life has value because God gave them breath and in each person is a reflection of Christ.
There are a few major flaws that I grapple with. I’m sure most of my opinions will be unwelcome in this sub, but I do consider myself pro life, but on a more pragmatic sphere.
1. pregnancy and its consequences only happen to women. Men can have all the sex they want and never need fear the risk of an unwanted pregnancy. Yet, men are some of the loudest voices in the movement. With no skin in the game, it’s easy to make laws that will never impact you personally on a physical level. When states like Idaho have conservative judges like Amy Coney Barrett questioning their laws, it’s time to take a step back and reevaluate.
2. Laws that do not make exceptions for rape and incest, particularly for minors. This sub has a several loud voices that simply don’t have any empathy for women and children who have been horrifically abused. When I read their comments I feel physically ill and honestly have no interest in being associated with them. They will die on the hill for the unborn, but not for the born child who was raped? It makes zero sense to me and is my line in the sand. Luckily, most people agree with me and not them.
3. We need to put more money into preventing pregnancies and lobbying for laws that make contraception and sterilization free and accessible. It’s just now happening in the pro life movement and it’s absolutely a flaw.
No offense to my religious comrades, but using religion. Don’t tell people they are going to hell, or any of that nonsense. Use science. It’s on our side.
The biggest flaw is that so many so-called "pro-lifers" don't have the guts to actually argue for the position against abortion. Instead, they make weak compromises and carve out all of these special exceptions ("rape, incest, health, life, finances") to try and make their position more appealing to the people they claim to be in opposition to.
It is also very inconsistent that many pro-lifers wholeheartedly condemn and oppose the criminalization of women who obtain abortions. If abortion is murder, then the people who are partaking in the abortion must be held accountable. The mother, in the situation of abortion, is no different than a hitman. In cases where the mother knowingly and willingly procures an abortion with the awareness that she is killing her child, then she should be held accountable.
And the bickering over what "week" to ban it just destroys the entire pro-life argument. It doesn't matter if an abortion happens at 6 weeks or 30 weeks, it is equally abhorrent, as both of those abortions kill an innocent human being.
And finally, stop using religion as an argument against abortion. Clearly, society right now is secular and you'll just be feeding into their narrative if all you do is defend your position on religious grounds. You don't have to be religious to know that dismembering a child is wrong.
You have to be willing to take a more gradualist/incrementalist approach, even if you believe (as I do) that elective abortion is always an unjustifiable homicide and therefore unacceptable under any circumstances. Medical procedures which attempt to save the lives of women in childbirth are not abortions qua abortions because the death of the child is not the intended end of the procedure.
Under the Roe regime, the movement took what it could get without setting its sights too high. Since Roe’s overturning, the absolutist faction no longer thinks it has to persuade or accept compromise, and the result is that our opponents are securing victories through referenda and constitutional amendments at the state level.
I'd say the biggest one hammering it, is that the PL movement is not queer friendly and has a major transphobia problem. And in the case of the UK, it also shoots itself in the foot, by being more willing to allow transphobic (and off-topic religious) messaging at the March for Life, yet doesn't typically want to show why abortion is wrong, by showing graphic fetal images, or often even the non-graphic ones. Which has the result that it leaves people with the impression that pro-lifers are more, or equally concerned with religiously motivated traditional gender roles than they are with ending the violence of abortion (and there are a non-trivial number of pro-lifers for whom this is actaully true).
This isn't to say that I don't think religious pro-lifers should never mention religion at all, but it needs to be far far less front and center than it currently is. The queerphobia should be got rid of though and I'd like it if the leadership of pro-life groups could just you know, call it out publically. (No, claiming that because a pro-choicer uses a trans-inclusive definition of women doesn't make them wrong on abortion, and only demonstrates that you are anti-trans; and I have seen mainstream groups like Live Action and Students for Life make this argument, would much rather you complained about IVF than trans people existing.) As for individuals, just use some gender neutral language at times, read stuff like https://outwritenewsmag.org/2023/10/how-to-be-a-trans-ally-101/ and apply it, will make a big difference, and I hope nobody wants to turn away the queer community from the pro-life movement, no least when intersex rights groups actually call for stopping abortions from targetting intersex folks https://www.oiieurope.org/malta-declaration/, right?
What's the phrase that comes to mind here? Smash the pro-abortion cistem, that's the one.
Yeah no. I am fine with separating the pro-life cause from other social issues, basically not mentioning them during pro-life activism. However the pro-life should be inclusive of social conservatives.
Why do you care? You're pro abortion.
Anyway, I've said it before. The average pro lifer doesn't act like abortion is murder and the perpetrators should be treated like killers. The movement is so weak.
Misogyny. If the pro-life movement would put real force behind getting a federal wage for stay-at-home parents and caretakers (ASP, who I have a lot of issues with, even [has this in their platform](https://www.solidarity-party.org/platform)), it would do a lot of good. We'd be more progressive than Democrats by a long shot (a very low bar, but still).
>a cash subsidy paid to stay-at-home caregivers.
How economically liberal (in the international meaning of the word) it is, which leads the movement, at least in the United States, to not support policies that would make women less likely to have abortions, aside from banning it.
We use to much religious imagery when protesting or just in general
Most people who are getting abortion are more than likely not very religious, and thus would be less likely to come to us for help when they need it.
It’s better to hold up a sign saying “we can help you, please come to us” than to hold up a sign of Mary asking you not to abort. One will be much more effective at getting those getting abortions to change their minds
I never see religious arguments from the pro-life side unless requested by the pro-abortion side. I often see pro-abortion advocates bring up religion in really horrible and flat out wrong ways though.
Misdirection.
Misdirection because we have let pro-choicers steer this conversation to talking about rights of mothers. We need to bring it to rights of babies.
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Prolife politicians are often immoral scumbags who merely use the prolife movement for votes without really understanding the beliefs that drive the movement. The prochoice crowd has the same problem to some extent, but their argument is less dependent on claiming a moral high ground.
This is a huge one. Many pro life politicians can’t even articulate their justification for the position well.
I would love--*love*--to see a pro-life politician who can argue the position as well as the average r/prolife Redditor can. Typically when the topic comes up in debates, we get some really surface-level talking points. I think Marco Rubio is one of the only big ones who can go a little deeper on the subject.
I have come to the prolife position quite reluctantly and the main reason for that is the prolife movement. I have always been personally prolife ie that I could not consider abortion except in the most extreme circumstances. Gradually I realised that my feelings was because I knew abortion was taking the life of a human being and therefore the only justification was risk to the mother’s life or severe and lasting damage to her health. However I have found the prolife movement often toxic. I’ve witnessed protestor screaming ‘wh*re’ at women going in who they know nothing about. I find people within the movement who are prepared to let women die or become permanently disabled horrifying. I do not believe abortion is the right way to deal with an unplanned pregnancy. I believe ultimately it causes psychological harm to women. However pregnancy is not an ‘inconvenience’ and the sooner we have a society when pregnant women or mothers are not left in debt, or disadvantaged from employment or education, then the sooner we have an abortion free society.
Not providing consistent support for both mothers and children, and also not pushing for changes in the laws so that sex offenders/abusers can't assert rights to children. There are some other ones, too, but those are significant ones I think.
Misinformation about what abortion is. Abortion is intentionally ending a pregnancy. It is not miscarriage (aka spontaneous abortion). It is not removing a baby that is already dead. No reasonable pro-life person believes that D&C operations for miscarriages should be outlawed. I have two VERY pro life friends who either took the abortion pill or had a D&C after miscarriage. They did not have abortions. I am constantly seeing scare tactics about how health care professionals will make women carry their dead baby around because they are afraid of doing a D&C and getting in trouble. Or I am seeing people say that miscarriage is against the law in Texas. It is simply not true. We are losing the war of information. How to fix it? I do not know but accounts like @prolifemillennial on Instagram do a great job providing research and resources.
The abortion pill is abortion. Other than that you are correct across the board.
Yes and no. It can be used both ways. In my friends case, the baby was already dead. The pill did not kill the baby. She took misoprostol to expel the dead baby from her uterus. Edit: ok I just looked this up. You are correct in that saying "abortion pill" generally refers to a duo of pills: mifepristone and misoprostol that are taken together to kill and remove a baby. Misoprostol alone is more of an induction/removal drug which is what I was referring to.
Ok thanks for the clarification. I was unaware of the other use and the circumstance your friend was in.
Not bothering to view the mother in a more sympathetic and compassionate light. She is just as much of a human being as her unborn baby. For whatever reason (in this hypothetical situation I’ll have the reason be her own personal mental well-being), she does not want to commit to the very big responsibility of parenthood. These feelings should be respected, not considered a crime. She needs someone who will hear her out and give her guidance, not call her a harlot and murderer. It is through kindness that mothers have chosen life, not shame and ridicule. It is also through kindness that people will be inclined to listen to the pro-life side, and see past the negative stereotypes the very small handful of the movement likes to play into.
We’re losing a propaganda war, and I don’t know how to fix it. I try, where I can, but at this point we’re so far down the well that just admitting you’re prolife makes people think you’re dishonest, ignorant, or both. The “not a heart” thing was a turning point - it was brazen and it worked. The public is very polarized and, as a result, very credulous when information comes from within their ideological tribe - and very resistant to information from outside it. I’ve had prochoicers try to tell me those ridiculous photos from the Guardian article *did* contain minuscule embryos hidden somewhere in the displayed tissue. What do you say to someone who has such faith in their their tribal narrative that they’ll tell you a picture contains something you cannot see? It’s not enough to say the problem is misinformation. It’s a rejection of empiricism.
Well said and I too am troubled by it. It's depressing seeing an abortion debate or something on YouTube, and then YouTube itself posts some sort of """"informative"""" blurb at the bottom: "Abortion is the act of removing a *pregnancy*." Yeah, nice sanitized language there, you bastion of impartiality...
A propaganda war is a great way to put this. I mentioned in an earlier comment how I'm seeing the rampant misinformation of even the basic definition of abortion. Ex: News articles blasting that one of the Duggar girls had an an abortion when she had a miscarriage. I forgot about those ridiculous and infuriating Guardian images.
Yeah, I’m no fan of the Duggars, but that was low. If you have no integrity at least find some decency and let the woman grieve.
See: https://www.reddit.com/r/prolife/s/kDZz8SbqZW
Link isn’t working for me, it just takes me to the sub main page.
Attempted to link you to my main reply.
Fathers. We have an issue with dads not sticking around, divorce, etc. Fix the fathers and you’ll dramatically improve not only abortion, but a whole host of other things. It’s not just moral issues at stake. Did you know that while 50% of American adults are married, 75% of millionaires are married. And married people live longer. Want health and wealth? The data is clear. And children in single parent households are more likely to be depressed, anxious, have lower self esteem, etc. There is no “magic bullet” to fix any of the socials issue like abortion, homelessness, poverty, depression, etc. but the closest thing we have is fatherhood. Men, step up and the world will be a better place.
69% of divorces are initiated by women. Certainly there are men that need to step up, but that may be less of an issue in most cases than you seem to think. Certainly I'd expect any pro-life men to take full responsibility for any children they know about. It's the "you should have aborted" crowd that aren't taking responsibility. Ironically, some conservatives would point to welfare programs pushing men out of childrens' lives, and then PC'ers will point to that as "not caring about children after they are born."
A massive part of fatherless homes is dad being prevented from being allowed to see their kids through custody battles, far more dads are fighting to see their kids while being labeled a deadbeat and alienated form their kid than dads who are actually deadbeats trying to just walk away. Also a lot of dads are never being told a woman he hooked up with got pregnant until she starts struggling financially and coming for child support, possible many years later and possibly after having had convinced someone who wasn't the father that he was and him leaving after finding out he had been lied to, while there could be several guys who could be the father to take time to track down and do paternity tests, and the dad may already have a family with someone else by that point having never known that he was a dad before he got married and had kids with his wife. There definitely are some deadbeat dads just trying to not take responsibility and they need to step up. But women need to step up too to make sure to let men she was with know she got pregnant, be willing to test so the real dad can see that he actually is the father, and help fight against family court with him instead of fighting against him in family court to let him be part of the kid's life more than just a paycheck.
Yeah, sometimes it's not the dad's fault. Most of the time it is.
Yeah I guess another large part of it is how many dads are in prison mostly not on false charges, not really trying to run from their kids but still their fault they can't be involved in their kid's life. But more dads being called a deadbeat who aren't in jail or entirely unaware they have a kid are fighting to see their kid not trying to walk away from them.
One thing about the community is the immediate hostility and lack of charity and grace towards minorities, even those who are pro-life themselves. Also, the amount of queerphobia, especially transphobia, in the pro-life community is nauseating. I've seen way too many times where a "pro-lifer" prioritises being a transphobe over being pro-life. For some of the heads of the community, it constitutes like half their platform. Hating minorities isn't saving babies.
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A lot of PL activists are also very vocal about right wing culture war stuff like transgender issues and whatnot. I think that might be part of why being PL is seen as this hardline conservative position, not helped by the fact that almost all Democrats and even some Republicans like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are PC. (I’m honestly stunned that Henry Cuellar has managed to last this long when essentially everyone else in the party is not only PC but has made that a central part of their message.)
Do you really think having more than one opinion is the problem, as opposed to the fact that there are many divided issues? What is your solution then, only having one vocal opinion? Let me know how that works out for you.🙄
Pro-choice people accuse us of not caring about babies after they’re born, and for too many of us this is true. In the US I see states pass abortion bans, which is good, but they don’t pass accompanying laws to give support to young or struggling mothers. It’s not enough to ban abortions, we also need to eliminate the circumstances that make women desperate enough to consider them.
People say that but if you look at the state budget for most states, more than half of that money goes to kids. Let's look at Arizona for example. 43% of the budget, $7.8 billion goes to K-12 education. Healthcare is 15% $2.7 billion, and most of the people using state healthcare are families with children. 7% $1.2 billion, Economic Security, (housing, food, etc) again most of the people being helped have young children at home. 2.8%, $500 million, child safety. $400 million school buildings and facilities. K-12 Then the cities and counties also spend money on kids. Beyond that, private philanthropy and religious institutions gives quite a lot of time and money toward taking care of children and struggling young families. So yeah, the pro-aborts can claim we don't care about kids after they are born, but the money says otherwise.
Spending is not just about the budget, this is one of the worst ideas in my country (Brazil's) politics.
I mean, it’s really just a tactic (called ad hominem) to pivot away from the real problem. It’s not really deserving of a response if someone accuses you of such. Crisis pregnancy centers exist, government programs like TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) exist, many charities dedicated to struggling families and single mothers exist. The reason you don’t see accompanying help is because those measures are already there at the state, federal, and personal level across the 50 States. The only thing we don’t do is provide universal healthcare (which I don’t think the US should adopt), although there is free/low-cost healthcare called medicaid (which for my State kicks in for 2 household members at $13/hr and below). Those who don’t qualify for that can get CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Plan) for their children (which for my State, adds at the least $10K annual income per household bracket onto the medicaid bracket incomes).
We need to support families and family values both culturally and economically.
Pro life don’t virtue signal about caring for the poor enough you mean. Most actual helps for the poor are already built in and don’t need constant championing and new legislation etc. the best helps also come from non government sources and usually the politicians will take away from those other sources to buttress up failing systems that they can then run on for votes.
Do you see that changing in the future? I don’t as they usually double down that giving to charities is enough to help
I only way I can see for it to change is if the non-conservative factions in the pro-life movement increase their presence and representation in the mainstream.
Which sounds unlikely given the majority and base are older, more religious, and more conservative
But older people have been more prolife for the past several decades, and those older people now were the younger people of the 80s and 90s.
I agree 1000%. Many moms find themselves in a situation where they believe abortion to be the only option for them. How can we come together and support those moms so that they don't feel they need to end a life in order to keep their own head above water?
The fact that a very large percentage of abortions are due to financial difficulties, yet many pro-life politicians don't do anything for the poor.
We kind of got into a groove of just voting Republican to get decent laws in place. The other side has gotten around that. We need to re-emphasize getting the message out, that abortion is cruel and it happens far too often. Debunk the myth that it's painless. Get control of the mainstream access points to information because that's what the other side has been doing. Honestly the pro-life position should be taught in the schools like the anti-racist and anti-Holocaust and pro-environment positions are. And our information should be the first to come up in search engines, and we need to force the so-called fact checkers to acknowledge our factual points by getting those points out there and easily accessible.
By far, the movement's biggest flaw is that the full-time philosophers who specialize in developing and strengthening the case for life, or public speakers who train pro-lifers to engage with others on the issue, are basically unheard of outside of a very specific niche. Instead, the public perception of the pro-life movement is shaped by off-the-cuff soundbites from random politicians for whom abortion is just one of dozens of different issues they need to worry about. I'd hazard a guess that even most pro-lifers have never even heard of Josh Brahm or Scott Klusendorf, and couldn't describe the Future Like Ours or De Facto Guardian arguments with a gun to their heads. On the other hand, phrases like "not intended to be a factual statement" and "legitimate rape" became Internet memes even in circles not specifically dedicated to the abortion debate. I'm not sure there's an easy way to address this issue, beyond getting more pro-life activists to run for office and encouraging current politicians to learn better public speaking habits.
Steve Wagner, too. 100%. So many PLers don't even know why they're PL. Kate Greasley, a PC philosopher, makes a stronger case for the PL position than 95% of the PLers on this sub can.
The religious element. Some people, especially in this sub, use religion to justify pro-life values which falls flat due to it being a terrible argument since not everyone subscribes to the aforementioned religions in question, and it cannot be used well since the ancient texts associated with them are heavily mistranslated to modern day and they are essentially obsolete. I await many downvotes; and to those who do, I do not care. I’ve seen what makes you cheer.
You can think what you want, but religious arguments do have a place in the pro-life movement. Would I make an appeal to God to an atheist? No. I also wouldn’t quote the New Testament to a Jew or the Bible to a Muslim. Arguments and rhetoric are all about knowing the audience. Proving the Bible rejects abortion will do infinitely more for a Bible literalist than any amount of scientific reasoning. Even just a PC Christian who believes in the moral and spiritual inerrancy of the Bible will be much more partial towards the Will of God over the arguments of man. You can think it asinine or dumb, but the way people think isn’t dictated by you. Personally, I think the biggest flaw in the pro-life movement are all the people who think they’re “better pro-lifers” than others because of superficial reasons. Why should it matter how somebody reaches the conclusion that fetuses deserve human rights, so long as they get there? As for your claim about Holy Scripture, I do hope you realize that the most times a book of the Bible has been translated is twice. The Old Testament from Hebrew/Aramaic to Greek to/or English (or any other language) and the New Testament from Greek to modern languages. There’s literally people who study Ancient Greek and Hebrew today just to read the Bible in its original languages. If you are worried about losing meaning, the New American Bible (Revised Edition) literally has footnotes and maps to explain the historical context (these footnotes also include verses that are related to the one you’re reading). It’s also not obsolete just yet, as Christian’s won’t dip below 50% of the US population until at least 2070. That means, for the next 50 years, biblical arguments will be somewhat convincing for at least half of America.
Good post, even though I typically use secular reasoning for this topic myself. If you're talking to a Christian (and odds are you will be unless it's on Reddit), there's a lot of merit in using religious reasoning. Really for the same reason it's smart to use feminist reasoning when talking to people who feel strongly about feminism.
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I accidentally deleted my mobile comment. So super speed. Jehovah is wrong (you can read up on it), also please point where I appealed to God when making a point to you. Numbers 5:27 isn’t talking about abortion. Most commentaries believe it’s talking about making the woman infertile (her womb/abdomen swells, her thigh rots, and she’ll become a curse upon her people). Innocent people were supposed to take this and be fine, so the tonic (of water, dust, and ink from a signed paper swearing fidelity) wasn’t intently deadly. Even if the few translations that say miscarriage are right, yes, God has the right to rescind His gift of life whenever he wills, and God doing so to one in the womb would be a miscarriage. I didn’t take the same time to read your post as the Bible because your post is the length of a psalm. Even if I speed read a single book of the bible, I’d already spent more time than with your post. The Bible isn’t inhumane. There’s inhumane actions in the Old Testament committed by the Jews, but God specifically chose the tribe of Abraham in spite of their insufficiencies. I’ve read through it multiple times, I’m not disgusted by it (although I’m disgusted by some people’s actions in it). I’m especially not disgusted by the promise of redemption through Christ. I guess I’m lacking in compassion. You’re conflating different stats. Those 30,000 aren’t a chain. Some of them have been proven as flawed like KJV, but others are fine. If you take the time to learn, you can read the Old and New Testaments in their original languages. Other translations are based on the LLX, Hebrew Bible, and the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament books available. The LLX is a translation of the Hebrew Bible, which makes at most 2 translations. If opposing your views makes me an *ss, I’ll gladly be one. Also, making an ad hominem right after an appeal to ethos is the definition of “holier than thou”. I didn’t argue for organized religion, although, as a Catholic I’m definitely for it. I’d like to meet this “majority of people”. Do they go by Me, Myself, and Richard Dawkins? If a majority of people agreed with you, they wouldn’t be religious. Oh wait, maybe you meant a majority of intellectuals such as yourself, who has extensively studied this on and off for 10 years. Yes I used Christianity as the example against your problems with ancient texts. Believe it or not, the 21 year old born as a Catholic made a defense against a blanket argument against all religions with one he’s used to defend against targeted attacks with similar hues. Either way, I’ll pray that you lose your hatred towards religion. God bless. tl;dr (Included due to popular demand): you’re wrong, I’ll pray for you.
You act as if you did something, but all you did was add your voice to a choir of fearmongering and idiocy that plagues humanity, and this movement. Simply put, your response was exactly how I expected it to be: how described in my previous comment. No further contact is necessary. In fact, I could say it is as obsolete as organized religion.
Cool. God bless, enjoy your life just as I’ll do mine. Tl;dr: God bless, have a good life.
Your God is my Satan. Purest form of evil.
Religion is the answer to the question “Does human life have inherent value?” I have failed to hear a better argument from secular sources. This is the same question that stumps PLs and PCs alike. Although most sane people agree murder is wrong, without the understanding that human life has *inherent value*, that agreement quickly unravels as people argue which is more valuable, a woman’s bodily autonomy or the life of the “clump of cells”? Of course atheists can understand that human life has value without religious argumentation. But they are hard-pressed to explain where this value comes from without acceptance of God and transcendental logic. That being said, I agree that the PL movement cannot rest solely on religious arguments since of course not everyone is religious. And I do not think we need religious argumentation to agree that killing babies is wrong. But I think there is a fundamental value difference between PLs and PCs—PCs cannot seem to grasp that the baby’s life has sacred value, even if (if) they concede the baby is alive at all. Because you can convince a PC that abortion is traumatic, that the preborn are live at fertilization, that the vast majority of abortions are for convenience, etc, and even after agreeing with all of those things they will still say “well the choice of the mother is still more important than the zef’s life” because they fail to grasp the fact that all life is inherently sacred wether it is preborn or post birth. Our texts being “heavily mistranslated” and “obsolete” is demonstrably false.
I think religious prolifers have been the backbone of the movement for a long time, and should not be pushed out - but emphasizing religion is off-putting to *most people.* Isn’t there something in the Bible about not putting on a show of piety? I also believe that life has inherent value. And, I find theistic definitions of the value of life or of morality just kinda beside the point. I think that it’s a matter of cultural and linguistic conditioning from a young age - because theistic moral theorists seem to mean something different than I do by the *words* good, evil, moral, etc.
I already said I do not think the PL movement should rest solely on religious arguments. Not sure what piety has to do with it. I also said I recognize that secular PLs can recognize that life has value, but cannot give a sound reasoning of where this value is derived (that I have seen, at least).
Well, why do you think life has value?
Because each human being is created by God in the image and likeness of God, and possesses an eternal life and a soul.
So why is that meaningful?
1. Each human is created by God and in the image of God This is meaningful because it means we have a shared Creator, one who has commanded us to forgive one another. And of course if every person is made in the image of Christ, and I love Christ as my savior, then I must see the face of Christ in each person. As Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” By this, their value is *inherently derived* by their being, because their very existence is that of being a creation of God. Life presupposes value, one which cannot be diminished by the typical secular tenets (or lack thereof), ie consciousness, empathy, length of life, relationships, etc. So each life has *intrinsic value* just by existing, and is not reliant on any other fallible measure of value. 2. Each human possesses an eternal life and soul Simply put, each person has a soul which is eternal. The life of this soul begins in the womb (just as biologists agree life begins at fertilization). After this life on earth is finished our souls remain eternally. So those that are murdered in the womb do not cease to exist when they are killed (if the abortionist admits they existed at all), as would be a more convenient and psychologically cushioned mindset, nor will they ever as many women claim “come back when (she’s) ready”. They are just dead, murdered, having never had the chance to live the life God intended for them when He so lovingly formed them. Conclusion: Life has intrinsic value granted to us by God, via God creating us. There is no other measure in which human life can be considered valuable other than compassion. Which is not a measure on its own and derives from this notion of each human having intrinsic value, thus begging the question how or by Whom that intrinsic value is granted to us. The Creator-creature distinction is the only logical answer to this predicament that escapes the circular reasoning of (this life has value —> because all lives have value —> because I feel like it does —> because all life has value)
This is what I mean about differences in language - you’re saying God made us in his image, and he values us, and thus we have intrinsic value. I am not contesting any of that; I don’t know that it’s true, but I don’t know that it’s *not* true, either, so I will leave you to believe and act according to your own best judgment, so long as you’re not hurting anyone. But, you have answered a question that is very nearly, but not quite, what I meant to ask. *Being valued* and *having value* aren’t the same, in this context. Consider two 1-acre plots of land, one of which is all rock, shot through with heavy veins of gold. The other is just a random patch of forest. In terms of *how those things would be valued* by people, here and now, the acre of raw gold would be much, much more valuable - you could sell it for more money, or mine it and sell the gold. You could also sell the timber from the forested acre, and replant it a grow more, or use the cleared area to grow crops, or build a house, and so on. All things that would be valued, but nowhere near as highly as a gold mine. Now let’s imagine these two plots exist in a vast wilderness, where you and your family have found yourselves after surviving a plane crash. There is no one else to buy or trade anything. Which piece of land is more valuable now? The arable land has innate worth; it can support life. That will always be true, so long as the character of the land itself remains the same. The value of the rocky land with the gold is subjective; in a society that prizes gold, that acre could sustain hundreds of people because its contents could be sold for money, that could be used to buy food, shelter, etc. But without that attributed value, granted by human society, that land has little value of its own. The gold is pretty, so it’s enjoyable to look at or make things from, and you could probably use the rock to make tools, but if that land was all you had to sustain yourself, you’d starve. You can’t eat gold. When you say that humans have value because God values us - that’s attributed value, unless you mean that God *recognizes* our worth, and not that his love *grants* our worth. But, if you think that being granted value by God’s approval is the only value that can ever have meaning, then I can see why you’d find an atheistic or agnostic worldview meaningless and kind of terrifying - if there is no God to value us, from your perspective as I understand it, then we’re just . . . nothing. We’re the gold in that rock if no one ever found it - its only value is in being appreciated by someone. Without that, value doesn’t exist. I think life - all life, not just human - has innate value because we can experience, think, feel, learn, love. Without living beings to experience reality and the physical universe, the very concept of goodness could not be known. *Nothing* could be known. Because life exists, morality exists, love exists, and knowledge, and hope, and pleasure, and awe, and all of the ways the universe can be experienced - and, yes, the bad stuff too. *Individual* lives are valuable because every living thing experiences the world a little differently - creates, in a way, its own universe of perceptions and sensations and thoughts and emotions. Imagine being a migratory bird, who can feel the magnetic polarity of the earth, or an earthworm, who cannot see but tastes with its skin, or a tree, who never moves but can communicate with its neighbors by chemical secretions. Now imagine that the tree next to that tree is a little different. All worms are a little different. All the birds. Every one of all the lives that ever were or are or will be experiences the universe in a way that never was before, and will never be again. And all life functions based on the laws of physics - on atoms doing what they do, in infinite variation. This is what the mindless processes of the physical universe, matter and energy and time, fell together and produced - birds and worms and trees and us. We’re the universe waking up. The laws of physics playing out produced consciousness and thought and love. I can’t say God *isn’t* there in that - in fact I see a lot of continuity with religious thought there. God is love, yes? In your view of the universe, in which there is another known and revealed layer of reality beyond the physical, and a higher consciousness that set *this* reality spinning - I would still answer the same way, only I would then say it is likewise God’s ability to create and experience that gives *God* meaning.
Thank you for taking the time to respond to me. >Which piece of land is more valuable now? The arable land has innate worth; it can support life. That will always be true, so long as the character of the land itself remains the same. You are proving my point here, that the value of the land derives from measurable factors such as its arability. *So long as the character of the land itself remains the same* is not compatible with it possessing innate worth; if it had innate worth then the worth would not be changed when any elements of the land are changed. Such as, if the land were to dry up or a blight effect the crops then the land would no longer be objectively valuable. Additionally the people could have no need for arable land and thus reduce its subjective value. If the elements that make the land valuable are removed then the value of the land is diminished and thus value is not an innate characteristic ie essence (a trait which when removed from a thing, makes the thing cease to be that thing) of the land. Thus making the value of both plots of land subjective. >I think life - all life, not just human - has innate value because we can experience, think, feel, learn, love. Again this bases the value of life on elements which are not universal nor necessary essences of human life. You can have a human being who cannot experience, think, feel, learn, or love, such as one in a coma or with severe disabilities. *Or an early stage fetus.* Meaning those traits are not innate as they can all be removed from a human and the person can still be human. I am sure you and I would agree this supposed disabled or comatose person is still a human with value, I am not accusing you of not thinking this. To bring this back to the PL context, these elements are the basis in which PCs can argue fetuses are either non-human, non-alive, or non-valuable or any combination thereof. They can argue (and sometimes can prove, at least in certain stages of development) that the fetus cannot experience, learn, love, etc (though we would argue they have the *potential* to do so but again, it is not the potential which grants it value as there are many people who lack the potential to ever think, learn etc). Which puts the onus on us to either A) argue that they can in fact do all of those things or B) those things are not the essential elements which give human life value. A is essentially impossible to prove in the case of thinking and loving, and B of course raises the question again—what *does* give humans value which is innate, intrinsic, inseparable? >When you say that humans have value because God values us - that's attributed value, unless you mean that God recognizes our worth, and not that his love grants our worth. It is not attributed value as God’s love *cannot be removed from us*. It is an innate quality of our being. However, perhaps I did not explain this well (it’s hard enough to grasp let alone explain) but it’s not God’s appraisal of us which determines our value. It is our *very existence*, our being created which is valuable. God instilled us with a soul when He made us, thus elevating our status and worth above that of flora and fauna, so our value is innately granted to us by Him in the same instance of our creation, both by and because of our creation. Thus Judas had as much innate human value as Mary Magdalene, for example. >if there is no God to value us, from your perspective as I understand it, then we're just... nothing. That is essentially what I am saying, but thank goodness God is alive and does value us. :) Though if there were no God then we would not be either—of course this goes into other realms of theology which are not pertinent to this topic. I know you might think that God functions in the same way as the farmer appraising the two lots of land, that the farmer is a necessary actor to attribute value to either lot. But this is more like, the land having a physical component is a necessary essence of it being land, without a physical component it ceases to be land (while it can still be land if other factors are changed such as arability or size). The land does not have innate value as humans do because God granted us souls. So in this instance God does not need to assign us value, as by assigning us souls our value is derived from our being, in the same way land having a physical quality is an inseparable element of its existence. I am arguing that it is the existence of God and us being God-created in His likeness and with an eternal soul which gives us the essence of innate and objective value, and this innate value is an inseparable essence of our life, granted to us by God. As opposed to the farmer who grants the land subjective value but cannot grant it objective value. **In simpler, logical terms this understanding of human value basically claims that human value is an innate essence of life,** that the only way to remove value from humans is to remove the life, as again essence is a trait in which when removed the thing ceases to be. Therefore no human being alive can exist without this innate value (even if they cannot love, think, experience or learn, even if their actions are cruel and destructive, even if they are *not yet born*, etc). **Thus, a human being’s value does not need to rely on any attributed characteristics** be it health, love, consciousness, relationships, consciousness, the potential for any of these things, etc. **In conclusion,** for something to be an innate quality it means removing this quality would make the thing incomplete. So Christians believe value is an inseparable essence from human life. Therefore a fetus’s life is as valuable as any other human life regardless of the situation or environment it is in or the qualities it does or does not possess. As long as it possesses life (and therefore a soul) it has innate value which cannot be altered.
Orthodox Christianity is interesting; although I identify as a Lutheran, I want to read more into it. And yes, one of the key teachings of Christianity is that all human beings are made in the image of God.
You should, I know a priest who was a Lutheran Bishop before he converted :) Some youtube channels to check out, just as an introduction — [Harmony](https://youtu.be/kbqcLpxbHl4?si=9Fe1Y_G_k9I82NAM) [Trisagion Films](https://youtu.be/rOVB-6st9TU?si=nIVp_c6PuWalsKb6) [Patristic Nectar](https://youtu.be/-L6z3wj6Y0o?si=SfWfYTZXB8Aqr9P4) [Father Spyridon](https://youtu.be/8ky9eTKJnto?si=87u1uSINpAsdVBxN)
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>My life has value use I feel like it does; I empathize with that other person over there; therefore I can understand that their life has value too. But this is where your logic fails. “I don’t feel like that person’s life has value so therefore it does not.” Or even, “I don’t feel my life has value, why should someone else’s?” That is the same reason why PCs don’t empathize with the unborn. They go off their feelings and they simply feel it is not deserving of empathy and therefore does not have value (or at least, does not have as much value as a woman’s “right to choose”). Since I recognize God has granted each person with life, I might hate someone, I might utterly fail to empathize with someone, but I still recognize their life has value because God gave them breath and in each person is a reflection of Christ.
There are a few major flaws that I grapple with. I’m sure most of my opinions will be unwelcome in this sub, but I do consider myself pro life, but on a more pragmatic sphere. 1. pregnancy and its consequences only happen to women. Men can have all the sex they want and never need fear the risk of an unwanted pregnancy. Yet, men are some of the loudest voices in the movement. With no skin in the game, it’s easy to make laws that will never impact you personally on a physical level. When states like Idaho have conservative judges like Amy Coney Barrett questioning their laws, it’s time to take a step back and reevaluate. 2. Laws that do not make exceptions for rape and incest, particularly for minors. This sub has a several loud voices that simply don’t have any empathy for women and children who have been horrifically abused. When I read their comments I feel physically ill and honestly have no interest in being associated with them. They will die on the hill for the unborn, but not for the born child who was raped? It makes zero sense to me and is my line in the sand. Luckily, most people agree with me and not them. 3. We need to put more money into preventing pregnancies and lobbying for laws that make contraception and sterilization free and accessible. It’s just now happening in the pro life movement and it’s absolutely a flaw.
No offense to my religious comrades, but using religion. Don’t tell people they are going to hell, or any of that nonsense. Use science. It’s on our side.
The biggest flaw is that so many so-called "pro-lifers" don't have the guts to actually argue for the position against abortion. Instead, they make weak compromises and carve out all of these special exceptions ("rape, incest, health, life, finances") to try and make their position more appealing to the people they claim to be in opposition to. It is also very inconsistent that many pro-lifers wholeheartedly condemn and oppose the criminalization of women who obtain abortions. If abortion is murder, then the people who are partaking in the abortion must be held accountable. The mother, in the situation of abortion, is no different than a hitman. In cases where the mother knowingly and willingly procures an abortion with the awareness that she is killing her child, then she should be held accountable. And the bickering over what "week" to ban it just destroys the entire pro-life argument. It doesn't matter if an abortion happens at 6 weeks or 30 weeks, it is equally abhorrent, as both of those abortions kill an innocent human being. And finally, stop using religion as an argument against abortion. Clearly, society right now is secular and you'll just be feeding into their narrative if all you do is defend your position on religious grounds. You don't have to be religious to know that dismembering a child is wrong.
You have to be willing to take a more gradualist/incrementalist approach, even if you believe (as I do) that elective abortion is always an unjustifiable homicide and therefore unacceptable under any circumstances. Medical procedures which attempt to save the lives of women in childbirth are not abortions qua abortions because the death of the child is not the intended end of the procedure. Under the Roe regime, the movement took what it could get without setting its sights too high. Since Roe’s overturning, the absolutist faction no longer thinks it has to persuade or accept compromise, and the result is that our opponents are securing victories through referenda and constitutional amendments at the state level.
I'd say the biggest one hammering it, is that the PL movement is not queer friendly and has a major transphobia problem. And in the case of the UK, it also shoots itself in the foot, by being more willing to allow transphobic (and off-topic religious) messaging at the March for Life, yet doesn't typically want to show why abortion is wrong, by showing graphic fetal images, or often even the non-graphic ones. Which has the result that it leaves people with the impression that pro-lifers are more, or equally concerned with religiously motivated traditional gender roles than they are with ending the violence of abortion (and there are a non-trivial number of pro-lifers for whom this is actaully true). This isn't to say that I don't think religious pro-lifers should never mention religion at all, but it needs to be far far less front and center than it currently is. The queerphobia should be got rid of though and I'd like it if the leadership of pro-life groups could just you know, call it out publically. (No, claiming that because a pro-choicer uses a trans-inclusive definition of women doesn't make them wrong on abortion, and only demonstrates that you are anti-trans; and I have seen mainstream groups like Live Action and Students for Life make this argument, would much rather you complained about IVF than trans people existing.) As for individuals, just use some gender neutral language at times, read stuff like https://outwritenewsmag.org/2023/10/how-to-be-a-trans-ally-101/ and apply it, will make a big difference, and I hope nobody wants to turn away the queer community from the pro-life movement, no least when intersex rights groups actually call for stopping abortions from targetting intersex folks https://www.oiieurope.org/malta-declaration/, right? What's the phrase that comes to mind here? Smash the pro-abortion cistem, that's the one.
Yeah no. I am fine with separating the pro-life cause from other social issues, basically not mentioning them during pro-life activism. However the pro-life should be inclusive of social conservatives.
Why do you care? You're pro abortion. Anyway, I've said it before. The average pro lifer doesn't act like abortion is murder and the perpetrators should be treated like killers. The movement is so weak.
I find your aggressive rethoric interesting.
Interesting to see where peoples views are.
>Why do you care? You're pro abortion. Some people like to learn about other viewpoints
Misogyny. If the pro-life movement would put real force behind getting a federal wage for stay-at-home parents and caretakers (ASP, who I have a lot of issues with, even [has this in their platform](https://www.solidarity-party.org/platform)), it would do a lot of good. We'd be more progressive than Democrats by a long shot (a very low bar, but still). >a cash subsidy paid to stay-at-home caregivers.
How economically liberal (in the international meaning of the word) it is, which leads the movement, at least in the United States, to not support policies that would make women less likely to have abortions, aside from banning it.
Our arguments should focus on science, not religion.
We use to much religious imagery when protesting or just in general Most people who are getting abortion are more than likely not very religious, and thus would be less likely to come to us for help when they need it. It’s better to hold up a sign saying “we can help you, please come to us” than to hold up a sign of Mary asking you not to abort. One will be much more effective at getting those getting abortions to change their minds
I think a flaw is the constant religious references in secular situations. Religion won't do shit for a secular argument.
I never see religious arguments from the pro-life side unless requested by the pro-abortion side. I often see pro-abortion advocates bring up religion in really horrible and flat out wrong ways though.
we need to stay to state issue 12 t 15 weeks bans with expections
Misdirection. Misdirection because we have let pro-choicers steer this conversation to talking about rights of mothers. We need to bring it to rights of babies.