Abortion & Apologetics

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala, and welcome back.

This, I think we're doing back -to -back. I had Colton Carlson on yesterday to critique mere

Molinism and the work of Tim Stratton. And ironically, my guest today is a Molinist, but we're not gonna be talking about Molinism today.

I have my guest on to talk about a very important topic, which we will be introducing in just a moment.

Just by way of kind of reminders and a quick announcement, by way of reminder, those who are interested in learning

Presuppositional Apologetics, my online course is starting on June 7th.

So signups are available on revealedapologetics .com if you wanna sign up for PresuppU. And it will be open, signups will be open all the way up until the first day of classes where the links will go out and we'll be meeting with the folks who sign up.

So I'm looking forward to that. That's available right now if you wanna go over to the Revealed Apologetics website.

Also on June 9th, I'll be having Pastor Luke Pearson. He's one of the pastors over at Apologia Church.

If that name sounds familiar, he is associated with Dr. James White, Jeff Durbin, that church over there in Arizona.

So we're gonna be having him on June 9th to talk about Apologetics and the local church. So the importance of doing

Apologetics under the accountability umbrella of the local church. We'll talk a little bit about that.

I think that's gonna be a very interesting and I think an important topic to cover. But all that said, let's kind of jump right in.

I wanna introduce my good friend, Eric Hernandez, and he can tell you a little bit about himself. He's been on the show before, but why don't

I just give Eric here a moment to introduce himself to everyone. How's it going, man? Good, how's it going?

Yeah. Going well. Good, yeah, thanks. Tell folks a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Yeah, my name is Eric Hernandez. I'm the Apologetics Lead for Texas Baptists, which encompasses everything from a three annual, what we call the

Unapologetic Evangelism Conferences, and doing trainings with churches, speaking on college campuses, doing debates, and having discussions with fine gentlemen like yourself.

Well, thank you so much for that. I'm very flattered. Thank you very much. Actually, Eric is a really good friend of mine.

We've had many conversations. He's one of my many, but within the inner circle of people,

I like to call on my 40 -minute drive home from work, where we have some great conversations, and he's just a good friend and an excellent apologist.

I highly recommend, before we kind of get started, if you have the ability to go over to, is it

Eric Hernandez Ministries or Eric Hernandez, your YouTube channel? Just Eric Hernandez, yeah.

Right, so look, Eric Hernandez, and subscribe. He's got lots of debates, and he is an excellent debater.

And I know folks who know us, I know Eric comes from a more classical approach, a minor presuppositional approach, but I have learned so much from Eric.

I think he does an excellent job, especially when discussing issues of atheism and things like that.

I mean, he even has a debate on the topic that we're gonna be covering today, which is abortion. So folks can, maybe why don't you tell a little bit, tell folks a little bit about that debate.

Who was the person you debated? What was the topic? And maybe kind of a one or two highlights that can kind of wet people's whistles as they search for that later on.

Yeah, so I had a debate at a secular college campus. It was at Lone Star College Campus in Texas, and they have had up to maybe five campuses.

And the long story short, a friend of mine had started a conservative group at the campus, and it's not a conservative campus.

And the topic was on, is it immoral to have an abortion? And I debated

Heather Busby, who at the time was the executive director of NARAL Pro -Choice, which is one of the biggest pro -choice organizations.

And she's also a lawyer and a feminist and whatnot.

Yeah, I really enjoyed that debate. I thought it went well for me.

It was awkward. Let's just say, if I supported the other side, it was very uncomfortable.

I thought you did an excellent job pressing some of the important issues there. Oh, yeah, well, thank you.

And I'll leave it to the viewers to interpret this fact. I just report the facts.

I don't interpret them. But sometime after our debate, she was no longer employed with NARAL Pro -Choice.

But yeah, there were lots of great highlights, but I expected her to bring a bit more to the table.

And to be fair, I mean, there's not much you can bring to the table on this topic when you're representing that side.

But for example, in one instance, she said something like we need to, that we have an obligation to care, clothe and feed the children who are already here.

And I would just write down things she would say here and there. And when it came to cross -examination, I said, well, you said that we have this obligation, moral obligation to care, clothe and feed the children that are already here.

And I said, well, why don't we have a moral obligation to the unborn to at least feed and care for them if they're not already here?

And if they're not here, where are they? Of course they're here. They're just inside of a womb. And then one of my favorites was just kind of piecing together a few things she said throughout her opening.

And at one point she said something to the extent that we should have equal rights across the board, whether you're gay, straight, transgender, homosexual, et cetera.

And then later on, she said that we have an obligation to support a woman's decision when they have an abortion, even if we disagree with that woman's decision, because at the end of the day, it's up to her.

It's her choice. It's her decision. So in the cross -examine, I just confirmed that she did say those two things.

And I said, okay, I have a hypothetical question for you. Suppose a woman of a particular religion approaches you and wants an abortion.

And I ask that because she also runs like a charity, if you can call it that, that it's an organization that will pay for a woman's abortion if they cannot afford it.

So I said, let's say this religious woman approaches you and let's suppose we have the technology that can not only tell you the sex of the baby, but could even tell you the baby's sexual orientation.

Sure. Now, so she comes up to you and she says, I just found out I'm gonna have a boy or girl, but I also found out that my baby's going to be born gay and I don't want a gay baby.

And so I said, now in this instance, would you still be pro -choice? Because if you say yes, then you're implicitly okay with killing someone just because they're gay.

But if you say no, then you're going against a woman's decision, which according to your standards should be respected and supported no matter what.

So would you still be pro -choice in this instance? She took a few seconds to respond and kind of laughed nervously.

And her response was that technology doesn't exist. And people laughed. And I said, well, of course it's a hypothetical.

I said, but let's run with that. Let's suppose it didn't exist even in this scenario. And let's even take it a step further and say she was lied to by her pastor.

Regardless of how she came to this, according to you, it is still her decision, her choice.

And you said earlier, you have to support a decision even if it goes against what you personally would do.

So again, would you still be pro -choice in this instance? She never answered the question and it was a really difficult time to even get this to happen at the school.

That's a whole nother long story. But it was around that time that the person that was there from the school representing the school in the back was basically telling the moderator to move on to the next question or she's gonna cut the mics off.

So it got heated, not in the sense that we're yelling at each other, but I mean, you could just feel the awkwardness.

But it went really great. And there were some other interesting results of that from a larger perspective, the school derecognized the organization that put this together and said, you can no longer meet on campus.

And basically my friend took the school to court, so to speak, with the

Alliance Defending Freedom lawyers, those Christian lawyers who stand up in these kinds of situations.

And long story short, the school was forced to, first of all, put them back and recognize them as a student organization and to also make it equal for all organizations across all their campuses.

Because for example, the school would give the student organizations a certain amount of money.

And I think they gave my friend like maybe a thousand bucks a year. And he one day went to visit the

LGBT group and asked how much do y 'all get? And they got like 2 ,500 a year. So there was some obvious bias going on.

And now I think everybody got a flat, like, I don't know, thousand or something like that across the board.

So he upset a lot of people, but everything was made a fair and equal across those groups.

So, and then on the other hand, afterwards, I got to talk to a lot of young ladies and students that came to that debate.

And I had even some say that they came to that debate either pro -choice or on the fence, but as a result of that debate, they left pro -life.

And I mean, that was just really great. I got to talk to some other ladies who two twins that were, no, they weren't twins, excuse me, two young ladies that were born in China around the one policy law.

And long story short, they basically said, thank you for standing up for people like us. I said, what do you mean? And they explained their situation.

And one of them was basically, because around the time they were born in China, you can only have one child.

And basically parents would abort their children if they found out they were female because they didn't want a female and you can only have one.

So it got to the point to where doctors stopped doing ultrasounds because of the high abortion rate for female babies.

So what mothers ended up doing was just having the baby at home to see and then decide whether or not they wanted to keep it.

One girl was left behind a dumpster and the other girl was left by a river, which was a river that was popular for just tossing the baby there.

The river would sweep the baby away and there was no, that way there's no crying or anything like that. You couldn't hear the baby.

And what that girl said was she says, it was probably the case that my mom just didn't have the heart to throw me in the river.

So she just left me by the river. And it was like December where it was really cold. And by the grace of God, she was found by the police.

And so many years later, an American couple adopted him. And they said, if it were up to people like the woman you debated, we wouldn't be here today.

And that, I mean, gosh, I was in tears. So I got to pray with some people, talk to some people and it was a really great debate.

That's amazing. I definitely encourage people to check that debate out. Who was the other person? So how can people search that specific debate on YouTube?

What would they type in in the search engine? I think something like Eric Hernandez versus Heather Busby.

There's a full debate. And then I made like a little highlight reel of my favorite parts of the debate as well. Okay, excellent.

Now I wanna kind of approach this because this is from a Christian perspective, there's a clear answer as to how we should view abortion.

But I think it's also appropriate to perhaps maybe kind of educate believers as to what our attitude should be when engaging this topic.

Cause I think because there is such a clear perspective from the Christian perspective, some

Christians tend to kind of shoot from the hip in terms of engaging folks who are pro -choice.

So what should be the mindset of the believer when they're engaging this topic in like various social settings?

Yeah, good question. There's a verse in Genesis nine. It's a Genesis. Let me make sure.

Genesis chapter nine, verses five and six. And it says the following. It says, and from each human being too,

I would demand an accounting for the life of another human being. Whoever sheds human blood by humans shall their blood be shed for in the image of God has

God made mankind. Now what's interesting here is we find something revealing about human life.

And whenever you look at any law for any society or culture, the laws will express and reflect the values of what that culture upholds.

Now here we find God saying that anytime human blood is shed whoever sheds human blood, then there's an allowance of capital punishment.

Because basically, and the reason being is when you take someone's life, you're destroying something that bears the image of God.

And because of that, your life can be taken. That being said, when we talk about the question of abortion, really the one question that has to be answered to settle the question is what is it that we're destroying or killing?

I like the way I've heard Greg Hockel use this illustration. He says, suppose you're washing the dishes with your back turned and your son or daughter approaches you from behind and says, mom or dad, can

I kill it? Well, your answer will not be yes or no. Your immediate answer will be, can

I kill what? The roach, the spider, sure. Dog or cat, no.

Brother and sister, definitely not. So essentially the only question we need to answer is can

I kill what? What is the unborn? And we can go to some quotes later, but essentially the way

Hockel puts it is that if the unborn are not human persons, then

I mean, really, why is this an issue? In other words, no one asked permission to cut their toenails or cut their hair.

And if abortion is not taking the life of an innocent unborn human person, well then, have as many as you want, go for it.

I don't have a moral dilemma when I pull weeds from my garden. So the way Hockel puts it is that if the unborn are not human persons, then, no, if he says, yeah, if the unborn are not human persons, then no justification is necessary.

But if the unborn are human persons, that no justification is sufficient. So when it comes to that, if going back to the biblical perspective, if this is human life, well, then biblically speaking,

God has a lot to say about that. So much so that he told these people in the Old Testament, if you take human life, then your life can be taken specifically because you are taking something that bears the image of God.

Another interesting passage, in Psalms 137, verse eight and nine,

I've heard Dan Barker quote this, the second verse a lot. And here's what verse nine says.

It says, happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. And of course,

Dan Barker jumps on that and says, this is a God condoning, you know, killing babies or being happy about babies and how sick this is, yada, yada.

You know, if he would just read one more verse above that, you see the context for this.

So in verse eight, it says, daughter Babylon doomed to destruction. Happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us.

Then he says, happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against rocks. Now, what does this mean?

In these ancient times, when the Babylonians would go seize a city, one of the ways, one of their tactics for not only taking over the city, but literally mocking the

God that this city worshiped would be to grab the infants by the ankles and slam their heads against rocks.

Because that was their way of saying, your God is so puny that he cannot even protect the most vulnerable among you.

So what the psalmist here is doing is reflecting back on the time when this happened to Israel. And that's why it says in verse eight, you know, you came and did this to us.

And then he says, you know what? One day, someone's gonna be happy to do that to you. In other words, you're gonna be judged for this. God's gonna judge you for this.

And one day, just like you did to our infants, someone's gonna be happy to do that to yours. So there's some lots, and there's lots more to say just about the biblical principle, but at the end of the day, we're made in God's image.

Every life bears God's image. And there is no, and we'll also get into this.

It's not as if the image of God starts when you take your first breath or at this point and whatnot.

Being a human being, a human person is a non -degreed property. Anyone who's heard me talk about the soul will be familiar with that.

For those who are not, in philosophy, you have degreed properties and non -degreed properties.

A degreed property is a property like being hard or loud. These are properties that can fluctuate or change and exist in various percentages or degrees.

By contrast, a non -degreed property is a property that cannot fluctuate or change.

It's an all or nothing kind of thing. So the property of being even, the number two and the number six are both even numbers.

They have the property of being even, but the number six is not more even than the number two because evenness is a non -degreed property.

It's all or nothing. I would say the same applies to being a human person. You don't gradually become a human person.

Being a person, that property is a degree that you, a property that you either have or don't have. It's not a degreed property and we'll get into unpacking that a little bit more later.

So all that to say, if the unborn are human beings and if Christianity is true, which we of course would argue and believe that it is, well then every human life bears the image of God and this is not something that we should take lightly.

You know, there are some things, like if I'm on Facebook, there are some things, or even just in social settings, if I hear someone talking about something, there are some times where I won't say anything just because,

I don't know, I'm running late or I just don't think it's worth the effort to talk about or maybe it is a serious issue but I know it has so much political baggage to it and sometimes

I'll just often not even comment or speak up about some topics and I won't mention which those are because I don't want anyone to take this the wrong way.

But when it comes to the topic like abortion, this is a topic I don't think any

Christian can be silent on. I don't see how any Christian could be silent on this. When you see this from God's perspective, that you're destroying something that bears

God's image, by all means, we should be standing up and saying something about this and the truth is on our side, just like the truth of Christianity, the truth of God's existence, the truth of the soul, this, the evidence, all the stuff that backs it up is on our side and we should be saying something about it.

Okay, so you mentioned like the image of God, you mentioned these things of like value. What happens when, you know, you have someone who doesn't believe in God and so they're saying, yeah, that sounds great but I don't believe what you believe in so stop trying to impose your beliefs on me.

This should be my choice. How would we interact with someone like that? Yeah, great question. So yeah, so now let's take it to, you know, a perspective where we're dealing with non -believers.

So in that debate that I had, you know, my argument wasn't a quote religious argument and that's something that's odd to me when

I see, you know, people saying, you know, your Bible, your religion isn't an argument against abortion or anything like that.

Well, I don't, first, I don't need to use those and nor do I expect the unbeliever to abide by the word of God.

So I'm not gonna hold a believer to that standard. Second, you have atheists who are pro -life.

I know of an atheist who's an acquaintance of mine, you know, we've met once or twice for lunch and he's very much pro -life and he's an atheist.

So you can't say that these atheists are using biblical verses to be pro -life. On top of that, I always like to quote

Brexton Hunter here, who's friends of ours and he says, abortion is not a political issue.

It is a moral issue that has been politicized. So when it comes to abortion, I mean, depending on who you're talking to, first and foremost, for the most part, people are going to agree that human life is valuable.

I mean, gosh, just look at the political arena and how much everybody is wanting to say that I'm valuable because I identify as this out of the other.

So there's something of value to human life. And even you look at the constitution, I mean, we have this right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

So that right to life, and where do we get that? Well, it's an undeniable right endowed by our creator.

That's again, those aren't my words. This is, you know, government here. So if every human life, if human life has a right to life, if human beings have a right to life, well, the question is, what is the unborn?

Well, if the unborn are human beings, well, then it applies. I mean, it's that simple. It applies that they have a right to life as well.

Now, when it comes to the question of abortion, people can disagree on different levels. You can have, for example, factual disagreements.

And this is also good to find out where the person you're talking to may disagree. So for example,

I have no problem eating a hamburger, right? I don't have problem eating meat. But let's say someone in the

East, let's say of a Hindu religion or some other religion similar to that would have a problem morally eating meat.

Or Alec O 'Connor. Right, yeah, sure, yeah, right. You don't have to go to India, people here in the

West, so. Yeah, well, this won't particularly apply to him, but yeah, I mean, that's a whole another point to get at.

But now, why do people though, these Hindus, why would they have an aversion to eating meat? Well, because they hold to the moral belief that it is wrong to eat grandma.

Now, you and I also believe it's wrong to eat grandma. So in other words, we don't disagree about the moral values of the situation.

We disagree about the moral facts or the facts of the situation. They believe eating a hamburger could be eating grandma because of reincarnation.

I don't believe I'm eating grandma because I don't believe in reincarnation. Hence, we agree about the moral value, don't eat grandma, but we disagree about the facts of what is grandma or who is grandma.

On the other hand, you can have a difference of moral values.

So one person may say, well, it is immoral to take human life, whereas the other person may say, no,

I don't think it is immoral to take human life for any given reason. So there's a difference there would actually be a difference of moral values.

But then on a third level, you can have an agreement of the moral values, an agreement of the moral facts, and yet disagree about the priority.

So we can both agree that the unborn are human persons. We can both agree it is wrong to take innocent human life, but then we would disagree on which right or which value takes precedence, the bodily autonomy or the life of the unborn human person.

And then that's where a disagreement can lie. So you can have a disagreement of facts, a disagreement of the moral values, or disagreement of the priority of the values.

And that's kind of where I would start with someone when it comes to that question. Sure, excellent. Well, I'm sure there's a lot to unpack.

I could technically ask a bunch of objections as to how would a

Christian respond to various arguments in favor of abortion. But I know that you have a presentation that actually will cover these in great detail and I think will be very beneficial to people.

I guess I only have one more question before we can get into that is what about people who, because I know it's not, people who have abortions, they're not all like these like self -centered people that wanna have a sexually liberated lifestyle and they don't want the responsive.

There are people who actually genuinely have like health concerns, that they know beforehand that if the baby is born, the baby is gonna have certain disorders that's going to make life very difficult for the baby.

And so when you have situations like that, how would we engage that sort of argument where someone says, well, hey,

I'm doing this because I'm trying to have the interest of the baby in mind. The baby's gonna be born with disabilities or it's things like that.

How would we engage that? And then that'll be my last question before I allow you to kind of unpack your presentation where you go into much more details as to how to navigate this terrain.

Yeah, good question. So a few things is, so first let me say this too, is that what

I'll be presenting, and I'll keep it brief so we can take questions. It can apply to anybody,

Christian or not. In other words, you don't have to be a Christian to use what I'm gonna present. Now, what you're referring to is often about the mother's health being at risk.

Or the baby. Or the baby, so it's the baby. Right, okay, yeah. So, well, let me answer these together and then we'll kind of separate them later because essentially,

I mean, you have, and I'm already kind of jumping ahead of myself. I mean, you have babies today who, I used to substitute at a school and there were times where I substituted for a teacher who was a special needs teacher.

And I saw everything from kids who were just on the spectrum to kids who were in a wheelchair, couldn't move, couldn't talk, had to be fed through a tube.

And they were just as much of a person as I was and just as much had a right to life.

Did that make their parents' life much harder? Have no doubt, absolutely, 100%.

But then the question becomes, is inconvenience, if you will, does that become a right or justification for taking the life of an innocent human person?

And of course we would say no. Now, going back to the mother's health at risk,

Dr. Thomas Murphy Goodwin, he runs the largest prenatal health clinic in the world. And he sees about 15 ,000 women a year who are told by their primary care physician that if they don't abort their child, they'll have, and I wrote this, have this notation down, that they will either die or have incredibly serious complications to their health.

Now he says out of the 15 to 16 ,000 he sees a year, only one to two cases of that year actually require any of the pregnancy to save the mother's life or in situations of grave health.

I mean, this, in other words, this is not something that is like an epidemic that people think it is.

On top of that, you have, gosh, it was, and I'm trying to look for the statistic here, there was another instance where it was, actually an abortion doctor,

I believe. And basically they said that out of all the abortions that they have performed, only about 1 % of these fall under that category.

Okay, and that's a very, very, I mean, 1 % is a very small category. Well, can I step in real quick? I do apologize. Yeah, please.

Because I guess this, if we wanted to push it a little bit. Sure. Okay. So it's 1%. So in the cases of 1%, should the mother in that case have the right to choose to terminate the birth in that 1 %?

Yeah, so good question. So here's where I would differentiate between an abortion and something like this case.

So first and foremost, we have to, we label actions as moral and immoral, not just by what is going on, but by the intent of the action.

So for example, if a suicide bomber straps bombs to his chest and blows himself up, we call that a suicide.

But if a soldier jumps on a grenade to save his fellow soldiers and comrades, we call that a sacrifice. So in any situation, the intent, so let me jump into my slides, if you don't mind.

Yeah, I apologize if my question - No, no, it's okay. If you wanna jump into your slides, I can sit back and you can explain that on packet, because I'm sure your slides will answer a lot of questions.

And I just wanna encourage folks who are listening, if you have a question, like every show, towards the back end, we go through the questions, or Eric, in this case, will be going through the questions.

And so please preface your question with question, because this will be a great opportunity to ask your super duper hard question on abortion.

It's definitely a difficult topic to navigate. So I encourage you guys to ask away, but go for it.

So would you like me to share the screen now here? Yeah. Okay, there we go. Okay, so let me just get this set up here.

So here's my argument, let's start with this, and then I'll finish answering the question, and this is why I wanted to get to my slides. So here's a simple syllogism.

It is wrong, i .e. immoral, to intentionally kill an innocent human being as an end in and of itself.

Now, the reason I specify it that way is because when it comes to these kinds of cases, first of all,

I think a lot of these cases will, it'll be even less in the future, because our technology is just increasing.

But note, in these instances, if it is, in other words, if you can, in some of these, okay, consider something like an ectopic pregnancy.

This is where the baby is not in the proper place it should be.

I think it's in like the fallopian tubes. And if the baby continues to grow there, well,

I mean, the mother's gonna die. You know, babies aren't meant to develop in the fallopian tubes, they're meant for the womb. Now, a few things to say about that.

First, if the doctor could remove the baby and somehow put the baby into the womb, then obviously that would be the choice to make.

In other words, we don't say, in this instance, the mother's life's at risk, so let's just kill the baby. If you can save the baby, you save the baby, right?

Right. Now, that being said, most, I don't know the exact percentage, but virtually every time that these ectopic pregnancies are discovered, the baby's already dead.

So it's just a matter of removing the dead baby from the fallopian tubes.

In other words, now here's an interesting thing, is that on the medical records, the doctor will label this as an abortion.

And that's why I go back to the intent and really describing the situation is relevant to how we label something.

Now, why would a doctor label removing a dead baby from fallopian tubes as an abortion? Well, because now we can say, look, abortions are necessary.

And in fact, some go as far as to say that a miscarriage is a, quote, natural abortion. No, it's not.

When you begin to define words in certain ways, that's when it begins to get really suspect to me.

And you can tell there's some kind of an agenda. When Roe v. Wade was passed, not too long after, it was

Doe versus Bolton, I believe, which is not as popularly known. But some people will argue, well, look, abortion is only legal up until this point.

Well, yes and no. In that other case, Doe versus Bolton, I forget the exact wording, and I can look it up if you want me to, but basically it said that abortions are allowed at any stage if the mother's health is at risk.

And here's another reason this is important. A few sentences later, it actually defines what they mean by the mother's health.

And mother's health ranges anything from physical health, emotional health, mental health, and implicitly even financial health.

So if I'm nine months pregnant, well, I will never be nine months pregnant, but if a person is nine months pregnant and they just feel, let's say, anxiety, or, and you know, here's another thing.

Yeah, the doctor, first of all, doesn't even need to verify this.

If a lady nine months pregnant says, I am, my emotional health is at risk if I go through this pregnancy, well, then there you go.

The health of the mother's at risk and you can perform the abortion legally. Oh, it's simply a word?

If the person just expresses any of these things, that's enough to kind of go ahead with it?

Yes, exactly. Wow. And that's what a lot of people don't realize. And here's the crazy thing is, the doctor doesn't have to report this to anybody.

And on top of that, the doctor she's talking to is not a psychologist, is not a therapist.

They don't know how to assess whether or not this is actually the case. Sure. All they do is say, okay, well, your health's at risk, let's go through with it.

And legally speaking, at any stage, they can perform the abortion. So the reason

I say killing an innocent human being as an end in and of itself is because I'm trying to differentiate between the cases in which perhaps the technology is not yet there to save the baby versus situations where, let's just be blunt, either convenience or because they feel that they can't handle the situation as if not being able to handle a situation, whatever that means, justifies killing your child.

So premise one, it is wrong, i .e. immoral, to innocently kill an innocent human being as an end in and of itself.

And again, going back to what I said earlier, I would not label these instances where you're removing the baby to save the mother's life as a, quote, abortion, just like I wouldn't label a soldier jumping on a grenade to save his comrades as a suicide.

The intent is to save the mother's life and the doctor should do everything they can to save the baby's life.

And if they can't, it is an unfortunate by -product of saving the mother's life, but it is not the intent and end to kill the child's life.

And that is the difference. Okay, so premise two, abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being as an end in and of itself.

Therefore, abortion is morally wrong. Now, I mean, just plain and simple, I mean, I think when it comes to the question of abortion, and let me not be too cold -hearted here,

I think it's an easy question to answer intellectually, but not an emotionally easy question to accept.

And there's a difference. As apologists, philosophers, there's instances where you're like, yeah, this would be the moral thing to do even if I may feel uncomfortable about it.

So intellectually, I think we can answer that. Emotionally is where really the problem lies. But here's where we're gonna look at kind of what

I've already started talking about. So the question again being, what is the unborn?

Here's a quote from an embryology textbook. It says, the development of a human being begins with fertilization, a process by which two highly specialized cells, the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female, unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.

Now, this is clearly stating, and this is not a religious text. This is not an anti -abortion book.

This is embryology 101, if you will, stating that from the beginning, from conception, you have a new living human being.

This is what the science tells us. Here's another textbook on embryology.

It says, a zygote is the beginning of a new human being. Human development begins at fertilization. This highly specialized totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.

Once more, I cannot stress enough, this is an embryology textbook that people studying this will read.

This is not something that comes from propaganda. This is just pure science. Now, here's where it gets a little interesting because, you know, this is, in other words, these were neutral books, if you will.

Now, let me quote from some pro -abortionist doctors. Warren Hearn wrote a book called Abortion Practice.

Last I heard, this is the only textbook on abortion that has a single author, and it is a textbook on how to perform abortions.

So this is an abortionist speaking here. And he says, in the beginning of the book, we have reached a point in this particular technology where there is no possibility of denying an act of destruction.

It is before one's eyes. The sensations of dismemberment flow to the forceps like an electrical current.

Again, this is a textbook on performing abortions. I mean, just being as blunt as possible.

Ronald Dworkin, also an abortionist, wrote this book, and in his book, on like the first page, one of the first sentence or two, he says, abortion, which means deliberately killing a developing human embryo.

And later on, in the same sentence, it says, this is a choice for death. So they make, you know, no hesitation to admit this.

Another popular pro -abortion advocate says, I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder. Wait, I'm gonna stop you in the middle of the quote.

This is a pro -abortion quote. Camille Paglia, I forget how to pronounce her nasty name, but she's a huge advocate in this.

And in fact, I don't know if it was her or the other one who was saying, we gotta stop saying this is not a human being because it's only hurting our case.

Well, let me finish the quote first. She says, I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder. The extermination of the powerless by the powerful, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue.

One abortionist says, we have to stop pretending like we're not killing a human being because what's happening is, you know, these people are looking at ultrasounds.

They're looking at these pictures of their babies and it's clear it's a human being. And when we argue that it's not a human person, we only hurt ourselves.

Let's just state up front it is and go from there pretty much. So, well, you've heard me talk about this.

You know, in America, if you kill a bald eagle egg, you get fined $10 ,000. An unhatched, a not fully developed bald eagle.

How much? $10 ,000. Wow, I didn't know, okay, wow, that's a lot. So yeah, in America, if you destroy a bald eagle egg, again, an undeveloped, unhatched, still developing bald eagle embryo, you'll get fined up to $10 ,000.

But consider this, if you're a mother and pregnant and you want an abortion, not only will you not get fined, we want the government to pay for it and fund it.

Wow. So here's what's sad, is when you think about this, and I'm not trying to make an emotional argument here,

I'm simply saying, let's look at this objectively and see if this even makes sense, rationally speaking.

You would think that the safest place for an unborn child to be is in their mother's womb.

I mean, it should be, that should be the safest place. It's a place that God created for them to develop and be safe and protected.

But sadly, in this country, the safest place that a child could be is in an unhatched bald eagle egg.

I mean, you know, let that sink in. If you're in your mother's womb, you can be killed and the government can pay for it, but if we put the babies in bald eagle eggs, they'll be safe.

I mean, this is so, you know, I'm trying not to curse here, this is so backwards. It's like, my goodness, this is a rationale of our country here.

Now, here's, let's get into the case here. Anytime I talk about abortion, I always use what

I call the sled test. Because first, we have a science that says this is an unborn human person.

That's human life from the beginning, from conception. This is in the medical textbooks and this is admitted openly by the doctors and pro -abortion advocates and doctors who perform abortions.

So someone may say, okay, but there's a difference between a baby in the womb and a fully developed human person. And yes and amen.

Yes, there are differences. However, here's the question. Although there are differences between you at this stage and you as an adult, the question becomes, are these differences significant justifications for killing you inside the womb, but not killing you outside the womb?

And here's, we come to what's known as the sled test. I wrote the name Summer, the guy who came up with this, but here's a sled test.

It is an acronym that stands for size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency.

Now, basically, anytime I go, in fact, on my YouTube channel, I have a video on this where I'm speaking at a secular college campus.

And I said, any arguments you give me in favor of abortion, I'm gonna tell you right now the approach

I'm gonna take. Any argument for abortion is going to fall under one of these four categories, size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency.

And really, these are the four main differences that stand between us in the womb and us outside the womb.

So it's Dr. Steven D. Schwartz, and he says there are only four differences between you as an adult, you as an embryo, and you as an adult.

But as we'll see, none of these can justify killing you inside the womb, but not outside the womb.

So let's kind of go through these one by one. Feel free to stop me at any point, by the way. No, you're on a roll, this is super helpful.

So, size. Now, depending on who you talk to is gonna depend on how they provide this argument, but let's just take it at face value, your size.

So, the unborn are obviously not as big as us adults while they're in the womb.

But here's the thing, can the bigger person kill the smaller person? No, of course not.

In fact, men are typically larger than women, but does it follow that men can now kill women?

No, obviously not. Well, if that's the case, then we shouldn't allow it for this one either. In my arguments for the soul,

I kind of make a similar argument about grounding personhood and I say something like, if we ground value in being a person, being a human person, and if being a human person is grounded in our mass and matter, well, the same principle applies.

Men typically have more mass and matter than women, but then the question is, does having more mass and matter mean that you matter more?

Well, obviously not. So, regardless of your size, if you were a human person from conception, size is not a justification for killing you inside the womb, but not outside the womb.

Level of development. Again, this can come out in a number of ways depending on the person, but let's look at development.

Is this a justification? A toddler is more developed than a child in the womb. But even then, a 10 year old is more developed than a toddler and still a teenager is more developed than 10 year old.

But notice that none of these at this stage of development can kill the first one or kill the previous one. However, if you become this one, well, then now you can kill that one.

I mean, that's really the rationale behind it. I know

I'm saying it bluntly, but I mean, if you look at the arguments, okay, but let's push it on from here.

So, here's what people may say. Okay, but hold on. There are significant differences within the stages of development. For example, some may say, well, the unborn can't feel pain.

That's a difference. And then some say at a certain point in time of development, the unborn are not conscious. So, let's take this.

That was my question, but I was like, you know what? He's probably gonna get to it. So, and that was literally my next question.

But that's an argument that comes. It's like the consciousness hasn't fully developed and that goes into how they're defining what is constituted as a human being and when it's appropriate to do this, that, and the other thing.

So, go for it. Yeah, yeah. So, scientifically speaking, I just want to reiterate it is a human person from conception.

There's a human being from conception. It's living, it's growing, it's developing. It responds to stimuli in its environment.

So, and it's a separate entity, if you will, from the parent. So, we know it's a living human being from conception.

It's just a level of development. And here's another thing I want to say is, and this, again, this ties in, you know, with arguments for the soul that I often give is that your function does not determine personhood.

If anything, that you have the functions that you have because of the kind of thing that you are.

You don't become something by gaining functions. You have functions because of what you are.

So, the first time we met, we talked about acorns. So, if you don't mind me bringing that, using the illustration.

That's a legendary, that was a legendary conversation. So, if I plant an acorn in the ground, it has a capacity to grow a root system and become a tree.

But if I plant you in the ground, you will not grow a root system and become a tree. Why? Because it's not within your nature to grow a root system.

In other words, the functions and abilities that a thing has is grounded in its nature. So, we don't say that losing certain functions means you've lost your nature.

It just means you have lost abilities that are grounded in your nature.

So, I can put it this way to get a little more technical. You have actualized capacities and you have ultimate capacities.

So, when my son is four years old, you know, he can speak, but he's still working on his grammar, right?

He's still working on putting sentences together in a grammatically appropriate way. But a few years ago, he couldn't, let's say he couldn't talk at all.

Well, he still had the ultimate capacity to be able to talk. He just needed to develop other capacities to actualize this ultimate capacity.

A different way to put it is, I have the capacity to speak English and Spanish, but I don't have the capacity to speak

French. So, we can say I have the first order capacity to speak English and Spanish, but I have the second order capacity to develop this ultimate capacity to speak

French. In other words, I have the capacity to develop the capacity to speak French. So, it's a latent capacity that is just not actualized, but I can do that because of the kind of thing

I am. Now, let's go back to this. When it comes to a consciousness, if you have a human person, then by the, in virtue of having a human nature, this individual has a capacity to be conscious, the ultimate capacity to be conscious, it just may be the case that it's not actualized.

But let's put it this way. Take someone in a coma. If a justification for killing someone is that they're not conscious, then by that standard, you can kill someone in a coma because they are allegedly not a human person or however the person is arguing the case.

On top of that, what about the pain thing? Here's what's interesting. This little girl, her name is Gabby Gringas, and she has a very, very rare condition.

It is known as the congenial insensitivity to pain. And basically, from birth, she cannot feel pain.

She feels no pain at all. Wow. The reason she's wearing glasses, I think one of her eyes might be fake.

Now, mind you, that there's really no way to detect this in the womb or even at birth, unfortunately, at least we don't have a way to detect it yet.

And what would happen is, she began to, she would have an itch in her eye.

One time, her parents saw her and her eye was gouged out because she had an itch and she just kept scratching.

Again, she doesn't feel pain, so she literally made herself blind and they had to put glasses and goggles on her to keep her from scratching her eyes.

Wow. When she was teething as a baby, she began to chew on any and everything, metal, wood, rocks, and she would just start to break her teeth and mess up her gums because, again, she could not feel pain.

On top of that, she began, there's an article I read on her, and her mom said that she would chew her tongue like it was bubble gum.

Oh, my goodness. And her mouth would just be full of blood. Cannot feel pain. So, according to the standard of, well, they can't feel pain if they're not conscious, well, the moment someone like this goes into a coma or you have someone like Gabby Gringas, well, then all bets are off.

Go for it. Because according to this argument, that if the unborn are not conscious or can't feel pain, we can kill them, well, here's a candidate.

Or, again, take someone to coma, take someone to sleep. However you wanna hash that out, we clearly have this reductio ad absurdum with this.

So, more to say their level of development. Environment. Now, here's another category of arguments, is oftentimes, you know, when you really talk to someone, at the end of the day, the argument seems to be, well, they're not born yet, which alludes to the environment for the unborn.

Now, imagine this. Again, your function does not determine your value or what you are.

So, your environment, essentially, let's say it's your location. If I drove 70 miles, you know, somewhere, let's say

I went to your house, and it's 70 miles away. It's not, it'd be nice, but let's say it's 70 miles away. If I drove 70 miles, does that change the kind of thing

I am? No. As you know, one of my dirty little secrets was before I got with Texas Baptist, I used to dumpster dive, right?

These retail stores would throw away perfectly good in -the -box new stuff, and if you knew when to go, you can go in the back, and, you know, it's not illegal, at least not in this state, and, you know,

I would pull out these perfectly brand -new items from retail stores, and I'd, you know, sell them in a garage sale or on eBay, and interestingly,

I used that as a way to provide for my family for some months, but note that, like, for example, I found, you know,

I'd find office chairs, desks, all kinds of equipment. You know, I found printers, but note that just because it was taken from the shelf and put into a dumpster, it did not change the fact that it was a printer because the location did not determine the kind of thing it was, so if driving 70 miles doesn't change my location or value, well, then how can we explain traveling seven inches through a birth canal, how does that change the value?

Yeah. Or what this unborn child is, a human person, so let's put it this way.

Suppose you have this doctor's office, and to the right of the room, you have this mother at 21 weeks pregnant, and on the other side, you have a mother that just gave birth at 21 weeks.

Now, the reason I say this is because, we'll get into this with the next one as well, the level of viability is also an argument you would hear.

Well, you know, abortions are legal only up until the baby is viable, which we've already talked about how that can be, how there's wiggle room and loopholes to that restriction of when the abortion can occur.

But in Texas, when I first gave this presentation, I think the earliest that a baby was born and live was at 22 weeks, but not too long ago, there was a baby born in, may have been in Texas, at 21 weeks and four days.

So that is like the record, of course, no one's trying to beat the record, but that 21 weeks and four days and the baby survived.

Now, you have here, let's say 21 weeks, on the right side, 21 weeks in the womb, on the left side, 21 weeks develop outside the womb.

Now imagine a doctor walks into the room. If the doctor kills a baby on the left side, he goes to jail.

But if the doctor kills a baby on the right side, he gets paid for doing his job. What's the difference?

Location, the environment, one's in the womb, one's outside the womb, but they are at the same level of development.

Well, what if they say that, well, the difference is that one has the consent of the mother who should have a right over that decision and the other doesn't have a consent of the mother who has a right to that decision.

Yeah, so that's, I'll touch more on those kinds of things towards the end, but let's address this here.

So if a doctor, okay, let's say this doctor is, you know, has a consent of the mother and on the mother's way to the doctor's office, let's say the doctor's running late and let's say he's a little bit drunk and he's running late, so he's speeding and he coincidentally happens to come at the same stoplight of this pregnant mother going on her way to meet him for an abortion and he runs a stoplight, hits her and ends up killing the baby.

This woman can legally sue him for vehicular manslaughter for killing her baby when just 10 minutes later, he would have gotten paid for doing it within a doctor's office.

So, yeah. You put them in weird scenarios, the point comes across, you don't really think about it at first until you kind of come up with these interesting scenarios to test the consistency of the standard.

I think that's important there. Yeah, so, okay, so environment, obviously not the justification.

Degree of dependency, here goes back to viability. So, here are three human beings that each have a degree of dependency on someone else for their continued existence.

Which one of them should we kill first? Or how about this question, which one can we legally kill?

Well, just one. This one. The degree of dependency is also, it's such an absurd, arbitrary standard, because really degree of dependency has nothing to do with value or what you are.

Again, the science is clear. You're a human being from the beginning. Level of viability has nothing to do with either of those two things.

And here's what's interesting, because some people argue, well, we can have abortions up until the age or level of viability.

Well, in America, that's about 21 to 22 weeks is the development of viability, age of viability.

I'm thinking age of accountability, I'm confusing these. Level of viability. That was an ideology along with all the other stuff.

Yeah, so level of viability, 21, 22 weeks in America. But if you go to the Middle East, like in Bangladesh, the level of viability is at 38 weeks.

So, here's another one of those peculiar situations. If it's only legal to have an abortion up until level of viability, then suppose you have a woman in Texas who is 22 weeks pregnant.

Legally speaking, she cannot get an abortion and let's set aside the health issue. She can't get abortion legally.

So she hops on a plane, flies to the Middle East, goes to Bangladesh, and now the level of viability is 38 weeks and now she can legally have an abortion.

In other words, the level of viability is not a degree of value or personhood. It's really a reflection of our technological abilities.

Has nothing to do with anything that's relevant to whether or not we should be killing these innocent human beings.

So, on top of that, there's an alliteration phrase.

It's blood, breast, or bottle. Any child is going to be dependent on one of those three things, blood, breast, or bottle.

It just depends on what level of development. In the womb, obviously blood when the baby's born, breast, and soon after that, bottle.

Because at all these stages, this baby is going to depend on its mother because it can't feed itself.

So it's not as if when the baby's born, automatically it's just independent and able to survive on its own.

Because, and that's how you'll hear a phrase oftentimes. Well, up until the baby can survive on its own. Name me one baby that comes out of the womb and goes and gets a job and survives on its own.

My body, my choice. They'll say, well, the baby's using my body. Well, sure, the baby is, but when the baby's born, it's still gonna use your body.

I guarantee you, ask any mother, your wife, y 'all have some kids. I guarantee you when the baby was born, she's like, okay,

I'm free. I could just sleep as long as I want. Don't have to feed. No, the baby is still using your body, your energy, your time, your money, et cetera.

So I know of no baby that pops out of the womb and is just independent, unless of course you're this baby. But other than that,

I know of none. I don't mean to interrupt you. Your slides are awesome. Like when you have your little scenario, where suppose there's a doctor and then magically your doctor just pops up on the screen.

That's very well done. I appreciate that. I'm sure it's visually stimulating for those who are watching, so.

Well, thank you. So not this. So again, just to reiterate, kind of recap, you have four differences according to Dr.

Stephen Schwartz, there are only four differences between you as an embryo and you as an adult. And none of these differences justify killing you in the womb, but not outside the womb.

Now, with that being said, and here's where I just open it up wherever you wanna go from here, is the next tactic

I use when discussing this is what I've heard called trotting out the toddler. Any argument that you give me in favor of abortion,

I'm gonna quote, trot out the two -month -old toddler or the two -year -old toddler. And I'm gonna say, let's take the principle of the argument you just gave me and let's apply it to this two -month -old toddler.

Can I use your argument to kill this toddler? If the answer is no, then it cannot apply for abortion either. So here's an example.

Suppose, let's take the main ones, the main, and I can stop sharing here. Let's take the main argument.

Here's an argument, let's say, baby's deformed or formidies or something like that. Well, let's say this mother has a two -month -old baby and on the way home gets in an accident and the baby becomes deformed, mentally damaged, et cetera.

Can she kill this baby? No. Okay, well, why can you do that inside the womb? Well, they might say, well, because it's in the womb.

Well, what's that? Well, that's environment, right? Doesn't work. Well, it's not as developed. In other words, you go through that sled test.

Or how about this? What about in cases of rape? And again, intellectually speaking, the answers are easy.

Emotionally, this is where it can get difficult for some. Sure. Just like the emotional problem of evil and the logical problem of evil.

The logical problem of evil is solved. Evan Plantinga is accredited for solving that. But when it comes to the emotional problem, well, that's a case -by -case basis for each person.

So let's say in cases of rape, they say, well, I don't wanna, every time

I see this baby, I'll have this memory, this and that. Well, killing the baby is not gonna take away the memory of the rape. And the problem is not that she's pregnant.

The problem is that she's raped. The problem is not the baby. The problem is the rapist. And ironically, I've heard people say, well,

I'm totally against capital punishment. Well, what about if a rapist, what about if someone rapes a woman?

No, I'm not in favor of capital punishment for that either. Okay, so you're against capital punishment even in cases of rape, unless of course you're the baby, then you're for it.

I mean, seriously? You know, like we're gonna kill the baby. Anyways.

So poverty, same thing. So here's what I like to do. I say, let's take all of these and put them into one scenario.

You know, suppose tomorrow I get fired. Let's say hypothetically, you know,

Leighton watches this and he's like, you did a horrible job. We're gonna let you go. You know, so I get fired.

And then on my way home, you know, I look at my bank and somehow someone hacked into my bank account and took all my money.

And then on top of that, when I get home, you know, I find out that, you know, my wife and children, God forbid, knock on wood, knock on the

Bible, whatever, you know, they got in a terrible car accident. And, you know, my children are disfigured, dismembered.

You know, there's some brain damage. And then when I see my wife at the hospital and, you know, she comes out of her coma, she says, hey,

I might as well tell you, you know, these children aren't yours. Let's even say, you know, she was raped

X amount of years ago and these children aren't yours, but I've never told you. Wow. Now you have rape.

Let's even say it was by a family member. You have rape, incest, poverty, dismemberment, anything else you wanna throw into the scenario.

Can she or can I kill my children? No. Well, then why do we allow it inside the womb?

Yeah. Right? Because, and I've heard people, you know, and, you know, emotionally speaking, I had one lady, you know, try to really, she just doubled down, but she just doubled down and say, well, if a woman is raped, how can you force her yada, yada, yada?

I know of someone personally, excuse me, that was, I know of someone personally that was raped and didn't know it till later.

You know, especially with, you know, these date break drugs and whatnot. And this person told me that, you know, she got in a fight with whoever she was with at the time and she went out, you know, whatever, had some drinks.

And then the next day she woke up in someone's house, didn't know whose it was, but, you know, just kind of left. Or it was a friend's house, something to that extent.

And when she went to the female doctor, about a month or so later, I don't know how long it was, you know, as they were examining her, they said, you know,

I thought you said you haven't been intimate with anyone. She said, no, I haven't. Well, it looks like you have, you know, when was the last time, it was this long ago.

And says, well, what happened around, you know, basically she explained the situation and the doctor said, well, I hate to break it to you, but you were raped and she didn't know it.

So that being said to the person who was just emotionally like in my face, but if a woman's raped, you're gonna force her

X, Y, and Z. You don't care about the woman. Well, let's say that this, a similar situation happens.

This woman gets in a fight with her husband, goes out to a bar, you know, gets a little promiscuous, but then, you know, blacks out next day, wakes up, let's say in her car.

She doesn't know that anything bad happened that night. She goes back home to her husband. They forgive each other.

They make up, there's intimacy and she conceives. Nine months later, she has a child and the child looks nothing like the husband.

And she finds out quickly, she was raped that night. She just didn't know it. So now she has a child that is already born that was conceived and birthed from rape.

Can she kill the child? And when I was talking to this person, they said, no, she can't do that. Why? Because it was born.

Well, wait a minute. I thought your argument was that you cannot force a woman to live with this experience by having the child. Well, she's already had the child and later found out it was because of rape.

Why can't she kill the child if your argument is about caring for women, not forcing them to have babies that were conceived by rape?

I mean, it's inconsistency. So a lot of their arguments might have emotional punch to them, but they're not consistent with their own standard.

And bringing up these weird illustrations that you're bringing up is just what we do in logic. When you do what's called the reductio ad absurdum, you reduce the position to absurdity by hypothetically granting the truth of what they're saying and showing, look, there's an inconsistency here.

I think that's a very helpful way. So people are saying, hey, Eric is bringing up these random examples of like these hypotheticals that are really unrealistic.

But actually these hypotheticals are demonstrating the inconsistency of the standard of those who are arguing in favor of abortion in different scenarios and things like that.

I think that's an excellent kind of a lesson in logical thinking. And it's very useful, not just in debates on abortion, in anything when you're doing apologetics and things like that.

I think that was excellent, excellent illustrations. And most of these, if not all, are not just kind of weird, quirky scenarios.

Some of these are actual things that have actually happened. So for example, the whole thing about, if you want,

I can send you the citations for it, but there was an instance where a woman who was either getting an abortion or was undecided about keeping the baby did get in a car accident.

And in her insurance policy, unborn children were covered under her insurance policy.

So by claiming that, by being pregnant and showing that her baby died as a result of the car wreck, she was able to get lots and lots of money from the insurance because the other person who was at fault for the car wreck killed a member of her family.

Wow. Now, that implicitly shows even inconsistency within the law, because if this woman decides to not have the baby, well, it's no longer a family member and you can kill it.

Unfortunately, some states have realized this inconsistency and now it's almost verbatim.

The laws is now something like, well, it's a human person if the mother decides she wants to keep it. Right. Well, then it changes that.

So yeah, so these examples, I mean, they're, while they aren't quirky and weird, they're real life situations in many instances.

And there's so many other ones that, of cases that have happened. No, no,

I won't go there. We'll just go for questions because there's a lot of interesting things. But what is funny is that when you go to the other side, they do have these really weird, almost never in a million years would happen type of situations.

Just about everyone I've mentioned have happened, but here's an argument against abortion. It's called the violinist.

Have you heard it? No. The violinist argument? No. Okay. I just as a heads up, Eric. I just as a heads up, after you make this point,

I do want to go into the questions. And for this purpose, I don't want this to go too long for the reason that I actually want people to watch it.

Some of my videos go up to like two hours. This I think is such an important conversation and you've covered so much ground.

I want to make sure that it's a sufficient length that some, most people will be comfortable kind of plowing through it. Cause I think it's really important.

So after this, we'll kind of move to the questions and wrap things up. Cause I think you've captured very well, the wide range of arguments and objections that we might encounter.

So I hope that's okay. Oh, well, I'll tell you what, let's just go ahead and go to there. And if we have time,

I'll cover that because it's an argument I would have to first like explain then unpack. And since I haven't brought it up yet, let's just go to the questions.

Okay. All right. Thank you for that. And again, folks, if you guys have been enjoying this conversation, I mean, it's very informative.

I hope you're also thinking from an apologetics mindset. Don't just think of, don't just concentrate on the points he's making, try to kind of pick up like the mental route he's taking, how he's rationalizing and thinking about these things.

That's a really good way to kind of practice thinking rationally and doing what we talk about a lot in this channel with respect to like presuppositionalism and stuff like that, like internal critiques.

So he's doing a very good job at internally critiquing a lot of these perspectives. So just keep that in mind.

All right. So first question here is from Jose Rivera. He asks, how would you answer, why does being made in the image of God give humans value?

So if you were to say, hey, we're made in the image of God and someone says, all right, cool. So what does that have to do with anything?

Yeah. Well, if I'm talking to a non -believer, I wouldn't necessarily use that argument because in other words, do

I believe we're made in the image of God? Yes. Would I use that as an argument against the non -believer?

No. And we may, you and I, Eli, may disagree here. You know, that's perfectly fine, but I won't quote a

Bible verse to an atheist, so to speak, because they don't believe the Bible. To me, at least, that's like quoting the Quran to make someone, you know, become a

Muslim. If someone quotes the Quran to me, it's not gonna make me, you know, drop to my knees and give my life to Allah. Now, from a

Christian perspective, well, I mean, obviously we trust in special revelation and I mean, really that's the final authority.

All we need to say is special revelation. What does God say about this? And of course, if God is a maximally perfect being, a maximally great being who has infinite value, then bearing his image gives us intrinsic value by virtue of the fact that we're made in his image.

In other words, because he is so maximally great and perfect, then us even being, having a part of him, if I can say that loosely, gives us that intrinsic value that separates us from anything and everything else from creation.

So that would be the nutshell there. Okay, all right, thank you for that. Jay asks,

Eric, your atheist friend who is pro -life, what is the fundamental moral standard they are arguing from? Yeah, you know,

I haven't, so when I was talking to him, we didn't go too much into that because one,

I mean, if an atheist is gonna agree with me on something that's important, I'm not gonna try to, you know, argue him out of it because let's say

I convinced him there's no moral standard. He's like, okay, you're right. Well, then forget it, you know. But what

I did instead, yeah, what I did instead was just listen to him, you know, hear him out, which

I think a lot of Christians don't do very well is they don't listen. And I asked him, but I did ask him why.

And it was interesting and without going into details and not that you know the person, but he's a single father.

And basically, if I'm not mistaken, the, I don't know if it was wife or girlfriend he was with,

I think maybe didn't want to keep the child. I don't want to get the details wrong, but basically he said, look, have the baby and I'll take it.

I'll take the baby. And he says his daughter's his best friend. So he's very much pro -life because of just how personal it is to him and his story.

All right, thank you for that. Neland asks, well, he makes a statement, Neland makes a statement, we should just label people as eagles than problem solved.

It would be more safer as eagles. I think that's an interesting point there. Let's see here.

Viet Mai says, should abortion be criminalized? What if someone argues that abortion shouldn't be criminalized because women seek illegal means to abort the baby, which is harmful to women?

Yeah, so when I spoke at UT Dallas where I did the similar talk at secular college campus, one student came up to me and he said, look,

I am pro -life like you. And he says, but if we don't keep abortions illegal, then women, because it's kind of a two -part question.

Let me answer that one first. If then if women don't have access to legal abortions, then they're going to seek abortions illegally, which can be harmful to women.

So in the book that I'm writing on witnessing to non -believers, I kind of use as an example of how to use questions to implicitly make a point and even to kind of throw the ball back in their court.

So the first thing I did was I reworded his position, but I did it strategically. I pulled the fluff away from his question.

And it's not disingenuous because I really do wanna make sure I understand a person before I answer them. So I said, before I answer your question, let me see if I understand your question correctly.

Are you telling me that if we don't allow women to legally kill their unborn children, that they might harm themselves when they illegally try to kill their unborn children?

Is that what you're asking? And he said, oh, that's a good point. And I said, well, I haven't made a point. I'm just making sure

I understand your question. I'm just repeating what you said. Yeah, I mean, I'm just repeating what you said. I just, you know, taking it up.

And then I said, okay, but I said, but let's do this. Let's take the principle of your argument and apply it to the different scenario.

Because if you reject the principle for this scenario, then you're gonna have to reject it for abortion as well.

Okay. I said, let's suppose I were able to pull up all the statistics, you know, and show you here the statistics of how many burglars are injured when they break into homes.

You know, this guy in, you know, 2005, you know, lost his arm when he broke through the window.

This guy, you know, broke his ankle when he jumped the fence. This guy got bit by a dog, yada, yada. And guess what?

But if we, but they only hurt themselves because burglary is illegal. Now, if we legalize burglary, then these criminals won't hurt themselves.

Now, do you agree with this argument? This was his response. He said, no, because they're just trying to hurt people.

And I said, exactly. And what does abortion do? It doesn't just hurt someone, it kills someone. So if you don't accept this principle for this argument, then it shouldn't apply to yours either.

Now, should abortion be criminalized? Great question. So first, let me say this to those pro -lifers and, you know, our

Christian brothers and sisters who are listening. Before I answer the question, don't allow a separate issue to somehow serve or pretend to be a rebuttal to anything you've said.

Because I can answer this one or two ways. Let's say I say, should, someone says, well, if you're against abortion, should it be criminalized?

I could say, I don't know. But that doesn't answer the question of whether or not we're dealing with an unborn human person, because if we're dealing with an unborn human person, my argument stands, and it's immoral and should be illegal.

I mean, in other words, these are two separate questions. My case against abortion does not stand or fall on me knowing whether or not it should be criminalized.

Now, that being said, I think it should be made illegal. And if illegal, should it be criminalized?

Probably. Now, here's the disclaimer, if you will.

Unfortunately, if you look at the statistics, most of the women, at least that have reported that we know, because you always have those women who either don't report it or, you know, whatever, they go through severe mental anguish, depression, regret over this decision.

So that's the first thing I'd say. Second, unfortunately, most women don't know what's going on or they don't understand what's going on.

I've heard stories of women who've had abortions thinking it's not a person, it's not a human being.

It was only at the second week of yada, yada, yada. And they go hear a talk on abortion or they go and read the literature for themselves and they just kind of die inside and say,

I didn't know I was doing that. I didn't know that's what I did. And to those believers listening, be gentle with people who have gone through this.

Let the Holy Spirit do the convicting, I put it that way. And let us do the loving. You know, when we have someone who's gone through this and I've always made a point to do that when

I've done talks on that. You know, I'll stop in the middle and say, look, if you've had one, I'm not here to condemn you or judge you. That's not my job, that's the

Holy Spirit's job. But I am here to let you know that there's forgiveness that can only be found in Christ. Sure. And I make sure to emphasize that.

So I say that to say, a lot of these women don't know what's going on. And really, I don't know how many years ago, the abortion rate really dropped drastically.

And it wasn't because churches became better equipped to respond. It wasn't because apologists were just amazing at this.

It was because of the invention of ultrasounds. And the invention of ultrasounds made it real and gave a visual representation that you are killing an unborn human being that is still developing.

So sadly, if you go to some places, this might get your video demonetized, but if you go to somewhere like Planned Parenthood, if it's not, as if it's not already gonna be demonetized.

I've never had an abortion video monetized on my channel. But if you go to somewhere like Planned Parenthood, it is required, you have to do an ultrasound, even if you're gonna go through an abortion.

But what the doctors will often do is they will put the screen to where the woman can't see the screen.

In other words, you legally have to do an ultrasound, but you're not mandated or obligated legally to show the woman her ultrasound.

So if they can hide the ultrasound for the woman, chances are she's gonna go through with the abortion. They just won't show the ultrasound.

Do with that what you will. I mean, it's insane. So should it be criminalized? Yes, but I think for sure, the person who should be punished are the doctors because there is no excuse and they know exactly what they're doing.

And oftentimes, they recommend abortion either out of convenience or because if, let's say the baby's health is at risk or questionable, if they do something wrong in a procedure to try to save the baby, let's say they're afraid of getting sued.

So instead, they'll just say, let's just go with a termination or selective termination in case of twins.

And it has nothing to do with whether or not it's a human person. It has to do with convenience for the doctor. And I think, yeah, the doctor should be criminalized absolutely for sure.

All right, very good. Let's kind of shoot through some of these a little bit quickly as, but you don't feel rushed through any of the answers.

I mean, answer it as full as you can, but if we can kind of do a rapid fire to make sure we get through all of them. Bubba's Audio, that's a weird screen name.

Hello, Bubba, how's it going? Bubba's Audio has a question. I had someone tell me that someone is dead when they lose brain function.

So in the same way, a thing is not alive until it has brain function. How would you respond to that? No, plants are alive.

They don't have brain function. Jellyfish are alive. They don't have brain function.

Now, maybe whoever they heard this from worded it differently, but first brain function is not necessary for being alive.

You know, lots of things are alive without brains. Okay. Aside from that, maybe what the person might be getting at is brain function is what makes you a human person.

You know, we've already kind of discussed that. I don't know if Bubba's Audio was working when we talked about that in the beginning.

I'm sorry, Bubba, your name just invited there. I'm sorry. But yeah,

I mean, if I go into a coma, you know, I may have no brain function or whatever. Getting ahead of where the case is, but brain function, going back to what

I said earlier, function does not determine what you are nor does it determine your value. You as a human person is what determined grounds your nature and that is what determines the capacities you have.

And there may be some instances where you lose these capacities due to, you know, in other words, I have the capacity to walk, but if you broke my spine,

I would lose that capacity. So I've lost a function, but I have not lost my identity as a person or personhood.

Yeah, excellent. Modern Caleb asks, how would you respond to the idea that a fetus before consciousness is just a lifeless body, like a body without a brain?

If someone becomes brain dead, we allow doctors to let them die. So a few things.

That kind of goes into what Bubba was asking, but yeah, so consciousness, again, is not a requirement for being a person or being alive.

Again, comas, when you're put under anesthesia, you have no brain activity, you have no consciousness.

You know, in fact, for certain procedures, because I was just looking at an

NDE, a famous one, I forget the woman's name, but basically they know she was like dead for sure because when they put her under, and they put her under, the way the procedure was, they also, before doing that, they had to drain the blood out of most of her body because they had to do a certain brain procedure.

But as they were putting her under, they put in these like headphones, if you will, that had a constant clicking sound, and they could measure the brain activity.

Because in other words, if she could hear the clicking, even though she wasn't responding physically, they could tell that her brain was still active.

So they put this ticking sound in her ear to make sure there was no brain activity. So it was verified that as long as the procedure took, there was no brain activity.

So you can have no brain activity and be a lifeless body, and yet you're still a person. You know, they couldn't do whatever they wanted to her because they were doing a procedure on her and she was under anesthesia.

If someone becomes brain dead, do we allow the doctors to let them die? Well, so a few things. The question becomes, and this would be beyond my, what

I know, is a person, could a person temporarily be brain dead and then regain function?

Well, if that's the case, well then perhaps, maybe they were dead and they were resuscitated. Or maybe they've just, again, something happened to her, just like, again, anesthesia, you have no brain activity, but you're still there, they've just put you under.

Coma, same thing. However, on the other side, I will say this.

If a person, as going back to the soul stuff, as you know,

I define the soul as an immaterial substance. Substances would be first movers.

You know, they respond to environment and stimulation. So if a person's heart is still beating, even though they're unconscious, and I'm just using one example, then we know that the person's still there.

But if you have a body where the only thing that is working and moving is due to a machine, if the machine is making my lungs move, if the machine is making my heart beat, and if the machine is doing everything,

I would say the person's already gone. So it's not a matter of letting them die, they're already dead. And it's just the machine moving a corpse, so to speak.

So in those, now, where does that line draw? That's, don't ask me, you know, that would be for the doctors to tell us, you know, when that happens.

But if by brain dead, someone assumes they're dead, well then, again, they're not letting them die, they're already dead.

Now, again, this does not apply to a developing child because we know it is in a stage of developing.

It is at a stage of continuing its growth and responding to it in its environment. It's alive, it's growing, and we know the end product of it.

We know it's a human being, it's a unique individual human being. It's not the parent's DNA, it's not the mother or father's

DNA, it's a different sex, oftentimes, than the mother. So we know this is a separate, individual, developing, living, growing human being, which is far different than any of these things that we've talked about.

All right, excellent. Well, I think this is a good place to stop. I wanna thank everyone who kind of sent in their questions.

I do apologize if we didn't get to your question. I think, Eric, you did an excellent job, that presentation. I might even just make a short, a little snippets from this interview, because there were some points where you just really kind of nailed a really important point down that I think would be useful for people to get.

So hopefully this is not too long that people will see like, hey, an hour and 20 something minutes, I think

I can do that. Very important topic. And I think Eric does a great job explaining how a

Christian or anyone who is pro -life might respond to pro -choicers. So again, as 1

Peter 3, verse 15 tells us, that when we are being always prepared to give a reason for the hope that's in us, let us engage in these issues with gentleness and respect.

I know it can be very difficult because of the nature of the topic, but we honor Christ when we engage with those with whom we disagree, when we do so in a way that honors

Christ and is consistent with the scriptures that we're trying to defend. So Eric, thank you so much for coming on and explaining all this and taking questions.

Are there any other resources that you could point people to, if they wanna go deeper into defending the pro -life position and maybe from a

Christian perspective, I know that it can apply to non -Christians as well, but what sort of resources can you point people to?

Yeah, so Scott Klusendorf, I forget the name of his ministry and hopefully he doesn't get mad at me for forgetting, but he does a great job.

I mean, he has great resources. Yeah, I would just for the sake of time, look him up.

Scott Klusendorf, his ministry is, and of course I don't see it when I Google his name,

I just see articles about him. I'll have to give it to him, but Scott Klusendorf does great stuff.

He's done quite a few debates on abortion. I would highly recommend checking out his content. Megan Allman, I think she usually does

Biola on the Road and she does great talks on abortion. Stancher Reason has great stuff on that.

I know Greg Koekel, Tim Barnett, Alan Shleeman, all those other great guys, even some of the newer guys.

I don't know if they've done talks on abortion, but I know all these other guys have done great stuff. In fact, when I was preparing for my debate, I kind of messaged them and was asking some questions in preparation.

So any of those ministries would have great resources for that. And I would also say to Christians, find a local crisis pregnancy center.

And maybe you won't ever do a debate on abortion, or maybe you might not talk to someone who has a pro -abortion position, but you can go to your local pregnancy center, crisis pregnancy center, donate money, donate time, donate what they need.

In other words, fight it on all fronts because we need as all hands on deck as we can get.

Thank you for that. And folks, also Apologia Studios with Jeff Durbin, his ministry, they're doing a lot of great work in this area.

So you guys can definitely check out the YouTube channel there and the website. So once again,

Eric, thank you so much for your time. Guys who are listening in, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for your time and sending in your questions.

Life Training Institute. I just, I looked at, okay. I went to his Facebook profile, prolifetraining .com,

president of Life Training Institute and author of The Case for Life. Right, well, thank you for that.

Well, definitely check out those resources and definitely subscribe to Eric's YouTube channel. He's got a lot of great resources there.

And if you found this conversation helpful, please share the video and have conversations with people and really engage on this very important topic, but do so with gentleness and respect.

Well, that's it for this episode, guys. Thank you so much. And once again, thank you so much, Eric. I appreciate your friendship and I appreciate learning from you.

You've got a lot of great things to say. So God is definitely using you and I hope that he continues to do so and that your ministry is a fruitful one.