TRTL: Abortion: Why Not

This is the primary TRTL¹⁾ 101 presentation against abortion used for audience old enough to have an abortion, e.g. high schools, churches, community groups.

Download the presentation files to your computer (you may not have internet access when presenting):

• http://media.trtl.ca/abortion/whynot.html
• http://media.trtl.ca/abortion/abortion-whynot.odp

• First slide: title page

1. (introduce yourself) “Hi, I'm NAME. I'm a member of the Education Team at Toronto Right to Life.”
   • (introduce yourself beyond TRTL) “When I'm not doing this, I'm…” (share something about what you do outside of TRTL)
2. (frame the topic) “Today, we're going to look at the abortion issue from science and human rights perspective. I believe this is an important issue to discuss. Many people in our society today are directly or indirectly affected by abortion. I have friends who have faced unplanned pregnancies and have had abortions. I’m here to present to you the facts behind abortion based on science and human rights, but also to share a message of love and hope to anyone wounded by abortion.”
   • (if in religion class or place of worship) “Even though this is religion class, we're not going to approach this from a religious perspective, but using science and human rights. Everything that I'm going to say is compatible with the faith, but if I were in a mosque or at a covention of atheists, I wouldn't say anything differently.” [religion class is just where ethics gets covered in the curriculum]
   • Is there a better “show don't tell” way to frame the presentation?
3. (set an AMA tone) “Feel free to ask me anything. I'll try to answer your questions during the presentation. If not, I'll address them at the end wherein we have time for discussion. I also encourage you to write down your questions so that you'll remember to ask them at the end.
4. (introduce the survey) “You all should have a copy of the survey. They're anonymous. We really want to know what you think. Start now by filling out the first question, what do you think about abortion before hearing the presentation. The rest you can fill out at the end.”

Transition: “Discussing the abortion issue can sometimes be tough because we recognize that the circumstances surrounding an unplanned pregnancy can be very difficult.”

Find an example of someone who in the midst of great suffering/difficulty chose to speak up for the truth and help others.

• Next step (blank) (ask the audience) “What are some of the reasons that people choose abortion?” (just acknowledge and name each reason)
  • Next steps: (reveal reasons as you go, or after naming a bunch with the audience)
    • rape
    • health problems
    • money
    • not ready
    • age of mother
    • school/career
    • unwanted
    • abuse
    • disability
    • (if any are left to reveal, reveal them very quickly if they've already been named, otherwise take just a second to introduce them)
• (trot out the toddler with a few circumstances)
  1. (first, take an easy example)
     • “Let's take poverty for example. (empathize with difficulty, e.g. “Raising a child can be expensive, I couldn't imagine facing poverty and parenting at the same time.”)) How many of you think abortion might be okay when a mother is poor?” (show of hands)
       • Next step: toddler photo (introduce the kid) e.g. “Meet Mara, when she was a toddler.”
       • “Okay, now imagine we're dealing with the mother of a toddler like Mara. Imagine Mara's mom wasn't poor when she was pregnant, but a year or two after giving birth, she lost her job, or became unable to work, she became poor.”
       • “Would it be hard for her mother to raise her when she's poor?”
       • “Would it be okay for Mara's mom to kill her because the circumstances are hard?”
       • Next step: infant photo “What about now, when Mara was an infant? Would it be hard to raise Mara if her mother became poor when she was an infant? Would we allow her mom to kill her because the circumstances are hard?”
       • Next step: pre-born photo “If we say no, then we have to ask ourselves: why would we ever allow someone to kill a child a few months younger for the very same reason?”
  2. (next, take another example, or take the opportunity to make it personal)
     • (if you or someone close to you has faced a difficult circumstance personally) e.g. “What about getting pregnant at a young age.”
       • “I/my mom became pregnant at age…” (share the story briefly)
       • (then, don't use the story as argument, but as context for getting back to the argument) “So what about someone like me/my mom who was pregnant at a young age?”
         • Go back one step: infant “What if Mara's mother was pregnant at x-years-old like me/my mom, and decided to carry the pregnancy to term, but after birth found it was way harder than expected. Would it be hard? Would we allow her mom to kill her?”
         • Next step: pre-born “Why would we ever allow someone to kill a child a few months younger for the same reason?”
     • (otherwise) “Let's take disability. How many of you think abortion might be okay if a child has a disability?”
       • Go back two steps to toddler photo: “Imagine a mom just found out that her toddler has autism. Would that be hard? Yes. Would we allow her mom to kill her? Of course not.”
       • Next step: infant “What about if a disability was discovered as an infant? Could that be hard? Would we allow the mom to kill her child?”
       • Next step: pre-born “We have to ask ourselves: What's the difference? Why would we ever allow someone to kill a child a few months younger for the same reason?”
       • Next step: killing / difficult life circumstances “That is, we have to ask ourselves: Is killing a solution to difficult life circumstances?”
  3. (last, make sure to address the hard case of rape, as it will be on the minds of those in the audience)
     • “Or how about the horrible case of rape” (make sure to briefly express your horror, e.g. “I can't imagine what it would be like to be in that situation, to be the victim of such a terrible and evil act”)
       • “Let's say you've got a married woman who has consensual sex with her husband on Monday, and on Tuesday, she's raped by another man. One month later, she discovers that she's pregnant. She doesn't know who the father of her child is. So let's say she hopes its her husbands child and she carries on with the pregnancy. After the baby is born, the doctors do a paternity test and find out that the father of the child is not her husband, it's the rapist. Would we allow that woman or anyone to kill that newborn baby because of the father's crime?²⁾ If no, then why kill the pre-born baby because of the father's crime?”
       • (the key point to make at this stage): “The point is: it's not money or age of the mother or disability or rape that makes it okay to kill somebody.”
       • “We know the circumstances are hard. Really hard. But if we don't think the circumstances make it okay to kill a newborn baby, then why would it be okay to kill a pre-born baby for the same reason?”

life of mother case

• Dr. Levatino video?
• suggestion: very briefly under circumstances, but save more detailed response to wrap-up or Q&A

Transition: “If we think a difficult circumstance can make killing okay before birth but not after birth, it's not the circumstance that makes killing okay. It's because we think there's some difference between pre-born and born children.” (don't pause)

Next step: Who are the pre-born? “The key question then, is: who are the pre-born? This is the question that we need to answer to understand whether abortion is right or wrong.”

• (maybe) “If the pre-born aren't human, then we don't really need a reason why abortion is okay. Abortion would be like getting a haircut or having a tooth pulled. But if the pre-born are human, then there's no reason that could make abortion okay, there's no reason that could make it okay to kill an innocent human being.”
  • “We know abortion can be very complex socially, emotionally, psychologically, practically – but it's not morally complex. Even when circumstances are really, really hard, intentionally killing an innocent human being is never okay.”

Transition: (outline the rest of the presentation) “This morning/afternoon/evening, we're going to dive into these questions in detail by looking at 3 key concepts:

1. We'll go through the science of human development to figure out whether or not the pre-born are human and alive.
2. We'll talk about the ethics to understand why all human beings should have human rights.
3. Lastly, we'll look at the reality of what abortion does to pre-born children.

But just before we look at science, let's consider for ourselves the “options” for when human life begins. Does human life begin before fertilization, at fertilization, or some time after?

Before Fertilization?

• Before fertilization, we have sperm and eggs, i.e. gametes. Are sperm and egg equivalent to the embryo? Here's one way to think about it:
  • If you take a sperm cell, and give it what it needs to live – nutrition, a safe environment – and wait 1 year, or 15 years, what will happen? You will still have a sperm cell.
  • If you take an egg cell, and give it what it needs to live – nutrition, a safe environment – and wait 1 year, or 15 years, what will happen? Again, you will still have an egg cell.
  • In contrast, if you take a zygote, and give her what she needs to live – nutrition, a safe environment – and wait 1 year, or 15 years, what will happen? You will have an infant, or a teenager.
  • A gamete has 23 chromosomes, while a zygote has a complete set of DNA. A gamete stays a gamete until the transformation of fertilization. A zygote, in contrast, continues to grow older, into a blastocyst, an embryo, a fetus, a newborn, an infant, a toddler, etc. A gamete is a human part, while the embryo is a human whole. We know the difference between a human part and a human whole.

After Fertilization?

• Now let's entertain the possibility that human life begins some time after fertilization.
  • Meet my friend's son Noah on his first day of kindergarten. Imagine Noah walked through that door and you had never met him before. Would you assume that his life began at that moment? That he puffed out of nowhere and started living when he walked through the door? Of course not! We know that he grew from a younger version of himself.
  • Now here’s toddler Noah. Would we say that Noah’s life began when he was a toddler? Again of course not. We know he grew from a younger version of himself.
  • How about at infancy? Did Noah’s life begin when he was an infant? No, because we know that a few months earlier, he was born.
  • And where did newborn Noah come from? He was not brought by the stork that’s for sure. He was delivered from her mother's body, at birth. Newborn Noah grew from an earlier version of himself–namely, the fetus.
  • This is fetal Noah at 21 weeks. You can see him making a lot of movements. He must be alive, right? Maybe sucking his thumb, kicking…. He can feel pain about halfway through pregnancy. A few weeks after this, he would have been able to survive outside the womb if born prematurely. Maybe you’re thinking, well he’s a not human, he’s just a fetus.
  • “We have to ask ourselves: what kind of fetus is he? Because you can have…” (slow down just a bit to let photos sink in)
  • next step: elephant “an elephant fetus”
  • next step: dog “or a dog fetus”
  • next step: dolphin “or a dolphin fetus”
  • “You see, fetus is just an age range term. Fetus is a Latin word that means offspring or child.”
    • “First, you're a zygote, then an embryo until about 8 weeks, then a fetus from 8 weeks until birth, then a newborn until a month after birth, then an infant, until you're a toddler, and so on until you're a teenager, until you're an adult.”
    • “Age-range terms like fetus or embryo don't tell us what species someone is, but how old someone is.”
    • next step Let's go back to fetal Noah at a much earlier stage in the 1st trimester when most abortions happen.
    • At 3 weeks is when the heart starts to beat and around 5 weeks is when brain activity can be detected with an EKG scanner. Where did fetal Noah come from? Did he magically appear in his mother’s womb? We know he grew and matured from an earlier version of himself namely, the embryo.
    • next step And we know that the embryo came to be as a result of the sperm fertilizing the egg, creating the zygote. Fertilization is the only point in human development that makes sense for the beginning of life, and we know from science this is when life begins.

Transition: immediate

• next step “Let's look at the definition of fertilization from the bio textbook used at the University of Toronto in a 3rd year course, called Developmental Biology course. I also encourage you to look at other biology textbooks.”
  • (paraphrase highlighted words)
    • “The very title of the chapter on fertilization is 'Fertilization: Beginning a New Organism'”
    • e.g. “Fertilization is the process whereby a new, individual organism is created, a new, individual member of the species.”
  • “This is not controversial. It's a basic scientific fact.”
    • “At fertilization, you have a unique, whole, human life.” (don't elaborate unless asked)
      • [unique: individual of the species, distinct from parents]
      • [whole: human whole (organism) not human part (gamete)]
      • [human: if two humans reproduce, what species if their offspring?]
      • [life: if something is growing, isn't it alive? if the child isn't alive, then what do you need an abortion for?]
    • “At fertilization, you have your complete, unique DNA that will be with you for the rest of your life, and the process begins the rapid cell development and growth that will continue all the way until you are an adult.”

Transition: (restate conclusion) We know that life begins at fertilization.

• “But our culture has a funny way of looking at pregnancy.”
  • “People think that when you're pregnant, you have 'half a kid', and you won't have a full kid until birth.”
  • “This is not accurate. I'll explain what I mean by showing you two contrasting analogies.”
• Next step: Mr Potato Head
  • (show just the potato) “Does anyone know what this is?” (wait for response)
  • “Is it Mr. Potato Head yet? Or just a potato?” (wait for response)
  • (repeat several times)
    • (add a piece, explain why it might be essential, then ask) “How about now? Who thinks this is Mr. Potato Head now?” (show of hands)
  • “At what point does this potato become Mr. Potato head?” (slight pause, rhetorical question)
  • “People think of human development like they think of Mr. Potato Head, like a human being is something constructed, a thing, an objected, like you can have half a human being.”
• “But actually, human development is more like a Polaroid picture”
  • “Does anyone know what a Polaroid is?” (wait for quick responses)
  • Next step: polaroid time lapse video (talk over video) “Before digital cameras, Polaroid was a type of film that developed instantly, instead of having to bring your film to a professional to get it developed. Like you can see in this time lapse video, you take a photo, and wait a few minutes and the photo develops before your eyes.”
  • “That picture was created in an instant, it just needed time to develop.”
  • “A human being is created in an instant, at fertilization – we just need time to develop.”
  • “This is a more accurate way to think about living beings.”
• “Mechanical things, objects, are the type of thing that are constructed – like Mr. Potato Head.”
  • “Could Mr. Potato Head construct himself, without somebody to put the pieces together?”
  • “Constructed objects rely on outside³⁾ forces, someone putting the pieces together”
  • “This is a thing, an object, not a living being”
  • “We could have an endless debate about when a potato becomes Mr Potato Head. There is no real answer”
• “Human beings, living creatures, we aren't constructed – we develop“
  • Living beings, organisms, we're not constructed, we grow⁴⁾ – we just need the right conditions to thrive

Transition: (restate development line) “Everything is captured in an instant at the moment of fertilization, we just need time to grow from a zygote to an embryo, to a fetus, to a newborn and so on and so forth.” (short pause)

• (quickly introduce the video) “Here's a short video to show you what that development looks like throughout pregnancy.” Next step: prenatal development video
  • Let the video speak for itself, unless visibility is low and the text is hard to read with lighting, in which case you might need to narrate the captions

(no transition)

• “Okay, so, we know from science that human life begins at fertilization. But some people have a hard time recognizing that pre-born children are human beings, who deserve human rights because they’re different from us.”
• (reveal photo) Looking at these two photos, how is a pre-born child different from a newborn child?
• (Collect responses from the audience. Affirm answers.)
  • Yup, pre-born children are smaller.
  • They are also less developed which is why they can’t think like you and I or they don’t look like you and I.
  • They are in a different environment. Pre-born children are inside the mother’s womb and we are outside.
  • They are also very dependent on the mother for basic needs.
  • Now let’s compare two other human beings. (reveal next photo)
  • Is Micah smaller than me? Yes.
  • Is he less developed than me? Yes. Can he think critically? No.
  • Is he in a different environment? Yes, he lives in Ottawa with his family and I’m currently here in [insert town/city where you are].
  • Is he dependent on others for basic needs? Yes. We know that if he was left alone in a room, he wouldn’t survive for a very long time.
  • Despite the differences between Micah and I, are we both human beings? Yes.
  • You see the differences we see between pre-born children and born children are the same differences that exist amongst all of us. But these differences do not change who we are, that is we are all human beings.
  • And think about it, these differences are just age differences. (reveal age timeline)
  • Why is a pre-born child smaller than us? Well, how big do we expect a human being to be at that age?
  • Why are they less developed? How developed do we expect a human being to be at that age?
  • Why are they in the mother’s womb? Where else is a natural place for a human being to be at that age?
  • Why are they dependent on the mother? How independent do we expect a human being to be at that age?
  • These differences are just age differences.
  • And would it be fair to base our human rights on our differences: size, level of development, environment, degree of dependency? Should bigger, more developed and independent human beings get more basic human rights? And those who are not, should be considered less of a human being? It wouldn’t be fair if you think about. Human rights should be given to all human beings.

• “Some argue that it’s not enough to be a human being to get basic rights. They say you have to be a person, i.e. human plus something else, like a certain trait or ability or colour. Whenever we define the word person and it doesn’t include all human beings, we are excluding a group of human beings. And that exclusion leads to a human rights violation. We create two classes of human beings; those who get human rights and those who do not. We’ve seen the consequences of this throughout history.”
  • Next step: Virginia Supreme Court (read it) “To be a person, you had to be a human being plus white skin”
  • Next step: racism “We know this today as racism.”
    • “I want to tell you a story. This is Ota Benga, a Congolese man who was bought from slavers in 1904, taken to America and put on display in the Bronx Zoo in 1906.”
      • “A sign on the exhibit read: The African Pigmy, “Ota Benga.” Age, 23 years. Height, 4 feet 11 inches. Weight, 103 pounds. Brought from the Kasai River, Congo Free State, South Central Africa, by Dr. Samuel P. Verner. Exhibited each afternoon during September.”
      • “The exhibit quickly became the zoo's most popular attraction, but protests from African-American clergymen had it shut down.”
      • “I think of Ota Benga whenever people say that a human being “doesn't look like a person”. People thought that Ota Benga didn't look like a person, but how else is someone of his ethnic background supposed to look?”
        • “People say that a pre-born child “doesn't look like a person,” but how else is someone of that age supposed to look?”
  • Next step: racism overview “But it doesn't stop with racism.”
  • Next step: British Voting Rights case (read it) “To be a person, you had to be a human being plus a man.”
    • Next step: sexism “We know this today as sexism”
  • Next step: Nazi Germany (read it) “To be a person, you have to be a human being plus non-Jew”
    • “We know this today as anti-semitism”
  • Next step: Canadian Supreme Court “Yet our own Supreme Court says that…” (read it)
    • “To be a person in Canada, you have to be a human being plus a certain age. Some Canadians define the word person as someone who can think or feel. And since the pre-born cannot think or feel yet at early stages, thus they are not considered a person. But why can’t the pre-born think or feel yet? Isn’t it because as we mentioned earlier, they are less developed. In order to develop those abilities, they need time. And time is reflected on our age. In our country today, the pre-born are denied basic human rights because of their age. Isn’t that simply ageism?
    • “This is ageism, age-based discrimination”
  • Next step: human being + x = human rights violation ”Whenver we see this pattern, that to be a person you need to be a 'human being + x', it's the pattern of a grave human rights violation”
  • Next step: human being + age “With abortion, it's “human + a certain age” – it's just age discrimination, or ageism”

Transition: And this ageism has lethal consequences.

1. Video:
2. “We can keep talking about the abortion issue with a lot of abstract words like “my body, my choice,” reproductive rights, freedom to choose, on the other hand, pro-life, human rights, the right to life, but we need to know the reality of what abortion really is to truly understand the issue.”
3. “I'm going to show you a video. This video includes footage of abortions, and of abortion victims. It's not easy to watch, but I think that you have a right to know the truth about abortion. You can close your eyes or look away, but if you can, I encourage you to watch – We need to understand the consequences when we deny human beings the right to life, and what's at stake with abortion.”
   • Next step: video

Transition: (pause for 3-5 seconds after video ends, count it out) “What you just saw does not unrape a rape victim. It does not make a poor woman rich. And it doesn't prevent two people from becoming parents – it just makes them the parents of a dead child.

When we keep silent about the issue, when we ignore facts, the reality is children die. About 300 pre-born children die every day in Canada. Abortion is allowed until 9 months. We’re talking about innocent lives here that are at stake, broken bodies that are discarded, with no identity, not even a name. This is not just a charitable cause, this is an emergency.

next step: Don't force your view on other people!

• Someone might say, “Don’t force your view on others. It’s their life, it’s their choice.” What I’ve presented to you so far is the truth behind abortion based on science and human rights. This is not just my view; this is the reality.
• And when we recognize that someone’s choice hurts/harms somebody else, shouldn’t we take action? (Give example here, drinking & driving, child abuse, rape) What if you find out that your neighbour next door is abusing their child? Can we simply say, “that’s their life, that’s their choice?” Shouldn’t we do something to stop it? When an action harms an innocent human being, we need to speak up.

Add Medical Circumstances later

• “100,000 abortions happen every year in Canada. That number also tells us that that many women are wounded by abortion. And who are those women? Maybe they're our moms, our sisters, our friends, our teachers. Maybe they're even us. And it's important to remember that while we have to condemn the action of abortion, we need to show love and compassion to those who have been wounded by it because only love can heal a wounded heart.”
• Share Angelina’s story: “My friend Angelina was raped when she was younger. She became pregnant because of the sexual assault. People told her that abortion was the best solution for her to move on. And so she had the abortion. After that her life became miserable - she did things she wasn't proud of. She thought it was because of the sexual assault but what she realized many years later and even after healing and moving on from the sexual assault, it was the abortion experience that followed her for a long time. She had feelings of grief and regret that she always ignored. She was in denied that abortion killed her first child. Angelina only started healing when she finally broke the denial, recognized and accepted that truth about abortion. She recognized that her daughter whom she named, Sarah Elizabeth, existed even just for a short while. With the help of her friends and Silent No More, Angelina shares her testimony today to prevent others from going through the same experience and to show them that there is hope and healing after abortion.”
• Angelina told me no one told her abortion looked like that. No one did. It's very important for us to share the truth about abortion and to share a message of healing and hope to those who are wounded by abortion.

• Next step: my mom's gonna kill me “How do we respond to a crisis pregnancy?”
  • “A pregnant teenager is pictured here with the caption, “my mom's gonna kill me””
  • Will her mom actually physically kill her? No.
  • Would it be wrong if her mom did? If you knew her mom was going to, should you try to stop her mom?
  • Now, if this girl has an abortion, will that actually physically kill her child? Yes.
  • If it's wrong for this girl's mom to kill her, because she's unexpectedly pregnant, why would it be okay for this teenage mom to kill her pre-born child because she's unexpectedly pregnant?
• We need to provide real support to women facing a crisis pregnancy. If you'd like to know more on what resources are available in the city, please feel free to email me.
• Our culture needs to know the truth about abortion. And we should always find ways to alleviate suffering, but never to eliminate the sufferers. Thank you.

• questionnaires
• handouts?
• contact cards?

• guidelines for connecting with teacher
• activism starter prep for enthusiastic students

• SLL info card
• one-page TRTL handout
  • crisis pregnancy contact
  • post-abortive healing (Silent No More Awareness Campaign)
  • facts about prenatal development (ehd.org?)
  • facts about law in canada (WNAL talking points)
  • summary of key points? (apologetics infographic?)
• sign-up sheet thing?