Should Abortion Be Legal

Debate Introduction and the Case for Legal Abortion

For this evening, I know that you're excited, like me, to witness a spirited exchange of ideas, and that we will maintain a respectful attention and quiet during the debate, and that there will be absolutely no need for any calling and insecurity.

So, now, let me introduce this evening's speakers. Ms. Danielle Kingsbury is a December 2012 graduate of SUNY Lawrence. She majored in Adolescent English Education with minors in Linguistics and Photography.

Since graduating, she has spent her time teaching mentally and physically handicapped people to ski, as well as being a teaching assistant and home tutor in the Pine Bush School District. She co-founded the Secular Student Alliance with Leo Vogel, after being inspired to advocate for non-theists at the Reason Rally in 2012.

Mr. Harris has been involved with college ministry since 2006, serving on the campuses of Dutchess Community College, College of the Canyons, and SUNY New Paltz, as well as leading Bible studies at both his local church, Grace Bible Church in Walthamers Falls, and Vassar Roman Baptist Church in Poughkeepsie.

He has taught apologetics, how to defend the Christian faith from objections at various local churches, and currently serves as a deacon intern at Grace Bible Church. Mr. Harris graduated from Thomas Edison State College in 2010 with a B .A. in History, and is currently working on his Master's of Divinity at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary.

Please join me in welcoming Ms. Imanis. The role of the speakers has been already determined, and this evening it will be Ms. Kingsbury who begins.

As you may have guessed from our introductions, I believe abortion should be legal, because women have the right to an informed decision about medical procedure with their own body. When abortion is illegal, the number of abortions does not drop, but the number of women who survive the procedure certainly does.

Illegal abortion is one that can be practiced with sterile equipment in a hospital with highly trained doctors. The alternative for many women is not simply having a child, but instead undergoing the procedure, as Patrick Swayze said in Dirty Dancing, traveling through New Paltz with a dirty knife and a fold-up table.

While many say the solution is to simply not get pregnant, this requires a great deal of resources. People are products of their environment, and the U .S. is not fostering one of personal responsibility when it comes to reproductive issues.

Instead of blaming women and forcing them to carry unwanted babies to term, we should be blaming them for changing society that puts them in this position. While I was student teaching at New Paltz Middle School, my students brought up Teen Mom, The Real World, New Jersey, Super Bowl commercials, and a song about blowing a metaphorical whistle, which all they knew had connections to sex.

They were just 12 or 13 years old, and they already knew so much about sex, but I assume that they didn't know how to have it safely or what consent was. In a country where rapists are looked at with mercy, such as what happened in Steubenville, it is not fair to women to bear all of the burden of their rapist crimes.

Surely even lawmakers know that less birth control equals less unwanted babies, therefore equals more abortions, right? Maybe not considering the prevalence of abstinence-only education, when in fact the states with the highest amount of teen pregnancies are the same states that teach abstinence-only sex education.

Where abstinence-only sex education thrives, the abortion rate is twice what it is in the U .S., but where there is easy access to contraception and information about how to use it, the abortion rate is half the rate in the U .S.

Teens have sex whether they have contraception or not, and similarly, women get abortions whether the government allows them to or not. The World Health Organization, Department of Reproductive Health and Research, said in a telephone interview, we now have a global picture of induced abortion in the world, covering both countries where it is legal and countries where it is very restrictive.

But we see that the law does not influence a woman's decision to have an abortion. In 1996, the procedure was made legal in South Africa, leading to a 90 decrease in mortality among women who had abortions.

But since abortion is illegal in most of Africa, it is the second leading cause of death of women admitted to hospitals in Ethiopia. Again, making abortion illegal does not prevent women from having it.

It does not save babies, it kills women. If you are thinking, well what about the children? I inform you, approximately 220 ,000 children worldwide each year lose their mothers to abortion-related deaths.

In the U .S. in 2007, 61 of abortions came from women who already had one or more children. For a person to call themselves pro-life, they need to consider all forms of human life, including the adult who is choosing to have an elective procedure.

Bidding abortion does not make the pregnancies that occur wanted, but access to contraception makes those unwanted pregnancies not occur in the first place. But, let's again take on a pro-life stance and say, look, if a woman doesn't want to have a kid, she should just give it up for adoption.

This is a no better solution. Our foster care system had 400 ,000 youth under age 18 in 2011. In 2007, there were 1 .2 million abortions performed in the U .S., according to the census. That means that if even just half the women considering abortions were to go the adoption route instead, the number of kids in our foster care system would double within one year.

As many of you know, the foster care system is not perfect. The average child will wait at least three years to be adopted once entering the system, and every year 60 ,000 kids are never permanently adopted and age out.

Of the children who age out in the foster care, just 6 will go on to age to get two or four year degrees. Over half the kids will go through three or more replacements with different families, and almost a third of the children in the system will go through five or more elementary schools.

Additionally, every child in the foster care system costs the taxpayers $40 ,000 per year. With newer advances in fertility, such as in vitro fertilization, artificial insemination, and surrogacy, many couples who would have formerly adopted are now no longer choosing adoption.

If anything, this can become an argument for gay marriage, considering many GLBT couples want children but cannot bear them. Another pro-life stance is that abortion has negative consequences that we must protect women from.

Some of these include regret, psychological trauma, or bodily harm in the form of increased rates of cancer or a higher likelihood of having a miscarriage in the future. So this should remind you that women are adults and abortion is elective.

Do you know what else kills people, causes bodily harm, and psychological trauma? Going to war with hundreds of thousands of adults. Make that decision every single year that that is the right idea for them to do at this time.

We must also acknowledge that there is no precedent for the lack of safety determining whether something should be legal. Cigarettes, for example, are subsidized by the government despite the fact that they are linked to death and cancer.

People still choose to have them, and yet very few people advocate for their complete ban. Like any surgery, women must make an informed decision on whether this is the right choice for them personally, and no one except their doctor or the people that they are in a relationship with should be able to influence that decision.

Another pro-life stance puts abortion in a simply black or white idea that abortion is killing a person, therefore it is murder. But murder is not a black or white issue. Was it murder-murder? Did a killer manslaughter?

Did it happen for a self-defense? Was it part of a hate crime? Was it part of a government-ordered assassination? Did it occur to a civilian during a war? Or was it the killing of an inmate on death row through the use of capital punishment?

These all carry different sentences and in some cases none at all because murder is not a black or white issue. Now I am not a scholar of the Bible, but John is, so I am going to quote a few passages because in order for something to be considered murder, it must be a human life that is taken.

The Bible specifically tells Christians when life begins, which is after a living being has drawn his first breath. In Genesis 2 -7, he breathed life into his nostrils, the breath of life, and it was then that man became a living being.

Although the man was fully formed by God in all respects, he was not a living being until after taking his first breath. In John 33 -4, it states, The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.

In Exodus 21 -22, this one is kind of long, so I am going to paragraph it. If you have questions, I should be able to write it down. In modern English it says, If a woman gets hurt in the course of men fighting and she miscarries, the man who caused the miscarriage must pay a fine that the judges determine.

Now throughout the rest of the Bible, healing someone is punishable by death, but because the man is merely fined, we can deduce that the man did not commit murder. Coincidentally, 65 of abortions are from women who either identify as Protestant or Catholic.

It appears as though even Christians don't think abortion is murder when they are put in the precarious position of having to choose. Before I conclude, I will warn you of the graphic video John had planned to show you.

The first two thirds of the video feature abortions from the first trimester, and these account for 90 of abortions. While the images are blurry, they are also extremely zoomed in. At seven weeks, the fetus is only the size of a blueberry, and it can be removed in one piece.

The fetuses in the video were cut apart for shock value. The final and most shocking clip is from a 24-week-old fetus. Take comfort that just 2 of abortions are performed after 21 weeks, and third trimester abortions are generally medical emergencies where the mother's life is in danger or the baby could not survive outside the womb due to congenital birth defects.

In conclusion, I am pro-choice because there are not sufficient resources in place to help women who are forced to make the difficult decision. Until there is proper sex education, free access to contraception, and rape is eliminated, unwanted pregnancies will occur.

The foster care system is not a viable alternative because it is a broken system, and banning abortion does not make pregnancies wanted, it just makes the procedure more dangerous. It is not right to punish women with unsafe procedures because lawmakers do not understand the separation of church and state, even when the Bible itself does not consider abortion murder.

And it is certainly discriminatory to force the consequences of sex or rape on the woman alone. It takes two to create a baby, but only one person gets their rights taken away as a result of it. So should abortion be legal?

Absolutely.

Christian Opening and the Central Question of What the Unborn Is

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, Danielle, for agreeing to debate. Thank you, Professor Arsenault, for agreeing to moderate. And for everyone else who decided to come out on such a nice evening to hear about an important topic.

I'm really happy to see you, and I hope that we can have a profitable discussion this evening. I'd also like to thank, last but not least, I'd like to thank my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for allowing this debate to occur for His honor and glory.

That being said, I couldn't help but notice as I was listening to my friend, Danielle, speak tonight that I, too, agree with her on much of what she said. I also agree that individual freedom of choice should be the principle of our country, even when it comes to abortion.

I also agree that our individual conceptions of what's right and wrong, whether they be religious or otherwise, should not enter into judicial decisions, and that none of us should push our moral views on others.

In other words, I think that Danielle is absolutely right on the issue of abortion if... if what? If the fetus is not human. You see, if abortion is nothing more than clipping a nail or taking out an appendix, then I see no reason to oppose it.

In fact, I think we should support people who make those decisions. It's in their freedom and their best interest. But you have to answer the question, what is the unborn, before answering the question, can we kill the unborn?

And to illustrate this, I'd like to give you a little analogy. Imagine for a moment you're studying, and your brother walks in the room and he says, can I kill this? Now, what's the first response you're going to give to your brother after he says something like that?

Probably, you're going to ask the question, what is it? If it's a snail or a bug, sure, go smoosh it, don't tell mom. If it's a neighbor's cat, we may have some issues. If it's your younger sister, he needs counseling.

You would not say, sure, go ahead, go kill it, without first asking the question, what has he got? And I'd like to suggest to you that that is the question of tonight's debate. You cannot make the decision to kill the unborn before knowing what it is.

The pro-choice movement needs to come to terms with this question of what is abortion. And she states, I quote, 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 images are real? Well, I think Ms. Wolfe may be onto something here. In a moment, I'm going to show you a short 51-second video.

You will not see an entire abortion performed from start to finish, but you will see the aftermath in the first, second, third trimesters. It is disturbing. If you wish not to look, then you can simply opt out by averting your gaze.

I didn't come here to condemn anyone who may have had an abortion tonight. Rather, I'm here to inform everyone what an abortion actually is. And the reason I didn't come here to condemn is because I am a believer in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And I believe it says we all have a problem. We are all lawbreakers of God, myself included. And the only place to find peace and forgiveness is in Him. So I'll say some more words about that later. But with that, I'd like to now roll the film for you.

Embryology, Conception, and the Image of God

And each of us as a unique individual begins with fertilism, the zygotes. These are leading embryology textbooks, and I could go on. Also say that the question of when life begins is no longer a question for theological or philosophical disputes.

It is an astoundingly scientific question. It begins at the moment of conception. Because we think of the embryo the same way we think of a car that is constructed piece by piece. We're lucky to see the Corvette factory and say that we have a Corvette.

Plates are put together, and rightfully so. Although those plates, by themselves, they are different opinions on this. When do we actually have a Corvette? Is it when the frame's put together? Some of you might say it's not until the wheels hit the ground and you can breath it that we actually have a Corvette.

However, ladies and gentlemen, human embryos are not like Corvettes that are constructed piece by piece from the outside. Do something that no constructed thing like a Corvette ever did. They develop themselves from within.

And that entails continuity of identity. That is why such a mistake to talk about the unborn is merely potential human life. When you're referring to an entity that develops itself from within, you aren't dealing with a potential human life.

You're dealing with a human life with great potential. Ladies and gentlemen, the unborn are living, distinct, and whole human beings. The kind of thing we are dealing with, it cannot tell us what gives humans value.

The truth, if you're a Christian, you know the answer. It's because we're made in the image of our creator. We all presuppose that we have life because of this. What difference is there between the embryo you once were and the adult you are today?

But you have value and a right to life today. And there are only four differences. Size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency. You can think of the acronym SLED, S-L-E-D. Size, you were much smaller than you are now.

That's true, right? You were very small. But since when did size justify killing anyone? A six-year-old is larger than a two-year-old. Men are generally larger than women. Does this mean that they have more rights?

It's true, you were less developed as an embryo. Two-year-old girls are less developed than 21-year-old girls. Human than a 21-year-old girl is. Environment, you are determined what you are. So I've watched a bunch of you come in this room.

You came from outside to inside, but you didn't stop being you. How does a journey of eight inches down the birth canal change you from a non-human that we can destroy to a valuable human that we cannot?

You don't achieve value by changing your address. Finally, degree of dependency. Sure, you depend on your mother for survival, but how does dependence on another human being give us the right to kill you?

A two-year-old is dependent on her mother. Degree of dependency, think SLED. Those are the only four differences between who you are now and who you were as an embryo. And none of them are proper justifications for killing you at the earlier stage.

Look around the room. Make a really awkward for your neighbor if you need to. Here's a question I want to ask you tonight. What makes us equal? It can't be body size, right? It can't be intelligence. There's only one thing that we share in common, and that's our human nature.

And you have it from the time you begin to exist. Thank you.

The Unborn, Human Nature, and the Moral Status of Abortion

...of this debate that there is a great potential in human life if we unborn. When I was doing the research for this debate, I saw a pro-life film called 180. It's on YouTube. It's a 30-something minute documentary.

I'm sure about half of you have seen it, given statistics. And in that debate, they compare the Holocaust to the abortions that currently go on. And they ask people on the street, if you had the option to abort Hitler, would you do so?

A lot of people said yes, and a lot of people said no. And I, my personal answer to that question is no. Because you can't determine what will come from an embryo or a future baby or whatever you really call that particular bundle of cells until it actually ends up in the world.

Environmental factors play a huge part in people's development. Again, with the foster care statistics, just 6 of people that get aged out of the foster care system go to two and four-year colleges.

How you are raised has a huge impact on what becomes of you. Just because you were once a bunch of embryos does not mean that you will become an awesome person or a terrible person. He also brought up that the true question of the debate is what is the unborn?

And when does the unborn become a child? You noticed in my opening statement, I very specifically avoided that because the question of the debate is, should abortion be legal? It doesn't matter when you think a person becomes a person or not, because that's not the question that we're asking.

The question is not, is abortion moral? It's, should it be legal? And we both agree that laws are not necessarily based on morality. We believe that people are made in the image of their creator. However, in the Bible, God kills a lot of babies.

In Isaiah, prepare a place to slaughter his children for the sins of their ancestors. In that case, the baby is being, or excuse me, the child is being to them for his parents' sins. Kill this man's children.

Let them die because of their father's sins. Same part. In which, I can't pronounce this because I don't do Bible things. Hosea, can you pronounce that for me? Hosea. Hosea, okay. The wombs that don't give birth and breasts that give no milk.

Even if your children do survive to grow up, I will take them from you. It will be a terrible day and I will turn you alone. The people of Samaria, as they rebel against their God, they will be killed by an invading enemy.

Their little ones dashed to death against the ground. The pregnant women ripped open by swords. In the Bible, the God is causing miscarriages by sword. If this happens in a hospital, people can find forgiveness in the sin that you are not condemning.

It is possible for a woman to find peace and forgiveness in God at any point. Why does it matter if she had an abortion or not? And in fact, because the baby wasn't given the opportunity to sin, doesn't that mean that he automatically gets a place in heaven?

So therefore, we could be doing fetuses a favor by automatically giving them a free pass. It's a ticket out of hell. You cause no sins. You are innocent. You are on trial before the Lord. And you didn't even have the opportunity to do anything bad.

Ticket to heaven. Very good. How this works, conception is where life begins, roughly. So I have a question. Since in vitro fertilization, clinics also create and discard embryos, would you be in favor of outlawing that?

A cloning where no fertilization actually takes place because it only comes from one parent. Are all of those experiments considered abortion? And what would that look like for the future? And what do you propose that we do with 1 .2 million extra children that compounds because of the snowball effect?

I agree that these children could lead promising lives, but as it stands now, there's no great resources in place for them to do so. I'm unclear about a couple things. The first one I want to ask is just a basic question.

Should murder be legal? It depends on the situation. Not for me personally, but in general, capital punishment is legal. Well, I'm asking about murders. I would find that the unjustified.

Taking of a human life. Nope. It should never be legal. Maybe in cases of self-defense. Okay. So you were pro-life. In the general sense of the word. You said that we both agree that laws aren't based on morality.

I was wondering what you heard me say that led you to believe that our laws aren't based on morality. You literally said exactly that. Okay. I guess that's the tape. I don't remember saying that, but I wanted to challenge you on that for a moment, though.

What laws do you specifically think.

Are not based on morality? For cigarettes, for example. Laws about whether people should have to wear seatbelts or not. Laws that say that self-defense is just by capital punishment legal. We're doing drone strikes.

I'm against war. That's currently legal. Let me just be clear. You don't think there's any moral component to any of those? There are. For example, like I said, seatbelt laws. If there's no accident, nobody's getting hurt.

It's your own body. Let me ask you a simple question. We'll take the seatbelt example. Do you think the seatbelt laws are right? In your conscience, do you believe it's the right thing? To require people to wear seatbelts?

Yes. Depending on their age.

If they're under 16, absolutely. So that is a moral decision then, correct? In my opinion. But according to the law... So the law is based on morality, then? Well, it's an important point because you made the statement that we're here to debate the legality of abortion and that laws aren't based on morals.

So I'm asking you if you can find me a law.

That's not based on morality somewhere. I heard you did. Adults don't have to receive belts if they don't want to. So that's right. How about laws about marijuana, for example? So you think it's right to legalize it?

Yes. So that's immoral? Right. So you believe morally that it's right to legalize it? But as of now, it's not based on a moral justification because the people... Remember, you spoke my language, I spoke your language.

But I can figure you out.

If you care about science. That's why I was going to also ask you why did you not incorporate any science in your DNA? It's not an English major. It's not where my background is. Do you agree with the science that I put forth in my opening statement that the embryo is a full human being?

It is important, but it's not the question of the being. And also, we're a doctor. Well, you had your five minutes for help. That's why.

You said that a lawyer should make the decision of when to terminate a pregnancy, correct?

I said that no one except a doctor and the people she is in a relationship with should be able to influence the decision that she makes. What if it's a two-year-old?

What if what's a two-year-old? What if she wants to give birth to a two-year-old child? Should she just consult a doctor and her friends or should we step in and say don't put your two-year-old?

Two-year-olds aren't good embryos. I know they're not, but they're humans. Would you agree? Yes. Okay. So if it's a human being, then we should step in and save the life of a human being, correct? Yes.

Okay. So isn't the question of this debate whether the embryo is a human being because if it is, then we would have to save the life of that human being, correct? The question of the debate is still should it be legal or not.

I specifically asked you if you were going to go with one. Okay. So should it be legal for a mother to give birth to a two-year-old? No. Why not? Because that's just wrong. Okay. So put that same baby, reverse it now a year and a half it's in the womb, why couldn't you kill it then?

I don't think that six-month-old should be able to be aborted. Why? Unless the woman's mother's life is in danger. Right. Okay. So since in vitro fertilization clinics also create and discard embryos, would you be in favor of outlawing them?

No.

Why? Not necessarily. I have to stick a little more of a nuanced answer to that. The labs that specifically destroy a fertilized egg, I think that there should be laws passed that say that they cannot do that.

Or use it for scientific research that would destroy it. Okay. If you could write the law however you wanted, how would you enforce that? Basically the way I just said they can't do it. Okay. How would you enforce a ban on abortion?

The same way that states did with oral abuse versus rape. Which is?

They outlawed it. They made it illegal. But that does not stop abortions from happening as a rural self-organization. Well, if you make laws against rape, it doesn't stop all rapes from happening either.

It significantly reduces it. It does not significantly reduce it. Well, the facts, if you want to ask me the question, what do they say? I would be happy to answer it. Okay, so for example, in Uganda where abortion is illegal, the sex education program, in Uganda where abortion is illegal, the abortion rate is twice as high as it is in the U .S.

Okay, so Uganda's a different culture, so I don't know exactly. What about Western Europe where the lowest rate has legal abortion and that's half the rate in the U .S.? Okay, but you're comparing.

Apples and oranges here. When we look at a rate... Western Europe is quite similar to the U .S. Well, when we... Very true, but when we look at a rate we're looking at change over time, you're comparing two different geographical places at the same time, so that's a categorical...

It's 2007. Yeah, so you're saying... It's not that much over time. Let me clarify what I'm saying. If you take, let's say, the liberal estimates of abortions before World War II, they said, apparently, 210 ,000 a year, conservative estimates 39 ,000 a year.

Within six years after Roe v. Wade was legalized, we had 1 .6 million abortions in this country. I think the laws did something.

Where did you get those numbers about how many illegal abortions were performed? Like, for Roe v. Wade? Planned Parenthood. Oh, that makes sense. Alright, cool. I have a right to ask. Okay, so... Okay, so what do you think.

The penalty for doctors should be to perform abortions? I mean, if you're assuming that abortion is illegal and, you know, in the world that I'm advocating, I guess, in most cases, then doctors should perform abortions.

I think if they take it as a human life, then that's murder. So they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. And what do you think the penalty for women.

Should be for women to seek out abortions? Well, it would be the same penalty for a woman who decides to kill her two-year-old. So whatever that is. So you would be willing to kill 61 of women who already have children and therefore taking away.

Those children's mothers? No, that's an ex-post-faculty law and I don't support those. It would only be after the law is put in place. Okay. I think women are smarter than that. I don't think that women are forced into abortion if they have no choice.

Which is why they should have the choice whether to get one or not. Exactly. They're not being forced into it. That's not the argument I'm making. I'm saying that if abortions are legal or illegal, I don't think women are necessarily forced into it.

I make that assumption that you're making that 61 couldn't have it anyway because I don't think they will because of the statistics I just cited. I have opposing statistics from the world to one country.

Larger sample size generally results in... But like I said,.

The rate has changed over time. And one of them went back to 1996. Okay, but... So 1996 to when? To now. The procedure was made legal and 90 more mortality decreased in women who had abortions. Okay, I thought we were talking...

Less people died. We're not talking about mortality, though. We're talking about how many abortions take place, correct? Yes. Okay, so that's a statistic about something different. You're still doing mothers.

Sorry. Well, you can ask me that. Okay, so... You can ask me a question. Oh, that was awesome. Okay, so if you were going to women who perform abortions, you are taking the mothers away from 220 ,000 annually.

No. No, like I said, I don't think women are necessarily forced into abortions. But if they were going to have one, they are still going to have them. Yeah, but I... It's the same thing. If you have a two-year-old in front of you...

I'm going to keep saying this two-year-old analogy until we finally admit that this debate is about what being born is. If you wanted that to be the debate, you could have chosen that. You were at the choosing topic meeting.

I was not. Well, if you decided to debate the issue of should abortion be legal, if you think that murder should be illegal and abortion kills a living human being... So what about pregnant women who engage in behaviors that are received for the fetus?

Can they be prosecuted for murder? Give me an example. Child abuse, negligence, if she drinks coffee and she...

A couple of things, I guess. I listened to your opening statements. What I got... I'm still not quite clear when you think a human being comes into existence, whether it's... I don't know if you agree with what you tried to interpret the Bible as saying, which...

I'm not answering the questions. I'm asking rhetorical questions because it's my turn to make a speech. But I don't know if you think that it's at the point in which that they have a first breath or it's at the point in which they are first conceived or what it may be.

But that is the key question of the debate tonight because if it's a human being that you're dealing with, then it would be wrong to kill that human being, really, no matter what the circumstances. It's the same thing if you have a two-year-old, a 15-year-old, or a 25-year-old in front of you.

If that is a living and human entity, part of the human family, then we should discriminate against them. And I haven't heard anything scientifically that would rebut any of the evidence that I gave at the beginning from the community of embryology and I haven't heard anything regarding the philosophical case I made for why we shouldn't support the pro-life position.

What is the difference between who you are now and who you were even in the early stages of development There's only four things that are different. Your size, your level of development, your environment, and your degree of dependency.

None of which are justifications for why your life was more valuable now than it was back then. Shaquille O 'Neal is taller than me. I don't think he has more of a right to life. At least I hope not. Some of the fans out there might think so, but I don't think a level of development that would mentally challenge people don't have less of a right to life.

Environment. Just because I come from a trailer park or a place where there's mansions doesn't do anything to my right to life. Your address doesn't change that. And finally, a degree of dependency. Like I said, if we're going twins, depend on each other.

That doesn't mean we can just kill one of them. Children that are just born depend on their mothers as well. We shouldn't just leave them in the streets. So this question cannot be dodged. This is a question of the evening.

Yes, it is a public policy question. Should it be illegal? But ultimately, if we agree that murder should be illegal, which I believe only the Christian position can really substantiate, then we have to ask the question, are the unborn people?

If they are people, then we have to treat them as people. And that means not unjustly taking their lives. Let's see. Some other things that were said. I heard Danielle basically make an argument that we need to get at the underlying issues.

That that's really what we need to look at. Forget about making abortion illegal. That's not going to solve the problem. We need to get at what causes people to have abortions. What contributing factors occur?

Imagine if I came to you tonight and I said, you know what, I really, I just don't think we should outlaw spousal abuse. I think what we need to do as really good people is we need to get back to the underlying issues of what really causes spousal abuse.