PBS302H: The Vanishing Pro-Life Apologist

The Vanishing Pro-Life Apologist: Putting the Life Back Into the Debate (1999)

There is merit to what both say. Pro-lifers must do more than stress the humanity of the unborn, especially with those facing the terror of unplanned pregnancy. This is why crisis pregnancy centers are so important. It is also true that for some abortion-minded women, appeals to self-interest may dissuade them from killing their babies.
But Swope and Matthews-Green are not saying we should reframe the debate in the narrow context of crisis counseling. Rather, they are telling the pro-life movement in general to speak less of the fetus and more to the self- interested needs of women. Although both have made important contributions to our cause, I think they are mistaken for the following reasons.

1. It is simply not true that the pro-life movement has won the debate over the status of the fetus
   • “Swope and Matthews-Green are confusing what the public says with what it truly believes. People hold contradictory and incoherent views on abortion precisely because they don’t really believe that the unborn are fully human, despite their rhetoric to the contrary. As philosopher Francis Beckwith points out, why do women only kill their fetuses when confronted with practical difficulties, rather than their already born children, if they truly believe their fetuses are fully human?”
   • “[…] When people tell me they personally oppose abortion but think it should be legal anyway, I ask a simple question to audit their core beliefs about the unborn. I ask why they personally oppose abortion. Nearly always, the response is, 'I oppose it because it kills a baby,' at which point I merely repeat their own words. 'Let me see if I’ve got this straight: You say you oppose abortion because it kills a baby, but you think it should be legal to kill babies?' Those who are intellectually honest respond with stunned silence before conceding, 'Gee, I never thought of it like that.' But many others reply glibly, 'Well, it's not the same thing.'”
2. A strategy centered primarily on the self-interest of the woman sets a dangerous precedent for the pro-life movement
   • True conversion on any ethical issue requires moral and intellectual assent. How can there be moral and intellectual assent if nothing in the ads speaks to moral or intellectual issues? What you get in this case are not true converts to the pro-life position, but self-interested converts who may readily abandon their newly found pro-life views. As one abortion rights leader put it, “The overwhelming majority of Americans are against abortion except in cases of rape, incest, and their own personal circumstances.” That is the heart of the issue.
   • “In fact Care Net, the nation's largest affiliate of CPCs, reports that 80 percent of clients seen by its centers are not abortion minded.”
   • Gregg Cunningham of the CBR: “I'm glad that some women can be loved into loving their babies, but I won’t let that fact blind me to the reality that there are many others who will kill their babies if they are not made more horrified of abortion than they are terrified of their own crisis pregnancies.”
3. Downplaying the truth about abortion patronizes the very women we are trying to help
   • Swope is right that pro-lifers must address the woman’s emotional concerns but wrong to say that we must downplay the truth about abortion in order to do this. Are we to conclude that women can’t look at abortion objectively?
   • Naomi Wolf (feminist author and abortion advocate): “The pro-choice movement often treats with contempt the pro-lifers' practice of holding up to our faces their disturbing graphics…[But] how can we charge that it is vile and repulsive for pro-lifers to brandish vile and repulsive images if the images are real? To insist that truth is in poor taste is the very height of hypocrisy. Besides, if these images are often the facts of the matter, and if we then claim that it is offensive for pro-choice women to be confronted by them, then we are making a judgment that women are too inherently weak to face a truth about which they have to make a grave decision. This view is unworthy of feminism.”
   • As unpleasant as it seems, breaking people's hearts over abortion is often an indispensable predicate to changing their minds. Pictures change the way they feel, and facts change the way they think. Both are vital. “I wish it weren't so, but whatever might be a CPCs reasons for categorically rejecting the use of graphic depictions of abortion, those reasons had better be more important than the lives of the babies who will die because of that policy,” writes Cunningham.
4. Downplaying the truth about abortion is totally unnecessary and strips the pro-life movement of its most powerful tools of persuasion
   • We can win if we force abortion advocates to defend killing babies. The national debate over partial-birth abortion (PBA) is a case in point.
     1. First, public opinion has shifted modestly in our favor. [Compare this to contemporary debates in the US: PPSellsBabyParts, or the Pain-Capable Abortion bans, or dismemberment abortion bans]
        • At a National Abortion Federation meeting in 1996, Kathryn Kohlbert cautioned delegates that if the debate over partial-birth abortion focuses on what happens to the unborn, their side will get “creamed.” She urged focusing exclusively on the woman:
          • If the debate is whether or not the fetus feels pain, we lose. If the debate in the public arena is what’s the effect of anesthesia. [on the fetus], we’ll lose. If the debate is on whether or not women ought to be entitled to late abortion, we will probably lose. But if the debate is on the circumstances of individual women, and [how] the government shouldn’t be making those decisions, then I think we can win these fights.
        • graphic depictions of abortion have put our opponents on the defensive.
     2. shift in public opinion has led to legislative progress
        • See dismemberment ban, pain-capable bans, or Gosnell and the medical standards legislation, see John Oliver's piece on pro-life laws in 2015
        • Swope replies that his strategy does not necessarily apply to legislative or political change, but only to reaching the general public. […] Most legislators, especially those who are pro-abortion, are not going to support pro-life legislation in the absence of intense pressure from constituents. What changed the minds of constituents in this case was not concern for the self-interest of women, but the brutal reality of abortion.
     3. both the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology have issued reports condemning partial-birth abortion
     4. PBA legislation has raised the issue of fetal pain, further calling into question the morality of abortion
     5. the PBA debate has undermined the credibility of abortion advocates in general. Simply put they were caught lying, and even their staunchest supporters in the media felt cheated

The partial birth debate damaged the pro-abortion side because it focused on what abortion does to the unborn. Pro-lifers did two things right. First, we forced abortion advocates to defend the indefensible. Second, we marshaled factual evidence to show that our opponents were lying. That’s the essence of effective pro-life apologetics as we approach the twenty-first century.

dialogue example, put in modern context of CBR/LTI/CCBR and our UTSFL focus on apologetics and dialogue in activism

http://www.str.org/articles/the-vanishing-pro-life-apologist

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/03/october-letters-49 (also with a response from Paul Swope)