What Would You Say to a Professing Christian Who Is Radically Pro-Choice?

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What Would You Say to a Professing Christian Who Is Radically Pro-Choice?

September 8, 2022

Questions about what approach to take with a professing Christian who is radically pro-choice and has rejected pro-life arguments, considering it all to be a matter of opinion.

* What approach would you take with a professing Christian who is radically pro-choice and has rejected pro-life arguments, considering it all to be a matter of opinion?

Transcript

#STRask What Would You Say to a Professing Christian Who Is Radically Pro-Choice? I'm Amy Hall and I'm here with Greg Koukl. This is the #STRask podcast. Welcome to you listener.

Good listener. And welcome to you Amy. Okay Greg, this question comes from anonymous.

Actually I think our last question was anonymous. So here's another one. How would you approach a professing Christian who is radically and narcissistically pro-choice? For example abortion is okay through the ninth month.

They reject sled. The fetus is not a human but like a parasite is not a person until viable and outside the womb and considers it all a matter of opinion. I'm chuckling at the last concept.

Pro-choice because it's okay to abort for all these reasons and that is just a matter of opinion. That is kind of contradictory. Well it relativizes, I guess I'm presuming this is a woman that's making, I don't know if that's is there an indication? It doesn't actually say but go ahead and for that refer to her.

Of course we've done a lot of writing on this issue and all that was said, let me just make a judgment on it and then explain why. All that was just said that this person offered is ridiculous. It's just ridiculous.

All of the statements, we'll go over them again. I'll have you reread them in a moment but especially the ending and it's just a matter of opinion. Well if it's just a matter of opinion you're relativizing the whole issue.

Then even her point of view is simply a matter of opinion and there's no truth to the matter. It's just and it's a parasite really. I mean is that the way the statement went? Could you read that again? I'm curious.

If he is not a human but like a parasite. Okay but like a parasite like a you know a tapeworm. Okay well a tapeworm is a worm.

A parasite, whatever parasite it is, is something in particular. So what kind of parasite is the thing growing inside? I'm just now off the top of my head. I'm not giving this organized response but it's um Amy mentioned before we went on the air.

This is questions going to probably make you mad. It makes me kind of chuckle because it's so silly all of these statements. If a person is a Christian, presumably that means some kind of adherence to Christian theology, biblical revelation and the person of Jesus.

All right. Now this is your first point of ambiguity. What does this person mean when she says? I'm just going to presume it's a gal is for the sake of discussion.

What does it mean when she says she's a Christian? This is a very important question to ask because there is um there are there are lots of variations of this definition nowadays. Mormons are Christians in the minds of many people. Of course there's nothing that is classically Christian about their theology.

Progressives are Christians. That's why they called progressive Christians but they reject virtually it. Progressivism as a as a broader movement rejects virtually everything that is foundational to classical Christianity.

So I don't my thinking with progressives is why don't they just you know find a different name for themselves instead of calling themselves some kind of Christian because there's nothing about them. It strikes me that is at all Christian except for the name that they choose for themselves. They certainly aren't tying any of their views to Jesus, the Jesus of the Gospels because that Jesus wasn't a you know social justice warrior and he wasn't I've written about this last year and he wasn't like all about love and acceptance and all that other stuff that they characterize.

So in any event I don't know what it means for this person to be a Christian. If this person is a in fact a Christian how can this person identify the unborn as a parasite when in Luke chapter one you have that parasite in the second trimester being filled with the Holy Spirit in the womb of Elizabeth and that parasite is called by God. If this is God's word a baby and this fetus who is John the Baptist though not named yet that same individual is leaping for joy being filled with the Spirit because he is in the presence of the Lord which is Jesus in the womb of his mother Mary and Jesus.

I'm trying to think of the right way to always figure this not as I go not a fetus what's the next one embryo and Jesus is an embryo in the beginning of the first trimester. So Jesus who is the Lord is a parasite according to this person John the Baptist filled with the Spirit in the presence of the Lord Jesus the parasite is also a parasite and they're not human what are they? I mean everything that is growing and developing is some kind of thing. You can find them located kingdom, phylum, class order, family, genus species.

We have a way of classifying human living things and we can put every living thing somewhere on that list. They have a characterization in each one of those descending categories and those things go through stages of development. There is no such thing as a fetus.

There are things as dogs in fetal stages or cats in adult stages or trees in seed stages like acorns and oaks but there is no such thing as a seed as such. What is that? That's just a seed. What kind of seed? It's not any kind of seed.

It's just a seed. They all fall into a category. Oh it's a fetus or it's an embryo or it's a zygote.

Okay what kind? Oh it's not any kind of thing. It's just a zygote. It is.

It's a type of zygote stage of the development of some kind of creature. So this is scientifically nonsense what this objection amounts to. It's nonsense in the Christian claim.

It's the nonsense in the not human claim. It's the nonsense in the parasite claim and it's nonsense in the relativistic claim. It's just a matter of opinion.

No it's not just a matter. Is gravity a matter of opinion? If you don't believe in gravity you're going to float away? No it's a feature of reality. It has nothing to do with opinion.

Now whether abortion is immoral, that's a moral assessment. Whether abortion kills an unborn human being is not a moral assessment. It is a scientific assessment and there is no debate about that at all in the circles where people know about this stuff like doctors and embryologists etc.

And you learn this what software your biology in high school but this is the kind of tripe. Well your concern I was going to get angry here. This is the kind of tripe that passes as a thoughtful point of view.

So the way to deal with the thing like this is to go through the parts as I've done kind of my little, what would you call this, my little pre-tramony, I don't know, but go through the parts of the claim and then see if they're true. Is Hagedas butter cup become ice cream delicious? That is a matter of opinion. Is the unborn a human being? That is a matter of fact not opinion.

It either is or it is not. And it's possible to find out. And the same with those other issues.

Okay now if a person claims to be a Christian then bringing in Luke chapter one is completely legitimate. I'm pausing here because I'm just thinking do I have anything more to say about this than just to conclude that it's all nonsense what this woman is saying. I'm not saying that people can't offer principled pro-choice arguments.

This what I was just read off, this is just a bunch of who we. It sounds to me but all of these things are what you're going to hear on social media. So this person is probably very is seeing people say this out there.

These are the things that people throw out there just on the street. These are the the you know abortions always okay. Be this is not a human.

Be this is a parasite all those sorts of things. So this is what the culture is telling her. So there are two possibilities here.

It could be she's never heard arguments before. And in that case that what Greg what you've just said is exactly what you need to do. However it also says in this question that she rejects sled which seems to me to suggest that anonymous has talked to her about this and she rejects it.

So it sounds to me like she's probably heard some of these arguments before. So start with the arc. Okay go ahead.

Let me give some substance to sled sleds in the acronym SLED. And what is meant to show is that there are four ways that the unborn is disqualified from value in a way that they are different from obvious examples of valuable human beings who are already born. And that would be size or appearance a level of development environment and degree of dependency level of development would be what they can do.

Environment is where they're located in the womb or out the womb. And so she's she's okay with abortion for nine months. But that same child if that same is born at seven months then I presume that baby should be protected once outside of the womb.

So the same baby is protected at this location but not in another location. And then degree of dependency and that's the viability thing. So these are all ways of showing that these the argument is meant to show that these four distinctions between the unborn and the born are not morally significant to the question of abortion.

So she rejects sled. What does that mean? She has found a way of countering in an intelligent way these concerns that size is not is a relevant issue of value. Well women are usually smaller than men.

So maybe women are less valuable because they're smaller. Okay, I mean this is the way the sled argument goes. So she rejects it.

What does that mean? Oh, I reject that. Okay, why? I just rejected. I don't find it compelling.

Well, okay, so now you're not if that's the way it's going and it sounds like oh she rejects sled. Does she do it in a substantive fashion? Or any shows that these things don't these aren't these are in fact relevant features of the unborn that disqualify them from value. This move by the way has been made before.

All right, it was made with Dred Scott decision in 1849 or 47 or whatever it was. This is move with the ethnic cleansing is based on these concepts. Some human beings don't look right.

You know that I mean this has been done before. It hasn't worked out very well. If this is the way you ascribe value to human beings.

And this is the way she is just ascribing value to human beings. Okay, well then let's say let's apply this in other circumstances. Anyway, this led test is useful to make a particular kind of point.

Now if she rejects sled in the sense that she accepts those points and she agrees that the unborn is an entirely valuable human person but abortion is still justified for another reason. Maybe bodily rights or something like that then or because it's self-defense the fetus is attacking the mother. This is a characterization that is often made and maybe this is where the parasite characterization comes in.

They acknowledge the violinist argument of Judith Jarvis Thompson famously acknowledges the full humanity and personhood of the unborn but still thinks abortion is okay. Now that's a different angle. So that's a different tact.

And actually I've written about that in the new book that will be coming out in the fall but most of my stuff has already been next year. Next year it's coming out. I'm sorry did I say the fall? I mean yeah it's going to be June should be June mid-2023.

In any event but it's it's all of these ideas are in play. We've used them before and others have used them and developed them and whatever so I'm just trying to put them together but these these kinds of challenges don't hold water. And if we accept this idea regarding these human beings that are in the womb we we set up what's called a logical slippery slope.

We set up a set of criteria and they have ramifications in other areas. If they're legitimate here they're they're they're legitimate in other areas as well because they're morally parallel circumstances and and when you see what be like ethnic cleansing for example then the consequences are really I mean that's quite a bullet to have to bite from the line of thinking. Once again I'm going to emphasize just because we can give a solid a case for the unborn and the value of the unborn and why we should not be killing the unborn for the reasons that people give for abortion even these new fangled things they've come up with just because we can do that does not mean a person who is belligerent on this issue and wants to have their own way is going to listen.

So ultimately start with the arguments as you've explained Greg break it break it down into its pieces the challenges right. I actually think it's it's encouraging that she says a fetus is not a human because there are a lot of places you can go to to talk about whether or not a fetal human being is actually a human being. So that's that's actually easier to deal with than somebody who says yeah it's a human being but we can still kill it.

So that might be somewhere you can go with her but if it's somebody that you have talked to about all these things and they're holding on to these these answers and even this last part is occlude to me considers it all a matter of opinion. It does sound like she's heard some of the arguments and now she's trying to as you said relativize it to get out of having to respond to the arguments you're making. Well now I start to think there's something else going on here and especially if this person is a Christian and you know you after you've done all you can do you've found common ground you've said do you agree that we should not kill innocent human beings yes well then let's talk about whether they're human beings you you get as much common ground as you can get and they're still relativizing and denying and all those sorts of things.

I think at this point we've come to a point where they have other reasons for denying what you're saying and my guess and it won't be the case every time but my guess and I think this drives a lot of pro-choice activism is that what is underneath is guilt. There's if you are guilty of having an abortion I it's so hard for me to believe that you truly deep down to the bottom of your soul think that what you did was okay you have killed your child and no matter how much you try to use the the culture's approval of you to make yourself feel better you cannot paper over that you have to deny with your whole heart and mind that anything pro-lifers are saying is valid because otherwise you have to face that guilt and so I honestly think this is what's driving a whole lot of what's happening in our culture and what this seeming lack of of common sense as you talked about you have to deny those things if you have guilt and this is where if she's a Christian this is where you need to take this because the only way you can face the gravity of abortion is if you've had an abortion is if you couple that with the gospel you have no one can face that kind of sin without the gospel so if this person is a Christian and maybe maybe they're not a progressive Christian maybe this is the maybe this is very strange that this this one thing they're they're latching onto I mean I don't know what this person's past is but you need to couple this with the gospel and maybe don't even apply it to them maybe just say you know I am so grateful as we're talking about this question I'm thinking about the gravity of it I am just so grateful that God forgives sin and he forgives the worst sin he forgives worse sins than this and the gospel is great enough to cover this sin not because God is sweeping it under the rug but because the justice has actually already been brought about by Jesus on the cross there's no sweeping under the rug there's no ignoring it there's just a covering of it and it taking away and it's an amazing amazing thing how God forgives if you can bring that into the conversation then that might be what's missing here in this person's understanding of this issue and I'm not it might not be but I suspect in a lot of cases this is what's going on that's a great observation and to go from the sublime to the somewhat ridiculous here but it is related to the comment I wonder if this individual who sees a friend who is pregnant obviously pregnant what she says to her hey how's your parasite that's the ridiculous part oh well that would be insensitive why if that's what it is well she doesn't think it's a parasite but I think it's a parasite what would you say how's your baby she would probably say how's your baby because that's what she actually believes she doesn't believe it's a parasite anyway or and it's not just her body because you don't go up to a pregnant woman and say hey how's your body you're asking about the body of the baby and this is why I say something else is going on because we all know what we're doing but as a culture we're desperately trying to justify ourselves and setting instead of looking to Christ for justification and we can never justify ourselves we will never say enough to quiet that guilt in our hearts whatever topic we're talking about there will never be enough unless we actually have it forgiven reminds me of Shakespeare's line me thinks thou does protest too much it's betraying something else going on well this is why we are Christians this is why we do what we do we're trying to help people to understand the gospel and understand who God is and so never forget that and almost every everything you confront this is going to apply to that people need to hear the gospel and so there you go Greg on that note looks like we only got through one question today but hopefully that will be helpful to you good one to you anonymous we were glad to help you out there send us your question on twitter with the hashtag strask or send it through our website on our hashtag strask podcast page all right thanks for listening this is Amy Hall and Greg Cocle for a stand to reason

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