Frequently Asked Questions About Abortion

Abortion: the intentional killing of the human fetus, or the performance of a procedure intentionally designed to kill the human fetus.

Abortion is the murder, the sacrifice, of tiny neighbors who have not yet been born. This is the definition. This great atrocity must be abolished, neither tolerated nor regulated.

Many believe it should be endorsed, tolerated, or regulated and marshal various arguments to attempt to justify and substantiate their position. As we respond below to those arguments, it is essential to remember the central point of the abolitionist position: The living God is and speaks, He has commanded all humans everywhere to love their neighbors as themselves, not to murder, and to expose evil, and He has also made clear that human beings are human beings from the moment of conception.

As we examine common pro-choice objections that we have encountered, it is important to remember the following:

this objection is intended to justify taking the life of an innocent human being, which is murder;
you and I are not given authority to take the life of any innocent human being for any reason;
we must never do evil that good may potentially come.

If you are opposed to the abolition of human abortion, find your pet issue below and deal with the arguments against it. Be forewarned – rare is the pro-choicer who ever advances the argument beyond the following series of steps:

The pro-choicer offers one of the objections refuted below.
An abolitionist rebuts the objection, usually with one of the arguments below its respective objection.
The pro-choicer either:
- moves to an entirely different objection, and/or
- responds with a complete misunderstanding of the offered rebuttal, and/or
- dismisses the rebuttal, and/or
- engages in profane/obscene/outraged discourse in order to intimidate the abolitionist.

Don’t be like that. This is a serious issue, and these are serious rebuttals. We dare you to advance the debate, as we have already done. Set yourself apart from the vast majority of people.

This FAQ will be periodically updated, so be sure to check back later.

WHAT IS THE HUMAN BEING?

POPULAR PRO-LIFE EXCEPTIONS

AUTHORITY CLAIMS

OBJECTIONS RELATED TO LEGALITY

ON THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE ABOLITIONIST POSITION

OBJECTIONS TO ABOLITIONIST THEISM

OBJECTIONS TO ABOLITIONIST METHODOLOGY

MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTIONS

DOES THE LIFE OF A HUMAN BEING BEGIN AT CONCEPTION?

According to the God who created the universe and all humanity, humans are a unique kind of creation. He has explicitly stated that murder is evil at any age. He Himself took on human flesh to redeem sinners, and when He did so, He did so as a single-celled zygote implanted in the womb of an unmarried teenager living in a culture that shamed fornication.

When does the “product of conception” become human? Whatever your answer, now ask yourself why the child wasn’t a human being one minute beforehand.

Example: “If the baby is human when his heart begins beating, on what basis do you assert that he wasn’t human one minute before his heart beat?”
Example: “If the baby is human after he passes through the birth canal, on what basis do you assert that he wasn’t human one minute before he entered the birth canal? In what way and how do you know that the passage through the birth canal confers human rights?”

The point of this question is to help you see that setting the time of humanity-acquisition anywhere after conception is simply arbitrary, with no foundation beyond your unsupported opinion. See these supporting resources:

Argument from analogy.

Argument from the wider “right to life”.

Argument from medical science.

Argument from development.

THE FETUS IS JUST A CLUMP OF CELLS

1) So are you. Does that mean it should be legal to put you to death?
This objection is merely a tactic for dehumanising that which is clearly human, so that the conscience is less moved and bothered when you murder the child.

2) So is a corpse that’s been dead for a few days. Death is the irreversible cessation of the body’s ability to function as a coordinated whole. Yet the fetus is nothing like the corpse. In the corpse, the systems are not coordinating together anymore. The fetus doesn’t need a functioning brain for all of his/her systems to function together. Mature humans need a brain, but very young ones do not.

3) Do mere “clumps of cells”, if left alone, grow rapidly in size and complexity and convert magically into fully-developed organisms of the same species as the parent? No. That is what offspring, children, do.

4) If the fetus were merely a collection of isolated cells, each cell undergoing its own developmental process, if left alone wouldn’t each cell develop into its own separate fetus?

THE FETUS IS A PARASITE

1) Many of your run-of-the-(baby-killing)-mill pro-aborts believe that a baby in the womb is nothing more than a parasite that is draining the life from the mother…er…host, which is a direct infringement upon the host’s “right to life”. Extend that reasoning out to its logical conclusion, and a newborn baby also infringes upon that “right”. They will also argue that an unborn child cannot live outside of the womb and is therefore not a viable human being. Based on that, most toddlers are fair game for abortion.

2) As long as someone says “this human is a parasite”, all of a sudden we can kill him? What if someone were just to call you a parasite? Is it justifiable to go ahead and kill you right here and now?

3) In the vast majority of cases, pregnancy is a result of the conscious choice the mother made; nobody forced her to engage in conjugal relations. Thus, the fetus is not “using her body or body parts against her will,” since she consented to the act of procreation in the first place. The vast majority of abortions murder children conceived consensually. Therefore, this argument does not apply to the vast majority of abortions.

4) It is absurd to say that a fetus somehow deprives a woman of her “right to liberty.” Pregnancy is a natural process, over which the fetus has no control. It would be absurd to arrest a newborn baby on charges of kidnapping or forced servitude, for using his/her mother’s body against her will. So also is it absurd to kill the unborn baby on these grounds.

5) There are some fundamental differences between the unborn and parasites. Parasites are of a different species. Parasites usually don’t cause happiness. Parasites are neither the goal nor the product of reproduction. Parasites are not necessary for the continued survival of the host species. The relationship between the unborn and the mother was part of the pre-Fall Edenic paradise, and even post-Fall is described as God’s work, His knitting together. That Christ’s Incarnation as an unborn eventually brought life for all is the opposite of parasitism.

6) How do you evaluate what a parasite is? Do you measure the effects of the organism only for the first nine months? Or should you consider more? Also, do you only evaluate things at a base material, biological level? Also, even if you do, are you really correct in painting the biological picture of child-bearing as primarily negative? There are health benefits to the woman in many cases, not to mention emotional and spiritual elements.

7) You yourself are not independent of anyone else. You are a parasite too. By that logic, anyone on whom you partially rely for your quality of life has the right to put you to death for no other reason.

8) Like the Negro is just an ape?

9) It denigrates the pregnant mother to reduce the beautiful and natural function of her body – nourishing and building the body and brain of a growing baby – by referring to her as a “host” just as it denigrates the baby to refer to him as a “parasite”.

THE FETUS IS PART OF THE WOMAN’S BODY

1) The body inside your body is not your body. Pregnant women do not have penises, or four eyes, ears, and feet. The baby’s body is his own distinct body, nourished and embraced by the mother’s body.

2) The baby has different DNA, brain waves, blood type (often), organs, preferences, reflexes, nervous system. What other part of your body has different DNA than the rest?

3) Can you think of any other part of the woman’s body that develops over the course of some months in that way and then emerges of its “volition” as a fully autonomous other? Do baby teeth and hair really compare?

4) Many post-abortive women experience significant emotional and psychological trauma from the murder of their child. Is the same thing true of those whose wisdom teeth are removed? Who undergo an appendectomy?

TUBAL PREGNANCIES, ECTOPIC PREGNANCIES

By this we mean a situation where the fertilised embryo has implanted in a part of the body other than the uterine lining, especially inside the fallopian tube. Pregnancies like this are often dangerous to the mother, especially as the baby grows larger but is not located in the place in the mother’s body that is best suited to house and nourish him. The potential danger and difficulty are often used as excuses for abortion. That is to say, the fact that the baby is in a difficult situation means a greater inconvenience for the mother, and this increased inconvenience becomes the sword that leads to that baby’s slaughter.

Yet the baby is a human being, created in God’s image, just as the mother is. Both lives must be upheld as equally valuable. Medical care should be provided to the mother and the baby. They are both patients. It is wrong to kill the baby because he is difficult in the same way it is wrong to drown a three year old because she is difficult.

The mother must seek medical care, not to destroy her baby. Physicians must give care. An ectopic pregnancy is not a threat to the mother’s life while small. When the child is larger, it may well be that his presence in her body creates an immediate threat to her life. Fortunately, with advances in medical technology, the child can be given an excellent chance to stay inside his mother during the crucial weeks of development, when he really needs the nurturing environment that only his mother’s body can provide, even if he is not ideally placed therein.

If his birth has to take place before his fetal development has run its full course because either baby is in imminent danger or his mother is in danger, then the medical practitioners must take care to do what is best for both lives, treating them as equally valuable patients.

“Imminent danger to life” is not equivalent to inconvenience or an avoidance of some measure like bed rest. By “imminent”, we must understand that death is inevitable within an emergency framework, with all medical options to save both patients exhausted.

In a right side up world (and in the case of most born children) we all recognize that it is good and honorable for a mother to put the life of her child before her own. None of us would admire a woman who pushed her child into traffic to save her own life. Rather we all rightly recognize that a woman who sacrifices herself to save her child is performing the role of the mother. The fact that such thinking is so foreign to the topic of preborn children only demonstrates how much we have dehumanized them.
Let us remember the words of the Lord Jesus:
“It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).
“Greater love has no one than that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

Please also see the related FAQ: Life of the Mother Is In Danger

LIFE OF THE MOTHER IS IN DANGER

1) See our article on Abortion and the Life of the Mother.

2) Abolitionists have no interest in placing the rights of the preborn child above the rights of the mother, any more than the original abolitionists wanted to replace the royal family of England and Parliament with an all-black oligarchy. Rather, we, like they, want to see equal rights, equally respected, no matter what age. We demand a system that recognises that human rights are based on essence, not on level of development, such that the system can consistently refuse to allow an 80 year old to put a younger person to death if he inconveniences his elder, just as it consistently refuses to allow a 21 year old mother to put to death her 21 day old son if he inconveniences her.

3) In a high-risk pregnancy, a woman who is determined to do all she can to carry her baby to term and give him the best chance at life may put herself under close medical supervision. As stated above, medical professionals should behave as they would in any other situation involving multiple patients. Typically medical professionals have learned to treat the child as dispensable, but they ought to treat both patients (mother and baby) with equal respect and urgency, and work to save both lives. If, in the attempt to save both lives, one is tragically lost, that life (whether it’s the mother or the child) should be grieved. But it is never necessary to intentionally kill one of the patients. Early delivery may sometimes be necessary (and may sometimes result in the unintentional and death of the child, if life saving measures fail). Removal of a miscarried child’s corpse from his mother’s body may be necessary, but actively killing a living child is not.

4) Even if it were ever justifiable to intentionally kill a child, ‘therapeutic abortions’ performed to save the life of the mother would be a poor foundation for legalized abortion. Compared to the total number of abortions performed in the USA, these comprise an infinitesimally small %.

5) A recent international symposium on maternal healthcare in Ireland concluded that abortion is never medically necessary to save the life of a mother.

6) In a right side up world (and in the case of most born children) we all recognize that it is good and honorable for a mother to put the life of her child before her own. None of us would admire a woman who pushed her child into traffic to save her own life. Rather we all rightly recognize that a woman who sacrifices herself to save her child is performing the role of the mother. The fact that such thinking is so foreign to the topic of preborn children only demonstrates how much we have dehumanized them.
Let us remember the words of the Lord Jesus:
“It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).
“Greater love has no one than that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

THE RAPE EXCEPTION

E.g. What if the woman was raped and can’t handle the psychological of giving birth to the baby of a man who traumatized her?

Abolitionists held an entire conference on this topic – Promote Redemption, Not Destruction. Please see the amazing testimonies of God’s grace poured out on a victim of underage incestuous rape and on a woman who came into being as a result of rape, as well as other material.

Consider that the rape exception is the equivalent of telling these women they shouldn’t have had the daughter they love, or that they shouldn’t exist.

Additional resources:

1) The baby is not responsible for the sins of his father.

2) Don’t speak about human beings conceived in rape as though they have no purpose and ought to have been murdered in the womb.

3) God can and does bring good out of evil of all kinds. Murdering the baby short-circuits this good process and deprives many people of blessing.

4) We must of course be concerned with helping the rape victim to heal and recover, as fully as possible. Shall we propose that one who has been so violated, so violently treated, then engage in her own act of violation and violence toward the baby God placed in her womb? The answer to the evil in the world is never more evil.

5) Do any of us know what kind of person the child will end up being, if left to grow and develop as all pro-choice activists were left to grow and develop?

Who knows whether she would become a great world leader, whose activities culminated in the elimination of rape altogether? Would not her exploits and the gladness of heart she would bring become that much greater, the blessing more magnanimous, when contrasted with her painful origin?

6) Love and grace are most keenly felt when suffering is deepest, when the contrast is widest between the nadir of anguish and the apex of glory. Compassion shown to the victim and to her child, an adoption of a “rape baby”, care from surrounding community – all of these things shine that much brighter when they are focused on overcoming a deep darkness.

7) How does the woman win if she inflicts not merely pain and trauma, but indeed death, upon her own child?

8) An abortion will not erase the fact that she has been raped.

9) In some parts of India, when a woman is raped, she is seen as unclean. The family is so ashamed that she may be sold into prostitution, or male family members may even try to kill her – an innocent victim – to get rid of the embarrassment. We recoil in horror from that practice, and then we turn around in the U.S. and do the same thing to the other innocent victim – the baby.

10) Compared to the total number of abortions performed in the USA, post-rape abortionscomprise an infinitesimally small %. Shall we base the entire law structure on the issue of abortion on less than 1% of cases?

11) Do you want the woman to end up like this woman? Or this woman?

12) Speaking of specific women, should this woman have been aborted?

13) Of course, there is more to be said on this issue, and it’s been said here.

14) And here.

A LIVING ENTITY IS DEFINED AS A CREATURE THAT CAN SURVIVE ALONE WITHOUT OUTSIDE AID

1) God defines humanity, not you or I.

2) A 2 year old child also fits that description. Is it OK to kill a 2 year old whenever I want?

3) Many older people need outside aid to go on living, like medication or oxygen. Does that mean they can be killed too, no problem?

4) Should we go ahead and never call 911, an ambulance? After all, that’s outside aid.

ONLY THOSE WHO ARE FACING THE CHOICE SHOULD HAVE A VOICE

1) One does not employ this kind of reasoning in relation to other crimes, like rape or armed robbery. We put laws in place to inform the populace and also to define police action.

2) It tells us something when the government proscribes certain actions via legislation of laws. How do we know how to live without running afoul of the authorities?

3) Most influential pro-choicers in the USA do not believe this, because they have continually fought for taxpayer money to go to subsidise Planned Parenthood and other abortion mills, thus making it everyone’s business even more.

4) The abolitionists of human slavery were told the same thing. Thankfully, they didn’t listen either.

5) It is partly my decision since this is a republic and I am a voter and a voice of reform.

IF YOU’RE AGAINST ABORTION, DON’T HAVE AN ABORTION.

1) “If you’re against slavery, don’t own a slave.

If you’re against rape, don’t rape anyone.

If you’re against the Holocaust, don’t shove Jews in ovens. But leave me alone to do what I think is best.”

2) We will speak up and fight for the rights of the smallest, least powerful, and most voiceless members of the human race. We encourage you to do the same. Would you have wanted an advocate if you were under the abortician’s knife?

DO YOU OPPOSE ALL FORMS OF BIRTH CONTROL / CONTRACEPTION?

There is an important distinction between contraception and contragestion.

Please see this article for a full discussion.

In this case, we think there needs to be a careful review of the clinical studies that were conducted on those medications to fully understand how they function in a human body as birth control. If such studies are inconclusive or unavailable, then the manufacturer of the medication should devote the necessary research efforts to determine the effects of the medicine before they are made available to the public.

While we cannot say that all birth control methods of contraception are abortive, and are therefore not included in the practice we seek to abolish, we do believe that the birth control mentality in America fuels the abortion industry and ought to be combated as well.

WHAT ABOUT A BABY WHO IS HORRIBLY DEFORMED? ISN’T IT BETTER TO SPARE THAT CHILD A LIFE OF SUFFERING?

1) What kind of a society are we creating by killing off sick or disabled human beings? People with limitations have a right to life just like so-called “normal” or healthy people.

2) Prenatal tests cannot predict defects with certainty, nor can they determine the severity of the disability. Why not let these children be born and have a chance to grow and accomplish what they can?

3) Even if a child is likely to die soon after birth, we should let nature take its course and give the child food, water and comfort measures. Then the family will be able to hold the baby and love the baby, rather than violently end its life.

4) Do those of us who will die later have the right to kill those who will die sooner? Do the strong have the right to determine what is the minimum quality of life for the weak?

5) Examine your motives for forwarding this objection. Are you saying that this child would be too great a burden on you/his family/society? How do you know that? God gives grace to the asking, for the needs of the present. When the alternative is murder, there is really no question here.

6) Many people have a special burden for special-needs children. Place the child up for adoption. Don’t murder him because his mind is not as sharp as yours, he can’t run as fast, or he may suffer more than you. Non-handicapped children may well suffer more than their parents. Is that a reason to kill them?

DON’T CRAM YOUR MORALS DOWN OTHERS’ THROATS

1) Would you say the same thing to an abolitionist of human slavery?

2) It’s always self-defeating to impose your own morals on others by telling them not to impose their own morals on others. You are actually engaging in hypocrisy, telling someone else what not to do while doing the same thing yourself.

3) This kind of tendentious language implies that illegalising abortion is morally reprehensible, but think about it. The state “forces” us all to do or not do all sorts of things, such as:

not rape, even if someone really really wants to
drive at or under the speed limit
refrain from firebombing legal places of business
pay taxes
etc.

Unless you’re a consistent and total anarchist, you don’t have a problem with the state “forcing” its will on its citizens in some cases. The question is not whether morality will be imposed, but which morality will be imposed.

4) Regardless of whether you confess His lordship and authority, God gets to tell everyone what to do. This is His world and we are His creations.

5) All people are actually commanded to proclaim the law of God throughout the world, to call all people to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus, and to remonstrate against sin. Abolitionists intend to obey that command, despite the opposition of those who remain in rebellion against King Jesus.

2) Shouldn’t you keep your choice off your baby’s body? He’s the one who gets dismembered and sucked into a jar.

3) It is hypocritical that some women want laws kept “off their body” yet they want the absolute freedom to kill as they please.

4) Would you accept the same objection from a rapist, who wants to use his body as he pleases? Sure, he will violate the body of another in exercising his “right to rape”, but that’s what happens in abortion – violation of another’s body (the baby’s) in exercising one’s “right to privacy”.

5) You certainly have the right to control your body before you become pregnant. But once you become pregnant, another body has come into existence – that of the child. Once the woman becomes pregnant, she has participated in bringing another human life into being and she needs to take responsibility for her actions. In addition, the law rightfully forces a man to use his body to earn money for child support of the child he helped conceive.

6) Abolitionists certainly support the enforcement of laws that place appropriate responsibility for the child on the father and for punishing deadbeat fathers.

YOU ARE NOT A WOMAN AND SO YOU CAN’T SPEAK ABOUT ABORTION

1) Then let’s invalidate Roe v Wade, since that case was decided by seven men.

2) This conclusion entails committing the genetic fallacy. The truth of the abolitionist position depends on the integrity and accuracy of its argumentation, not on who is expressing the position. If your position commits a logical fallacy, you should abandon the position.

3) American women have, for a long time, consistently and repeatedly polled, in the majority, pro-life.

4) Our own Facebook page is overwhelmingly ‘Liked’ by women. 67%, at the last count, are women.

5) Will you be willing to say that no woman can add any input about circumcision? You don’t know what it’s like to have part of your penis cut off.

6) Will you be willing to say that unmarried people can’t complain about wife-beating (or gay marriage) because you don’t know what it’s like to be married to a woman? Can Caucasian people speak out against African chattel slavery?

7) >50% of all abortions are carried out against future women, whom we want to save. We are the pro-women ones here.

8) We tell the truth to women even when it’s costly to us, whereas abortion providers, politicians, and other pro-abortion powers-that-be lie to them about the nature of their baby, assuaging their consciences to get them to spend their money on abortion.

9) What makes you think you can trust aborticians? And popular atheist bloggers and published authors?

YOU CAN’T SPEAK ABOUT ABORTION UNLESS YOU ARE GOING TO ADOPT CHILDREN OF YOUR OWN OR TAKE CARE OF ALL THE EXTRA CHILDREN

1) This conclusion entails committing the genetic fallacy. The truth of the abolitionist position depends on the integrity and accuracy of its argumentation, not on who is expressing the position. If your position commits a logical fallacy, you should abandon the position.

2) You have no authority to obligate me. God does, though, and He has not said anything like that.

3) Abolitionists are very much in favor of adoption and we have done numerous things to assist in it.

4) There are many factors involved in adoption, often including huge expenses. Abolitionists are in favor of massive reduction in these significant obstacles and of reform in the system.

5) And yet many abolitionists have adopted, many of us multiple children, many adopting the least wanted children, ie, a Caucasian couple adopting multiple children of mixed ethnicity.

6) Certainly it is best, ideal, and our goal that all children have parents, but even if it turns out to be an unaccomplished goal for years and decades, it is still not justifiable to murder orphans.

7) Is it inconsistent to point out societal ills without being able to directly contribute to their solution? Are you saying that 90 year olds can’t be abolitionists?

8) William Wilberforce did not focus his time and energy on sponsoring education and remedial help for freed slaves. Should he not have done what he did?

9) If you are not a police officer or some other member of the criminal justice system, do you have any right to proscribe rape and armed robbery? Or are you just telling others what to do and not directly contributing to the cure?

10) Many orphans turn out to be world leaders and have fulfilling lives that bless many others. These lives would not have happened if the pro-abortion folks had their way.

11) Perhaps the person who offers this objection would like to interview orphans and ask them if they prefer their lives as orphans, in their current situation, or be killed?
If we’re going to make the decision for someone else that their life is or is not going to be of what we think is sufficiently high quality, why stop with killing preborn children? Why make an arbitrary cutoff point at any age?

12) Yes, the church of Jesus and abolitionists are not perfect. Far from it. No, we do not always fulfill all of the things we have been called and commanded by God to do. However, that does not mean that we should not do what is right. This objection is reflecting the tyranny of the perfect over the good.

13) If each abolitionist were to adopt ten children, many pro-aborts would merely complain that we didn’t adopt eleven. This objection is actually disingenuous, a smokescreen.

SHOULD ABOLITION BE UNQUALIFIED, OR WITH EXCEPTIONS?

It is never justifiable to take an innocent human life deliberately. It is a measure of the failure of the pro-life movement that many abortive mothers and fathers excuse their murderous intent with pro-life slogans such as “My baby won’t feel pain” or “It’s OK – we’ll anesthetise him first.”

If your doctor believes that your pregnancy is too risky to allow you to go through with it, may we humbly suggest you find another doctor, one who believes that life is not disposable and, ideally, one who has experience with high-risk pregnancies?

For more information, please see other FAQs on this page about the specific exception in question.

WILL YOU HELP WOMEN WHO HAVE DANGEROUS PREGNANCIES?

Imagine this question on the lips of a non-abolitionist, status-quo proponent of the 19th century: If you and your fellow abolitionists object to all slavery without regard to circumstance, do you all have a plan to aid the freed slaves that will be left without income and livelihood upon their being forcibly released from the job they’ve known their entire lives?
We favor medical, familial, and community intervention to optimise the survival and fulfill the needs of both the mother and her child. Yes, we desire that especially those who belong to Jesus Christ would be truly available to those who are in truly in need. We agitate the culture and assist those in need.

Living in the real world has risks. Driving a car, living in Tornado Alley, drinking Coca-Cola, eating a sandwich; all of these carry risks to life and limb. Nobody’s next breath is guaranteed. We seek to protect all life as far as it is in our power and yet we will not be slowed or stopped by the fact that sometimes, despite all our medical technology and expertise, people die. Just because people sometimes get lost does not mean we should shrug in the face of kidnapping.

ABORTIONS ARE <3% OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD’S SERVICES

The 2010 annual report from Planned Parenthood can be found here.

PP counts distributing a condom as an equal “service” to abortion, even if they hand it to the woman to whom they just gave an abortion. Strictly mathematically, it is legitimate, but in terms of true representation of what PP actually does, it is disingenuous and fungible. It is what and how they count the services that is bogus. Say a lady comes in for an abortion. She has a pregnancy test and 8 other tests/services and then the actual abortion. That’s 10 services, 9 of which they call non-abortion services.

Also, let’s also not forget that Jew incineration made up only a very small percentage of all the services that the Nazis provided. Child molesters spend most of their time doing things that are not molesting children. Many people who appear to be good, blameless people because they kept up a good front have later been found to be hiding terrible skeletons in their closets. We must think clearly and grow past this naïveté.

WOMEN STAND A HIGHER RISK OF DYING THROUGH CHILDBIRTH THAN ABORTION

1) Life is a risk. You don’t know what’s going to hit you the minute you go out your door. The point is, what in life justifies killing another life?

2) Babies stand a 99.99% chance of dying through abortion.

3) Women stand a good chance of undergoing very difficult emotional problems after abortion.

4) Women stand a good chance of undergoing very difficult medical problems after abortion.

5) Childbirth is a natural process. This is how God has created the human body and procreative abilities. Abortion is specific and willful intervention to end the life of the preborn child. The answer to the problem of death and suffering is not more death, but less. More care, more medical technology and generosity.

6) Women also have an elevated risk of death when they rush into traffic to save their three year old who wandered into the street.
“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” – John 15:13

GOD DOES NOT EXIST

Yes, He does.

In an age of Internet and social media, there is even less excuse to deny the existence of God. From the vastness of the universe now clear through long-range telescopy to the intricacy of the design of cells now visible through electron microscopy, from the observable idiocy of atheist public figures to the hundreds of Christian-atheist debates available on YouTube alone, the atheist position is obviously bankrupt. Listen to some debates; the atheist almost always loses, usually badly. Do your due diligence and educate yourself. Your very eternal soul is at stake.

WHY DO YOU ARGUE FROM THE BIBLE/USING RELIGIOUS TERMINOLOGY?

We have laid out our explanation here and here.

All of that is far better than “I don’t like it, therefore I oppose it”, which is what an atheist/agnostic moral view amounts to.

YOU’RE FORCING WOMEN TO BE IN AGONY FOR 9 MONTHS!

1) This is greatly overstating the case. I’m neither doubting nor denying that pregnancy includes difficulties and a varying amount of pain and discomfort. Childbirth itself is also frequently difficult.

However:

In no way is it true to say that all nine months are “agonizing”. I’d need to see some evidence that it is “agonizing” for even a significant minority of women for even a significant minority of the time. I’ve known and listened to many pregnant women, myself, and not one, not even those who have had to spend months in bed rest for the good of their baby, have ever used the word “agonizing” or any word that means anything even close to it, to describe their pregnancies.
In fact, many women report that during a few of the months of their pregnancies, often starting around 20 weeks and stretching into the 8th month, they feel pretty darn good most or all of the time.
And of course there is the joy set before them, as it were – many women greatly anticipate the day when they will finally hold her son or daughter in her arms for the first time and be able to kiss and show him or her off to her family and friends.

2) Childbirth does not have to entail much or any discomfort, not anymore. Epidurals, advances in anesthesia, C-sections, etc – these mean that many women I know have not even experienced any pain whatsoever during childbirth.

3) We refuse to be drawn into a greater horror in a vain attempt to mitigate a horror already committed.

4) It’s strictly correct to say that the state government will “force” the woman not to murder her baby, yes. This kind of tendentious language implies that this is morally reprehensible, but think about it. The state “forces” us all to do or not do all sorts of things, such as:

not rape, even if someone really really wants to
drive at or under the speed limit
refrain from firebombing legal places of business
pay taxes
etc.

CONSENT TO SEX DOES NOT ENTAIL CONSENT TO PREGNANCY

Please see our treatment of this issue.

DO YOU SEEK ILLEGALISATION ONLY?

As followers of Jesus Christ, we do actually recognise that this is a problem, but the solution is most certainly not to be found in some sort of top-down, governmental regulation that seeks to control one’s free association to the extent that would be necessary to prevent any extramarital consensual sexual act. Rather, the solution is in the change in individual hearts wrought by the Holy Spirit of God when the good news of Jesus Christ’s sacrificial death for sin and His resurrection for eternal life is proclaimed. We can’t make anyone else live a moral life.

We answer that way because of the way the question was framed. More specifically on the topic of abortion, we recognise and seek to remind everyone that whatever the societal ill, the legalised termination of vast numbers of its citizens is not the solution.

WHO DECIDES?

We are sure that it is not us. Rather, we call all to the recognition that we are not responsible for our own lives or well-being. We are creations, beings that are contingent on the existence of another. Yes, of course we are contingent upon our parents’ having had sex, but go back far enough, both chronologically and logically, and the understanding that God is the ultimate Cause is inescapable, for those who have eyes to see and who are not giving way to previous bias.

The consistent and beginning-to-end message of the Bible is that God is working all things together for His own glory, and part of that glory is that He is the disposer of human lives and affairs. Who else but God knows the answers to the big questions? Why the universe exists, rather than nothing? Why humans have volition, intelligence, and self-awareness? What we are supposed to be doing while alive? And who else but God gets to tell us who has rights, what they are, and why? We as abolitionists make no statements on our own authority, for we have none. Rather, we reflect the Creator in His love for and concern for the protection of life.

Additionally, we believe that the numerous problems with punting the question of the justifiability of abortion to a woman’s physician should be obvious to any reasonable, objective observer.

1) Too often it’s not her physician at all but rather an abortion “clinic” worker or even the abortion surgeon who “inform” the woman’s decision. Surely nobody would think that most women bring their personal physicians with them when they walk into Planned Parenthood, or that their physician is waiting behind the waiting room doors!

2) Making judgment calls about the justifiability of abortion is not in the purview or expertise of a physician. Physicians are trained in how to make people better, how to heal. They are not experts in ethics or philosophy. I do not ask Stephen Hawking how to do my taxes, nor do I ask my pastor about marine biology. Most physicians are not experts in human embryology, either.

3) Speaking of which, to the extent that physicians are trained in medical ethics, those ethics are based on the Hippocratic Oath, which includes the following phraseology:

…it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.

Given that the physician cannot know for certain (for indeed the vast weight of the evidence lies on the abolitionist side) that the fetus is not a human being with human rights, it is difficult to see how following through with the abortion is anything but a violation of his/her oath. Thus it is difficult to see how we should trust such a decision with a physician who is willing to abort.

4) Human abortion is big business. Do you trust Halliburton or Xe Services/Blackwater to give you a straight answer on events in Iraq and Afghanistan? Of course not, and that is because of the large amounts of money accruing to their coffers, which cash flow it is in their best interest to preserve, free from disturbances to the status quo. Similarly, human abortion is quite profitable, not only in cash intake for paid abortions but also for receiving tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars from the federal government. Why would anyone trust someone with such a vested interest to perform unbiased internal auditory control? Are physicians somehow immune to the love of money? What about Planned Parenthood and abortion clinic employees?

5) By the way, why are so many aborticians, in-vitro fertilisation doctors, and OBGYNs male? Wouldn’t this assertion conflict with the common argument “if you’re not a woman, you have nothing to say” (which is addressed elsewhere in this FAQ)?

6) Human abortion and the pro-life/pro-choice debate is such a hot topic in today’s culture that it can often seem like the best, least biased, and most conflict-free modus operandi is to keep all available options open, even when one of those options is no good. And of course, as mentioned, not all physicians are experts in embryology.

7) Plenty of physicians throughout history and modern times have plenty of blood on their hands. Kermit Gosnell is merely the latest and most prominent. And despite the unpopularity of bringing them up, we cannot fail to mention World War II-era Nazi and Japanese doctors who made serious advances in medical technology and knowledge through means that virtually nobody would tolerate today, including live vivisections. Physicians are sinners too, and therein lies the danger of basing our morality on other people rather than on God.

WHAT ABOUT IN-VITRO FERTILISATION (IVF)?

See here a full discussion of this issue.

In addition, imagine with me: If preborn children at whatever age are indeed human beings with rights fully equal to yours or mine, would not freezing 10 of them to death constitute “mass murder”? How else would you define it? Is it better if they don’t look like you, are smaller than you, don’t have a voice, or are out of your line of sight? How far are you willing to carry that thought?

Is it OK for a WASP to stick 10 African-American children in a freezer until they died, insert earplugs so as not to hear their screams, and lock the door so he wouldn’t see them?

So in reality, doctors will merely have to alter their methods. Instead of fertilising several dozen eggs at one time (thus creating several dozen human beings) and freezing them (only to discard many of them later, as is common practice), doctors can instead freeze eggs (to which no one objects), and when the time comes to implant, fertilise, say, only two of them and implant both, thus not wasting human beings and also still giving each embryo a chance at life.

Even if IVF were entirely proscribed (which, again, it’s not), remember that adoption is an outstanding and actually much-preferable alternative. Compared to IVF, adoption:

is much less risky
involves no surgery
is comparably expensive
saves and greatly blesses a life rather than creates lives that are often in weak health
does not further often-questionable biomedical technology

Opposing IVF as it is currently structured also means we can work to avoid tragedies like this.

EMBRYONIC STEM-CELL RESEARCH

1) Don’t miss the section on In Vitro Fertilisation first of all.

2) Obtaining stem cells from previously-frozen and then defrosted embryos results in the death of the embryo and is the equivalent of donating someone else’s body to science for them. Perhaps you should ask them first.

Even if there were no other way to get stem cells for research and medical treatment, the killing of innocent people could not be justified in order to obtain stem cells for that research or treatment. The central question, as usual, is whether the embryo is a human being. If that is so, there is no difference between Nazi doctors’ medical experimentation and vivisections, which did serve to further medical science and knowledge.

3) Fortunately, umbilical cord blood provides many more stem cells than an abortion, and does not end a human life to procure.

Other sources of stem cells, such as adult bone marrow, are also preferable sources of stem cells.

4) If, as some argue, embryos are a preferable source, rather than adults or something else, this amounts to a contention that expediency and pragmatism should be our moral standards in questions like these. In that case, we propose the following test:

If a particular person needs a couple of organs donated and the waiting list for donors is too long, why not simply decide for someone else to donate their body for the sick person’s benefit? It is far easier to obtain a working pair of eyes, a living, undamaged heart, liver, or lung, from a person who has not recently died of a sudden trauma and who checked the Organ Donor box on his ID. Simply track them, restrain them, and harvest their organs.

Yes, this brings the question back to whether the embryo is a human being. If the embryo is indeed a human being, just as such behavior would be unacceptable and unjustifiable with a living, healthy adult, it is unacceptable and unjustifiable with the embryonic human being.

Expediency and pragmatism are poor guides to morality, unless you’re the one in power.

I’M PERSONALLY OPPOSED TO ABORTION BUT I THINK IT SHOULD BE LEGAL

Babies are really being dismembered. Real babies, with real blood and real internal organs and real brains.

Does it really not bother you that unborn children are being killed? What does that say about you, your priorities, and how consistent you are? If rape were legal, would you try to change the law? If Jews were being shoved into ovens today, would you fight, or would you change the channel?

God will not hold blameless those who are apathetic about great evil. We are guilty.

Is the Fetus Equivalent to a Sperm?

1) We are actually glad when pro-choice people use the completely foolish argument that sperm are somehow equivalent to fertilized eggs, also known as tiny human beings in the embryonic stage of development (see here for one great example) because it demonstrates that the pro-choice side is out of arguments. Irrelevant mockery is the last refuge of the defeated.

2) Obviously, abolitionists are interested in protecting preborn human children from unjustifiable homicide. Sperm and eggs are not human children.

3) See more detailed analysis of this question here and the section titled “No One Thinks Human Skin Cells or Sex Cells Should Have a Right to Life” here.

WHY DO YOU DEPICT GRAPHIC AND OFFENSIVE IMAGES OF ABORTIONS?

1) Abortion is gory and awful. If the truth offends you, should you not reconsider your own position?

2) Part of the power of abortion is that it happens behind closed doors. We know it is there, but we don’t see it, so it doesn’t touch us deep down, just like the Nazis killed Jews in the concentration camps. The locals knew it was happening, they saw the Jews carted in, the could see the smoke and smell the burning flesh, but they didn’t see the awful condition of the Jews. It wasn’t until Allied soldiers made them walk through the camps that they shuddered inside at the true barbarism of the Nazis.

And that’s what pictures of abortion do. It wakes us up to the cruel, violent, selfish, evil, barbaric, bloody act that abortion is. And hopefully, those who still have an sliver of a conscience will realize that abortion is morally repugnant. Signs are an important tool for rapidly communicating information to people in a way that would otherwise be impossible.

3) Hopefully you’ll understand if we don’t take advice on how to effect the abolition of human abortion from any pro-choicer, from the well-known and well-heeled politician to the anonymous Internet troll, who isn’t fazed by those awful images. Why in the world don’t they trouble you? I’m not lying here – I can barely bring myself to look at them.

4) The abolitionists of human slavery undertook the same strategy in their noble efforts. They showed – in public – the shackles and chains used on slave ships, diagrams of slave ships with slaves packed in like sardines for the weeks-long voyage, pictures of people with massive scarring on their backs from lashes.

5) If these preborn children are merely clumps of cells, products of conception, parts of their mothers’ bodies, why are you so upset? Is it merely the sight of blood, or is something else going on? Are you 100% sure that some part of you doesn’t know that the remains of a dead child are not the same as, say, a set of extracted wisdom teeth?

6) Examine your views here – is the whistle-blower to blame for the evil of the message he is communicating, or is the evildoer guilty? Don’t shoot the messenger. Give us a reason to think that we are misleading people, and you may have an argument. If we speak and show the truth, why not follow the truth where it leads? Thing is, our approach is intended to be multifaceted, and these images aren’t doctored or made up out of thin air. This is really happening. Babies are really being dismembered. Real babies, with real blood and real internal organs and real brains.

The fact that you choose to chastise us for exposing the truth instead of chastising those who make a very good living off of dismembering babies tells us all we need to know about you. Repent, seriously.

WHY NOT ABOLISH ANIMAL ABORTION?

The proper care and humane treatment of animals is important because animals are part of God’s creation. However, there is no specific mandate from God to protect animals at all costs. We do, however, has this mandate about humans, who are created in God’s image. Therefore,
1) Being concerned with animal abortion is a relative waste of time while human abortion is not yet abolished.
2) God Himself instituted the practice of animal sacrifice and the permissibility of eating meat in the Bible. In contrast, He stated plainly that murdering humans is evil.
3) God has given animals as food to eat and to master for our good and assistance – Genesis 2, Genesis 9, Mark 7, 1 Corinthians 8, Romans 14.

CRIMINAL CHARGES FOR ABORTIVE WOMEN?

We regard the aborticians as holding the most guilt. They know the truth about what they are doing and yet consciously and continually suppress that truth in their own minds and hearts every day. They lie to women constantly, thus betraying their trust when many of these women are in their weakest moments, for the sake of enriching their own bank accounts. They must be stopped.

Here is a proposed timeline to which I believe most abolitionists would agree.

1) Abortion is outlawed by virtue of the government’s recognition that preborn children have full and equal human rights from the moment of conception until the end of their lives.

2) The most strenuous possible penalties are put in place for aborticians and their staff and assistants. Obviously because of the ex post facto provisos in the Constitution, they would not be liable for their actions before the abolition of abortion.

3) I would personally be in favor of a swift and not-particularly-painless execution for these murderers, but not every abolitionist will agree. Let us say that the consensus position would be closer to this: aborticians who continue to practice after the abolition of abortion should be severely punished.

4) After abolition, the question of what, if any, punishment the government should apply to abortive mothers is murkier and undecided. Most would propose that punishments be considerably less severe relative to the aborticians’ penalties. Some would say that, to allow time for the implications of the new legal framework to sink in to people’s minds and hearts, we should slowly ramp up the severity of the penalties, such that a woman who seeks out an abortion one week after abolition would be punished less severely than a woman who seeks out an abortion 20 years afterwards.

We do not necessarily believe that the best course of action should be to apply the death penalty to abortion immediately after criminalisation. The mother bears some guilt, but those who know for sure what they are doing bear much more.

PRO-LIFE LEADERS OPPOSE HIV/AIDS TREATMENT AND PREVENTION

Answered here.

YOU’LL FORCE WOMEN TO GO TO BACK ALLEYS

1) Just because scissors work better doesn’t make it right.

2) You don’t also hold to Darwinian evolution, do you?

3) Could “back alleys” be worse than the back alleys that have already been in play in the USA?

4) Slavery has been abolished. Slavery has been banished to ‘back alleys’ as well: sex trafficking and the like. Yet shall we argue that because evil cannot be completely eradicated in the totality of human existence, we should not fight evil anywhere?

5) Credible evidence has been brought forward that flatly contradicts this myth.

SAFE, LEGAL, AND RARE

1) This doesn’t fly. Pro-aborts don’t really mean it.

2) Could we say that about any issue, like slavery? “We want to keep slavery safe, legal, and rare.”

“We want to keep rape safe, legal, and rare.”

3) Just because it’s legal doesn’t make it right.

4) Any procedure that is designed specifically and explicitly to destroy a human life is hardly “safe”. It’s in fact the polar opposite.

5) Despite massive amounts of money and government support for abortion, many abortuaries are still medically unsafe, non-sterile, unprofessional, etc.

6) Is it safe for those women who end up sterile because of abortions? Whose uterus is punctured? Who fall ill with toxic shock and die?

7) Why rare? So many pro-aborts make it sound like it’s a wonderful thing, rejoice in its legality and availability, write absurdities on their pregnant bellies such as “my baby is pro-choice” (as if her baby would happily accept the severing of his spinal column rather than shying away from the sharp points), and bring vile curses against anyone who opposes its legality. If the preborn child is not a human being, if he is merely a clump of cells, why restrict abortion at all? Why act like it’s bad? Do we talk about making appendectomies “rare”?

On the other hand, if that is indeed a human being, shouldn’t we abolish human abortion entirely?

NO ONE IS EVER FULLY PREPARED TO BRING A CHILD INTO THIS WORLD

1) If the potential to suffer means we should go ahead and kill the child, we should kill everyone in this world, because everyone is going to suffer something in the future. This is a poor justification for killing someone else.

2) This, of course, includes the objector, because the person making the objection is going to suffer in the future. Presumably the objector would therefore not resist if someone approached him with scissors to snap his spinal column.

3) By the power of God, who created the universe and in fact brings life from the dead, anyone, no matter how unprepared they think they are, can raise a child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

4) If a person selfishly refuses to try to raise a child, there are thousands of people out there desiring to adopt. Instead of murdering an innocent baby, why not give him and other people a chance to have a loving family?

YOU’RE DECLARING WAR ON WOMEN

1) Actually, abortion is much more a war on women, since more female preborn children are murdered than male. We want more women alive than pro-choice does.

2) American women have, for a long time, consistently and repeatedly polled, in the majority, pro-life.

3) Our own Facebook page is overwhelmingly ‘Liked’ by women. 67%, at the last count, are women.

4) Insisting that it be illegal for anyone to take part in murder is no more a war on women than freeing slaves is a war on specifically Southern white men.

5) Come on, pay attention.

6) From a woman: You are not oppressing me when you say I should not have the choice to kill my child. I suggest you wake up to the reality of what abortion is, and stop giving in to women’s oppression nonsense. I want a man to be a man and stand up for women’s “rights” and not give me absolute rein over killing others! It’s preposterous, and I’m tired of hearing about women’s oppression. I’m a woman. Get over yourselves women and stop whining about how you are treated so badly and deserve freedom.

HOLOCAUST: WHY DO YOU COMPARE ABORTION TO THE HOLOCAUST?

1) We have answered at length here.

2) There are strong parallels between all forms of genocide. In each case, there is a defenseless class of people targeted for killing. Each time, the perpetrators of the genocide started by dehumanizing the victim class – calling them non-persons, parasites, sub-human, animals, etc. In Germany, the Nazis made it lawful to kill Jews. In the United States, slave owners and racists made it lawful to abuse and even kill slaves. In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the Roe vs. Wade decision, made it lawful to kill unborn children for any reason or no reason at all. Even if some of the motives are different, the end result is the same – huge numbers of dead victims.

3) Martin Luther King, in his letter from the Birmingham Jail, compared the brutalisation of blacks to the brutalisation of Jews during the Holocaust. Was that insensitive of him? Was he wrong to do it? And was Dr King fighting an injustice that has so far claimed 53 million lives? Since the death toll is far higher in this case, how much more strongly should we struggle to end this atrocity?

HITLER WAS A CHRISTIAN

1) He most certainly was not. Christians don’t actively work to destroy the Christian church as he did.

He was a pagan.

2) Just because you can cite someone saying Christian-esque things when politically expedient doesn’t make that person a Christian any more than President Barack “Barry” Hussein Soetoro/Soebarkah/Obama’s frequent Muslim-sounding verbiage makes him a Muslim.

ABSTINENCE-ONLY EDUCATION IS UNHELPFUL

1) It is extremely unrealistic to think that people won’t do meth, or speed, or cocaine, or kill people. The fact that there are so many people in prisons is pretty good indication of that.

2) It’s so funny you should say that. Abolitionists urge people to obey Jesus, and part of living for Jesus is not engaging in extramarital sex. Yet that never seems to go over well. It’s not our fault, and it’s certainly not the baby’s fault such that he should be executed for his mother’s and father’s lack of self-control.

3) You mean that we should offer condom education because people don’t follow the teaching of abstinence?

So if people ignore the curriculum, blame it on the curriculum? Are you consistent in blaming condom education when people don’t use condoms? After all, abstinence is taught rarely in government schools, and condom education is taught widely, yet unplanned pregnancies still occur. Why is this?

Why, it’s because people don’t use condom ed.

Thus, since people don’t follow it, by your own logic, we should conclude that we should try something else, like abstinence education.

4) Incidentally, abstinence is 100% effective, whereas condoms are ~85% (optimistically) effective.

5) Yes, we definitely need to work toward making sure women don’t think they are hopeless when they find themselves with an unplanned pregnancy such that they think that murdering their baby is the only option (and we do). To say that we should therefore not outlaw abortion is the equivalent of saying that we should not outlaw armed robbery since we have not yet found a way to make sure that everyone’s material desires are always met.

I WOULD NEVER GET AN ABORTION, BUT IT REALLY DEPENDS ON THE PERSON.

I would never own a slave, but it really depends on the person.

TOKOPHOBIA, THE FEAR OF PREGNANCY

1) I don’t know anyone who has gone into pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing without feeling any trepidation or anxiety.

2) Sometimes it even puts a strain on household finances. Hard to believe, but true. [/sarcasm]

3) Xenophobia (fear of strangers) exists. If I were deathly afraid of strangers, would that justify me killing one if a stranger rang my doorbell or said hello to me on the street?

4) If I were truly so extreme in my phobias, I would choose not to put myself in the situation, just like one truly afraid of pregnancies must elect to take the necessary steps not to get pregnant in the first place. Pregnancies don’t just spontaneously occur…most of the time.

5) Further, if you are afraid of pregnancy, then you have a right to not have sex.

6) A mother with tokophobia has time to find treatment and care. A dead infant does not.

7) Life is a risk. You don’t know what’s going to hit you the minute you go out your door. The point is, what in life justifies killing another life?

YOU BULLY PEOPLE

1) Please excuse our passion about the fact that 3,500 of our tiniest neighbors are being callously and legally put to death in our nation every single day.
Imagine, though, that rape were legal in this country, but only in controlled environments like cold, lonely buildings not too far from little girls’ dance academies. Imagine men parking their cars and then having to walk across some public sidewalk to be able to enter into the “rapository” (as the rape abolitionists call it). Since in our thought experiment, rape is legal and free speech is too, don’t you think you might look with some admiration at, and maybe even join with, those people who protest the legality of rape?
As in most of these questions, it all comes down to whether the unborn child is a human being. If she is not, then all of this fuss is merely sound and fury about something of no more import than legalised appendectomy. But if she is, it is impossible to overreact (short of undertaking violent behavior oneself).

2) It is not our intention to bully or to humiliate. Rather, as those who proclaim the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, our desire is to expose sin, call to repentance those who are enslaved to sin, and invite all to humble themselves and receive the forgiveness and freedom of Jesus Christ. This is the best message anyone could ever hear. We are saying, “Repent with us,” which is the opposite message of “We are better than you”.

3) The mainstream media usually paints any street preaching or abortion-mill sidewalk counseling as a “protest” of “extremists”, “right-wing fanatics”, or “pro-life zealots”, thus giving the impression to the viewer that the group is full of dangerous people who are self-righteous and are threatening violence. These kinds of reports are dishonest – search out the truth for yourself. Ask for video evidence.

4) Preaching the Law of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ at an abortuary is not “abuse”. Check this out. What you call “abuse” or “nasty”, I call the most merciful thing possible.
And watch the way this man reacted once God started to move on his heart: part 1 part 2
People react badly to the Word of God preached all the time, but that doesn’t mean that such preaching is “abuse”.

5) Simply raising one’s voice so that one can be heard is not “yelling” or “screaming”. Listen to what is being said, with what tone of voice, etc.

6) We find that often this objection is forwarded because of a latent fear that our preaching or signs will change minds and hearts on the question of the justifiability of child sacrifice. This is no good reason to stop doing these things.

RESTRICTIVE ABORTION LAWS ARE NOT ASSOCIATED WITH LOWER ABORTION RATES

This merely tells us that more would need to be done to stop abortion once it is illegalised. But to use this as an objection against abolitionism forgets several important matters:

1) Illegalising it allows the authorities to prosecute (and hopefully swiftly execute) aborticians, such that there exist a deterrent effect. Take away the supply and you reduce the demand.

2) Prosecuting abortive mothers (although not to the same extent or with the same severity as aborticians) will also contribute.

3) All the moneys that pro-life orgs throw into lobbying, ballot initiatives, propaganda, and legal challenges could much more easily be diverted toward helping women. Right now pro-choicers are partly responsible for whatever low level of available assistance they decry. It’s unfair to use our good prioritisation as a critique.

4) Keeping horribly awful and blasphemous things like abortion legal hastens God’s judgment on the country. I have no idea when it’s coming or what form it will take when He decides to make the final blow, but it will come, and it will be crushing, far more than any of us can imagine. Illegalising abortion may indeed postpone or even turn back God’s temporal wrath.

And no, it doesn’t matter whether you believe in God. In fact, your unbelief is contributing to the coming wrath. Jesus Himself urges quick repentance in John 3. www.proofthatgodexists.org

5) There are other factors at work in these regions to which you allude. How powerful is the police presence? How formalised and consistent the system for legal complaints? How corrupt the relevant local officials in place? How corrupt the police? Etc.

The USA far exceeds these other regions in these relevant categories, so there is reason to think that illegalising abortion will lower abortion rates here.

OVERPOPULATION

1) Ever been to west Texas?

2) Take a look at this.

3) Overpopulation is not problematic because of excessive total population but rather because of excessive density of population in a particular place.

4) War and military complications create food shortages.

5) So do politico-economic realities such as widespread corruption. NGOs and other aid groups deliver food to a starving region. The local authorities commandeer the shipments with pious-sounding platitudes, then sell the food and medicine off elsewhere and buy another few Bentley limos and hire a few more mercenary bodyguards.

6) More people = more workers to develop natural resources and produce income and economic development and growth. More people is a good thing.

Productive Christians In An Age Of Guilt Manipulators

THE FETUS CANNOT FEEL PAIN

1) Just like they’re unthinking clumps of cells, with no more brains than a box of rocks, right?

2) It’s been documented over and over that many children move away and attempt to escape from painful pricks in the womb.

3) How do you know the fetus can’t feel anything? Why aren’t they smiling when their post-abortive remains are photographed? Why are their mouths always in a position of terror and agony?

4) If you appeal to brainwaves, what precisely is your argument that you know infallibly what precise connection brainwaves have to experiencing pain?

5) The statements “I’m unsure if any evidence exists that fetuses can feel pain” and “Fetuses cannot feel pain” are not even close to equivalent.

6) Should we not err on the side of protecting life when we’re unsure?

If you and I go hunting and we see bushes rustle about 400 meters distant, is it justifiable to go ahead and pepper the bush with bullets, because it might be a deer in there? Or should we wait until we know for sure, because it also might be another hunter? The pro-choice side opts for death, while abolitionists opt for life.

HOW CAN YOU BE ABOLITIONISTS AND YET SUPPORT CAPITAL PUNISHMENT / DEATH PENALTY?

Please see here a full answer.

THIS IS ABOUT MAKING AMERICA A “CHRISTIAN” NATION / SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

1) Do Christians not have the right to push to make laws in which they believe just as Muslims and secular humanists do?

2) Where does any founding document say that religious people can’t attempt to change the laws to fit their moral views?

3) Are you really all that afraid of a nation modeled after Jesus? When is the last time you read the Gospels and the life of Jesus?

4) Plenty of other worldviews decry abortion. There are atheists, for example, who oppose abortion. How precisely does illegalising abortion (one single issue) make America into a Christian nation?

5) How is ending abortion specifically Christian?

6) Was ending slavery specifically Christian? Most of those who pushed to end it were Christians!

7) The “separation of church and state” is a myth and historical novelty whose modern understanding differs enormously from what the Framers of the US Constitution believed.

8) The modern idea of “separation of church and state” trades on the erroneous idea that ideological neutrality exists. Rather, the truth is that it is inevitable that the laws of a nation follow a given ideology and ground that nation’s moral framework. The question is not whether the nation will follow a religion, but rather: Which religion will be followed?

REFUSING TO ALLOW ABORTION INHIBITS A WOMAN’S RIGHT TO LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.

1) By this same token, legalized abortion is unconstitutional. It inhibits the unborn child’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

2) “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” appears in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. Rights to life and liberty are guaranteed by (at least) the 4th, 13th, and 14th amendments, but the “pursuit of happiness” is not a right explicitly endowed by the Constitution.

3) Prohibition of abortion limits a woman’s rights to life and liberty in no meaningful sense. If a law prohibiting a woman from hiring an abortionist to kill her unborn child limits her rights to life and liberty, then a law prohibiting a woman from hiring a hit man to kill her husband also limits her right to life and liberty. In both cases, the laws would prohibit a woman from hiring someone to kill another human being. The only difference between the two cases is the location of the individual that the woman wants to kill.

IN EXODUS 21:22, GOD DID NOT REGARD THE PREBORN CHILD AS HUMAN LIFE

Here is the passage: “22 ‘If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. 23 But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.’”

The term in the Hebrew that is translated “gives birth prematurely” does not have to refer to a miscarriage. On the contrary, it often refers to the birth of a living baby! So, there is no reason to interpret the text as saying that a mother must be paid a fine for miscarriage (or unintended abortion).

Notice that it says “if…there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined…”

If the baby is born prematurely, there is to be a fine (because premature babies require more care and expense).

Then it says “…if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life…“ If the child comes out dead, there is to be life for life (i.e. the assailant is to be put to death for causing the death of the unborn child), and if the child comes out maimed, the assailant is to be punished with like maiming.

A more in-depth discussion of Ex. 21:22 can be found here. Also here. And here.

WHAT RIGHT DO YOU HAVE TO JUDGE ANYONE?

1) Was killing Jews morally acceptable during the Holocaust? Was flogging and killing “Negro” slaves morally acceptable during slavery? If you say no, then you’re being judgmental too. You’re being judgmental about some forms of genocide, we’d like you join us in being judgmental about all forms of genocide.

2) Jesus’ condemnation of judgment was a condemnation against hypocritical judgment and an endorsement of correct, right judgment. Read Matthew 7 in its entirety (not just verse 1) and note how Jesus Himself engages in numerous non-politically-correct judgments.

3) To warn sinners to repent and turn to Christ is not to judge them. God has already judged them and revealed that judgment through His Word. We are actually attempting to rescue people from having to face the judgment of God.

4) People are commanded by God to judge, not according to the appearance, but rather with righteous judgment (John 7:24; Acts 4:19; 1 Corinthians 2:14-16, 10:15).

5) To complain that the abolitionist is judging and that judgment is morally objectionable is itself to commit the same act. To judge that someone else is judgmental is itself judgmental. The very complaint is self-destructive and hypocrisy.

DO YOU SHOOT ABORTIONISTS AND BOMB CLINICS?

We oppose violence against unborn babies, the aborticians who murder them, and everyone else who is complicit in this slaughter.

We oppose and condemn the killing of any person without justification.

Please see our fuller statement – “Why Abolition must be non-violent”.

YOU ARE RACIST

1) Actually, the abortion industry has historically targeted minority populations such as African-Americans with stronger attempts to induce women to abort.

2) Sadly, they have in many ways been successful. Amazingly, some modern disciples evenresist correction and refuse to believe the obvious.

3) To say “you are ____, therefore you are wrong about this other unrelated topic” is to commit the genetic fallacy. A true position does not rely on fallacious argumentation.

4) We want more babies of all ethnicities. If wanting equal rights for all makes us racist, we must question how meaningful your definition of “racist” is.

YOU ARE LIKE WESTBORO BAPTIST

We entirely disagree, and we denounce the Westboro distinctives in the strongest possible terms.

ROE V WADE IS THE LAW OF THE LAND

1) God’s law is a higher law than any law of man. The Supreme Court stands not only in contempt of the Constitution but also in contempt of the supreme law of the supreme Lawgiver, Jesus Christ.

2) The Supreme Court has made numerous erroneous decisions in the past, notably the Dred Scott decision of 1857. Just because the Court decides a certain way does not mean it is in the right. It merely means that a handful of attorneys in Washington DC made a certain proclamation of their opinion at a point in time.

3) The right to murder other human beings is not in the Constitution. It is against the Constitution and against God’s law. The Supreme Court was dead wrong.

4) It is a legal category error to contend that a Supreme Court decision is a law in any sense at all. Rather, it was, strictly speaking, a violation of the constitutional role of the judicial branch of the United States government. The Court exceeded their rightful authority when they made that decision, which means that any other governmental entity that recognises Roe V Wade and abides by it is actually acting against the Constitution, and that entity is not only free but is in fact duty-bound and obligated to resist the unlawful usurpation of authority perpetrated by the Court.