Conference on Answering Abortion Arguments with Scott Klusendorf Video Q&A Session 6

Kootenai Church

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through it and it just takes an issue and works you through the moral reasoning and the logic in about five minutes of your reading time.

00:07

All right, we're also going to give away another $20 gift card to Messy's Burgers, but I'm going to have

00:13

Scott draw the number for that. You can come on up on stage with me. I can feel the number.

00:29

All right, you ready to wait for it? Here is the one person who will get into the kingdom.

00:40

Eight, zero, three. How many of you have that? Six, four, one.

00:54

Whoa. There you go.

01:00

I'll tell you. Thank you for that 20 you slipped me under the table a moment ago.

01:05

All right, this question, this Q &A session is going to be a little bit different.

01:11

I have queued up here a series of videos. Scott, have you watched or seen any of these videos? I've seen none of them. Okay, you may have actually seen the video clips, but I have not sent these to Scott ahead of time to say

01:20

I want to get his reaction to this. So here's what we're going to do. The guys in the sound booth are going to begin the video clips and we're going to go through them, and at any point that you see an assumption, an assertion, something that you want to answer, just say stop.

01:34

They'll stop it, and then you can give an answer or an argument to it or point out the moral flaw or point out where they go off the rails or how you would answer it in that situation.

01:43

All right? Okay, so here we go. First video clip. Many, many, many, many more hundreds of eggs are fertilized than become humans.

01:53

By that I mean sperm get accepted by ova a lot. I know it was written or your interpretation of a book written 50 centuries ago makes you think that when a man and a woman have sexual intercourse, they always have a baby.

02:10

That's wrong. It's just a reflection of a deep scientific lack of understanding.

02:16

All right, stop right there. Two things. Is our argument that abortion is wrong because it kills a baby?

02:29

Is that our argument? Not really. What's our syllogism?

02:34

Let's go back to it. Abortion is wrong because it does what? Intentionally kills an innocent human being.

02:44

We are not arguing that every stage of development results in a baby.

02:50

We're saying that every time you have an embryo present from that point forward until it dies naturally, you have a distinct living whole human being.

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We are not arguing that everything from sperm egg is a baby. We're arguing that everything from a successful fertilization process is a distinct living whole human being.

03:15

Bill Nye there is not being a very good science guy. By the way, what happened to his arms? He's like this.

03:22

The other thing is he's hinting at, and maybe I'm jumping ahead of where he's going to go, but he's hinting at that because there's a lot of miscarriages that never become babies, these are not human beings to begin with.

03:35

We mentioned this last night, but it's worth repeating. How does it follow that because nature spontaneously triggers miscarriage that A, the embryos in question are not fully human, or B, we may intentionally kill them?

03:49

This is a non sequitur. It does nothing to justify abortion and nothing to justify the claim the unborn aren't human.

03:59

I really don't know what you're talking about. If you're going to say when an egg is fertilized, it's therefore has the same rights as an individual, then whom are you going to sue?

04:12

Whom are you going to imprison? I'll stop right there for a minute. The term fertilized egg is a misnomer.

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Sperm and egg die in the act of fertilization. They each surrender their constituents into the makeup of a new living entity, the embryo.

04:32

Bill Nye does not know what he's talking about right here. He is literally misstating the science.

04:40

Sperm and egg die. Fertilized egg is a term that no embryologist would recognize.

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You have sperm on one hand, egg on the other. When they come together and you get an embryo, you do not have a fertilized egg.

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You have a distinct living new human being. Fertilized egg passed through her.

05:02

Every guy whose sperm has fertilized an egg and then it didn't become a human, have all these people failed you?

05:09

When it comes to women's rights with respect to their reproduction, I think you should leave it to women.

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You have a lot of men of European descent passing these extraordinary laws.

05:21

Let's stop right there. What bad way that we looked at this morning did he just illustrate?

05:30

Remember we said the five bad ways some people assume rather than argue, some people attack rather than argue.

05:39

Which one did he just do? Attack. Attack. Did he in any way refute the pro -life syllogism that it's wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being?

05:49

Abortion does that. Therefore, it's wrong. No. He simply attacked men. Hey, arguments don't have gender.

05:55

People do, as we said before. You've got to answer the pro -life argument, not attack the person.

06:02

That's all he did there. Based on ignorance.

06:09

Sorry, you guys. Come on. Okay. Quick thing here.

06:16

When you get people that duff protest too loudly, there's an old saying in debate.

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When you have the facts, pound the facts. When you don't have the facts, pound the table and do it loudly.

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You're seeing a lot of table pounding here. These people are ignorant. They just don't get it.

06:37

This from a science guy who intentionally distorts the science of embryology, quite remarkable.

06:48

Now, right now, they hold everybody in line with this one piece of doctrine about abortion, which is obviously a tough issue for a lot of people to think through morally.

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Then again, there's a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath.

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Even that is something that we can interpret differently. I'm pro -choice. Me too.

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Go ahead. By the way, I'm having trouble hearing what they're saying, and it could just be me.

07:21

Is anybody else having trouble hearing the ... Okay. I am seriously having trouble hearing it.

07:29

Was he trying to say that breath begins life? Was that the ... Okay.

07:35

Breath begins life. All right. A lot of people will try to make theology this way, and Dr.

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Zeke threw this at you, that Adam became a soul when God breathed into him, and therefore, when you begin to breathe, that's when you have life.

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Let me answer this argument theologically and then philosophically. Theologically, when someone says to you, well,

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Adam wasn't a living soul until God breathed into him, until he breathed, agree with them. Say, you know what?

08:04

You're right. I agree with you. Anybody that God creates directly out of mud is not a human being until God breathes into him.

08:13

You're right about that, but that's not how we began, is it? The rest of us began a different way, where the embryo is processing oxygen from the beginning.

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In fact, early human beings are breathing, just the mode of operation changes at birth. It's like shifting from AC current to DC current.

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Instead of taking in oxygen through the blood, through the umbilical cord of the mother, the child begins to breathe on its own.

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Philosophically, if we're saying you're not a human being until you breathe, if you have no rights until you breathe, that would exclude a lot of born babies who don't immediately breathe on their own.

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It would basically mean you're not a human being until you get a swat on the butt and you start yelling. That's, of course, an absurd argument, but that's what follows from the line of thinking here.

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About the cosmic question of how life begins, most Americans can get on the board with the idea of, all right,

09:09

I might draw the line here, you might draw the line there, but the most important thing is the person who should be drawing the line is the woman making the decision.

09:15

Absolutely. I think that if you're a man - Stop right there. Could somebody tell me what he just argued? I honestly cannot hear it.

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I do suffer from a lot of background noise interrupting what I'm able to hear. What did he just argue?

09:28

Well, some person - Some people draw the line in one place, some people draw the line in the other place.

09:34

The one place that we can all agree to draw the line is that the woman should be drawing the line. Okay. Yeah. There's a circular argument for you.

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First of all, note the appeal to the majority, that somehow if we all agree that makes it right.

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Secondly, note the arbitrary nature of the claim. We just assert that the woman should be the one drawing the line.

09:57

Why is that? What happens to human rights when we arbitrarily pick out places where one becomes a human with value?

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Well, might makes right. The better way is to objectively ground human value in our common human nature, in our human bodies.

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You have a human body, you have a right to life, but body self -dualism dices that out.

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It takes it out, and now whatever trait the powerful decide matters, that's what matters.

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In this case, a raw appeal to power. The mother has the right, period, but we're never told why.

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He just asserts it. Why is it that that's the case? By the way, if the mother has a right to absolute bodily autonomy, no one can tell her that she can't conceive a child for the express purpose of killing him at age five, five months in the womb, so that his fetal body parts can be used to treat disease in other human beings.

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There would be nothing that you could say to stop that. There would also be nothing that you could say to a mother who wants to take thalidomide to reduce morning sickness.

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Let's say a mother says, I'm sick of being tired, I'm sick of being tired of vomiting,

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I'm tired of having to throw up because I'm pregnant, morning sickness is driving me insane, I want to take thalidomide.

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Thalidomide causes children to be born with malformed limbs. The doctor says you can't do that, you'll get a malformed child.

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The mother says, hey, I'm the one who decides here, I want a malformed child,

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I want to take this to relieve myself and I don't care what happens. If it's true that the woman is the only voice in this, you can't tell her it's wrong for her to do that.

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And yet our legal system tells women they shouldn't smoke when they're pregnant, they shouldn't take drugs when they're pregnant, they shouldn't drink when they're pregnant, they can't take

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Accutane when they're pregnant. I mean, we all the time tell women what they can and can't do with their bodily autonomy and I don't see why in this case abortion should be different.

12:04

Listen, you haven't gotten the wrong woman pregnant. I mean, I'm just saying, we've had some slip -ups.

12:12

I've had a few. Look in the... Now right...

12:19

Oh, yeah, so Scott stopped it there right before the man who's the host of this radio program said men oppose abortion only because they haven't gotten the wrong woman pregnant and we've all had some slip -ups, that's what he said, so he was justifying that.

12:32

Let's say that's true. The only reason men oppose abortion is for the reason he said.

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How does that refute our syllogism that it's wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being and abortion does that?

12:48

Maybe I am and maybe I'm not a hater of women. How does that in any way have any impact on the argument

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I'm presenting? Are you starting to catch a common theme here? That all these things are attempts to change the subject.

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That's what's going on here. Nobody's addressing our syllogism in these conversations. They're just changing the subject on us.

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That's why I said to you over and over again, you've got to stick to your syllogism like glue. Here you go.

13:19

Give me your straightforward position on the issue of abortion. My position is in line with Roe v.

13:28

Wade, that women have a constitutional right to make these most intimate and personal and difficult decisions based on their conscience, their faith, their family, their doctor, and that it is something that really goes to the core of privacy.

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I want to maintain that constitutional protection.

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Under Roe v. Wade, as you know, there is room for reasonable kinds of restrictions after a certain point in time.

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I think the life, the health of the mother are clear, and those should be included even as one moves on in pregnancy.

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When or if? All right. Stop right there for a moment. She asserted a constitutional right.

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Where is that constitutional right found? Nowhere. The Supreme Court made it up out of thin air.

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By the way, it's not just pro -life critics who say that. You even have pro -abortion law professors who say it.

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You get people like Lawrence Tribe saying that this was invented out of thin air.

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There's no constitutional mention of abortion that you can use to say there's a right to an abortion based on privacy.

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You also have a situation where she calls it personal, and she just keeps adding names to this, personal, intimate.

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How does any of that make it justified? What if someone argued, I want a personal, intimate decision to kill my toddler?

15:09

Calling it personal and intimate doesn't make it right. She never deals with the question, what is the unborn?

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She simply assumes they're not human. Nobody argues for personal, intimate decisions if we're talking about killing two -year -olds.

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She only does that with the unborn because she assumes they're not human. She also said that Roe v.

15:29

Wade had reasonable restrictions on abortion. No, it didn't. None at all, as a matter of fact.

15:36

Let me explain what Roe v. Wade says. Roe v. Wade says in the first two trimesters of pregnancy, the state may not infringe on the mother's abortion decision except to save her from something unsafe.

15:56

Not unsafe for the child, only the mother. So that means, for example, the state might be able to regulate where a late -term abortion happens in the second trimester but not stop the mother from having one.

16:06

Roe v. Wade also did not say viability is when the child should be protected.

16:12

No such thing as in the text. Roe v. Wade does not say viability is where the state has to protect the life of the unborn.

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It says the state may protect the unborn at viability, not must protect the life at viability.

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Do you see that distinction? The state then, we are told, can only protect the fetus in the third trimester if and only if those restrictions do not interfere with the mother's health, which the

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Supreme Court in Doe v. Bolton, the companion case to Roe v. Wade, defined so broadly you can drive a

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Mack truck through it. Health means social health, family health, psychological health, economic health, anything you want it to mean.

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Oh, and by the way, the one making the health decision or making the assessment is the doctor willing to perform the abortion, which talk about the fox guarding the chicken coop.

17:10

You see the problem with this line of reasoning. So Hillary here is trying to present herself as a moderate.

17:16

She's anything but. Roe v. Wade was not a moderate decision. And nowhere does she cite where the constitutional right to an abortion comes from.

17:25

She just is inventing it out of thin air, like the court did. I have been,

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I've had the same position for many years. When or if does an unborn child have constitutional rights?

17:41

Well, under our laws currently, that is not something that exists.

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Stop right there. She just told the truth. Rare moment, everyone.

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Mark this date down. Find this video clip. Save it for posterity. So if you ever need an example where Hillary just spoke the truth, you just heard it.

18:01

Nothing exists in our law that says an unborn child has a certain right to life at a certain point.

18:07

She was right about that. The unborn person.

18:17

Stop right there. Talk about a slip. Unborn person? Thank you.

18:23

This is getting better by the moment. I don't think I need to say anything at this point. Of constitutional rights.

18:30

Now that doesn't mean that we don't do everything we possibly can in the vast majority of instances to help a mother who is carrying a child.

18:42

All right, stop right there. Yeah, carrying a child. Yeah, you caught that.

18:48

If there's nothing wrong with abortion, and if it is indeed a justified constitutional right, why do we care how many abortions there are?

19:00

Why do we worry about limiting it and caring for women in pregnancy so they don't abort?

19:06

Why do we care how many abortions there are? Do you care how many tonsillectomies there are annually?

19:13

No. Why do we care? She's trying to have her cake and eat it too here, and clearly she's been caught off guard by the question, which

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I never thought you'd see on Meet the Press, right? We don't do medical procedures out of convenience.

19:40

Yes, that is a medical protocol question, but it's not a moral issue. It's not a moral question like, why should

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I morally be bothered that there are too many abortions? If there's nothing wrong with abortion morally, I shouldn't be troubled by how many there are.

19:55

Wants to make sure that child will be healthy, to have appropriate medical support. It doesn't mean that you don't do everything possible to try to fulfill your obligations, but it does not include sacrificing the woman's right to make decisions, and I think that's an important distinction that under -

20:19

All right, woman's right to make decisions. I support a woman's decision to choose her own husband, choose her own career, choose her own health care provider, choose her education path, choose the kind of car she wants to drive, and the list goes on and on.

20:39

But do we support a woman's own decision to kill her two -year -old? What's she assuming about the unborn here?

20:47

That they're not human. She's not arguing for it. She's simply assuming it. She is talking in circle, called it a person, called it a child.

20:59

Isn't it funny how things slip out of people when they're positioned? Yeah. We've had enshrined under our

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Constitution. You had said you think there are room for some restrictions, so is it fair to say that women don't always have a full right to choose?

21:16

Well, under Roe v. Wade, that is the law, and as I said, I support the reasoning -

21:23

Okay, stop right there. She just contradicted herself. Remember earlier she said Roe v. Wade had reasonable restrictions, and there she just said it didn't, so we can catch that.

21:34

Yeah, go ahead. The outcome in Roe v. Wade. So in the third trimester of pregnancy, there is room for looking at the life and the health of the mother.

21:47

Now, most people, not all Republicans, not all conservatives, even agree with the life of the mother, but most do.

21:57

Where the distinction comes in is the health of the mother, and when you have candidates running for president who say that there should be no exceptions, not for rape, not for incest, not for health, then

22:12

I think you've gotten pretty extreme, and my view has always been this is a choice.

22:18

It is not a mandate. You know, I have traveled all over the world. I have seen what happens when governments make these decisions, whether it was forced sterilization, forced abortion in China, or forced childbearing in communist

22:33

Romania. Okay, stop right there. A lot of what she said we've already addressed, but that last little bit.

22:41

Notice what she's doing, comparing U .S. policy with what?

22:46

Romania, China, and these other third world countries, right? Okay, let's compare apples with apples.

22:55

I love how people try to make a causal connection between something that happened in a foreign country and what they think will happen here if we protect the unborn.

23:06

Just because something happens in Romania does not mean it happens here, and just because there are correlations we can draw does not mean we have causation.

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It does not mean that because abortion is restricted, women are going to die from illegal abortions, for example, even in Romania.

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These are faulty without getting into too much statistical theory here. She's spinning a very nice deceitful web trying to get you to believe that something that happened in a third world country is going to happen here, but citing no evidence as to why we should believe it will happen here.

23:40

Is everybody clear on how she's not comparing the apples with oranges? That's a big thing.

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That we should be allowing the government to make decisions that really properly belong to the individual.

23:56

Okay, so let's go back to something I said last night.

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People love to say all the time, I don't want the federal government involved in a private decision. Do they mean the federal courts too?

24:09

Because the federal courts are very involved in the abortion decision, very involved. They have told the executive and legislative branches, you have no say in this matter.

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So when people start talking like this, they are ignoring, in her case, intentionally, the role of the federal courts that has totally co -opted this issue and taken it out of your hands to have any say in it.

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Basically, when somebody says to me, I don't want the government involved, my first question is, does that include the federal courts?

24:37

Because they're very involved in this decision regarding abortion. Human population growth has more than doubled in the past 50 years.

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The planet cannot sustain this growth. I realize this is a poisonous topic for politicians, but it's crucial to face.

24:57

Empowering women and educating everyone on the need to curb population growth seems a reasonable campaign to enact.

25:05

Would you be courageous enough to discuss this issue and make it a key feature of a plan to address climate catastrophe?

25:12

Well, Martha, the answer is yes. And the answer has everything to do with the fact that women in the

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United States of America, by the way, have a right to control their own bodies and make reproductive decisions.

25:27

All right. Two people make the right to control their own body argument.

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The street -level activist, which is what you just heard with Bernie, and the more academic person like Judith Jarvis Thompson that you heard me mention during my

25:42

Dr. Zeke backsliding presentation that you heard a few moments ago. The street level that Bernie's talking about here is easy to refute.

25:52

The unborn are not part of the mother's body. How do we know that? Because, number one, it would mean if it were part of the mother's body, she'd have four arms, four legs, four eyes, and if she's carrying a male child, she has something else.

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You can see how we know conclusively. By the way, we can take a white baby conceived in a test tube, implant it in the body of a woman who is black, what color will the baby be born?

26:25

White. We know conclusively it's not part of the mother's body. It's its own distinct living entity.

26:31

That's what Bernie's getting at there. He's just asserting bodily rights without actually making an argument for it.

26:40

And the Mexico City Agreement, which denies American aid to those organizations around the world that allow women to have abortions or even get involved in birth control, to me is totally absurd.

26:55

Okay. Stop right there. He's distorting what is the Mexico City policy.

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The Mexico City policy is simply this. Your tax dollars are not going to fund overseas organizations that promote abortion.

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And Bernie, for all his talk of choice, thinks you should have no choice in your tax dollars being used in this matter.

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So, again, he talks the line, but he doesn't live it out. Especially in poor countries around the world where women do not necessarily want to have large numbers of babies.

27:27

Okay. Stop there. The other thing he's not telling you is, under the Obama administration, nations that didn't promote abortion were denied aid from our country.

27:37

We basically were trying to blackball them into saying promote abortion or we're not going to give you the foreign aid you request.

27:44

I just love how he ignores that fact. They can have the opportunity through birth control to control the number of kids they have, something

27:52

I very, very strongly support. All right. Another thing. On the teacher's question, she was appealing to overpopulation.

28:00

When you argue that we need abortion to control overpopulation, what are you assuming? That the unborn are not human.

28:10

Remember this table back here? I said if you really want to control scarce resources, you've got to kill those guys because they eat more than everybody else.

28:17

All these arguments simply assume the unborn aren't human. That's the huge problem with them.

28:25

This bill is not about pro -life or the right to life.

28:31

This bill is about control. People are going to have abortion. The problem is it's going to always be unsafe, inaccessible for those people who have lesser means.

28:44

We all know about the back alleys, the basements. People will try going online now, how you can mix a concoction to have an abortion.

28:54

But why you all want to control our bodies, I will never, ever know.

29:03

You know, you all are always trying to put the laws on us. I want you all to vote for this one so we can have some equality about this thing, okay?

29:13

Mr. President, I offer this amendment. And that's the long roll call vote. I saved the best for last.

29:22

Amendment to House Bill 314 by Senator Figures. On page 8, after line 15, insert the following new subsections

29:29

C and D. C, a man who has a vasectomy shall be guilty of a Class A felony. D, a man who attempts to have a vasectomy shall be guilty of a

29:38

Class C felony. Urge you to vote no, members. Using the long roll call vote.

29:46

You're talking about life. All right, Secretary, call the roll. All right, we'll ignore a lot of the nonsense there and go for the things she said at the end.

29:57

She said we're talking about life. Prevent men from having vasectomies because sperm is life, basically, is the argument.

30:05

What mistake is she making based on what we've already talked about? What is she confusing? Parts with holes.

30:13

Sperm and egg are parts of larger human organisms. They are not whole living beings the way you were at the embryonic stage.

30:21

There's a difference in kind between each of our bodily cells, sperm and egg, and the distinct whole living beings we were when we were embryos.

30:29

That's the main mistake that she is making. There was so much there. We could have just drawn a list of things.

30:36

I'm trying to remember. What else did she say in there? There was so much of it. Can we roll that back again? I want to comment.

30:41

There was a couple more things I wanted to... It's not about pro -life or the right to life.

30:47

This bill is about control. People are going to have abortions. All right, stop right there.

30:53

Do laws against rape stop all rape? Are we still justified passing them?

31:00

Of course. No law stops all illegal behavior, but it stops most, and we know from the stats that we've seen prior to Roe v.

31:09

Wade that most women did not pursue abortions prior to it being made legal. Making it legal increased its occurrence, not decreased it.

31:19

Laws against rape don't stop all rape. Laws against abortion won't stop all abortion, but it will stop most.

31:24

Now, she said something else earlier that women need this to have equality. Did you catch that?

31:30

How condescending to women is that? To basically say they need a special surgery to become equal with men.

31:40

That is unbelievable, but I don't think it occurred to her. Roll some more of that because...

31:53

Yeah, yeah. ...is going to always be unsafe, inaccessible for those people who...

32:02

Okay, the vices of the wealthy do not become virtues simply because the poor are denied them.

32:12

Rich people can go out and afford to hire hitmen to kill their enemies. Does that make it moral, just because the rich can do it?

32:21

The rich can do a lot of things poor people can't do. The question here is, are the unborn human?

32:27

Rich people can avoid legal penalties for all kinds of things. That doesn't mean that they should get a pass on it.

32:34

Citing inequality here isn't going to help her. ...have lesser means. We all know about the back alleys, the basements.

32:43

People will try going online now. How you can mix a concoction to have an abortion?

32:48

All right, stop there. We already talked about illegal abortion, but just to review, what does that argument assume about the unborn?

32:55

They're not human. Otherwise, you're arguing that because some people will die attempting to kill others, the state ought to make it safe and legal for them to do it.

33:04

Doesn't work. It's assuming what you're trying to prove, and we've already cited the statistics. She said, did you catch what she said?

33:11

We all know about these back alley rooms. Really? How do we know that?

33:16

She cited no evidence, just asserted it. But why you all want to control our bodies,

33:24

I will never, ever know. You know, you all are always trying to put the laws on us.

33:32

I want you all to vote for this one so we can have some equality about this thing, okay?

33:39

Mr. President. I'll give her some high marks for comedic relief. That was a funny thing to introduce.

33:47

But again, take everything she said. Take every single thing she said and ask yourself this question.

33:54

Did any of it touch your syllogism? No. Changing the subject.

34:01

That's all it is. Now, how do you deal with people who want to change the subject like this?

34:06

Let's say you're talking to a neighbor and you get this kind of stuff. You do what we call narrating the debate.

34:11

I touched on this last night. You remind them of the syllogism you argued. You remind them that what they just said did not refute that syllogism, and you invite them to actually address what you argued.

34:24

You keep them on point. She doesn't do that. She just throws out statement after statement, assertion after assertion that's beside the point.

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Offer this amendment. And after the long roll call vote. And save the best for last.

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Amendment to House Bill 314 by Senator Figures. On page 8, after line 15, insert the following new subsections

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C and D. C, a man who has a vasectomy shall be guilty of a Class A felony. D, a man who attempts to have a vasectomy shall be guilty of a

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Class C felony. Urge you to vote no, members. Using the long roll call vote.

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You're talking about life. All right, Secretary, call the roll. We're facing a really terrifying attack on abortion in the

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U .S. where I live, in Northern Ireland, and elsewhere. In the past, the strategies that our side has tended to use have included a kind of ceding of ground to our enemies.

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We tend to say that abortion is indeed very bad.

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But. Or we say, luckily, it's not killing. Luckily, it's just a health care right.

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We have very little to lose at the moment when it comes to abortion. And I'm interested in winning radically.

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And I wonder if we could think about defending abortion as a right to stop doing gestational work.

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Abortion is, in my opinion, and I recognize how controversial this is, a form of killing.

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It is a form of killing that we need to be able to defend.

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You can stop right there for a moment. What you're hearing here is a calculated shifting of the ground that we are now seeing with some abortion rights leaders.

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During Bill Clinton's presidency, you heard the refrain all the time, abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.

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And then people started asking, well, why should it be rare? And that posed problems for the

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Democrats and the pro -abortionists. So now, you get authors like Katha Pollitt, Anne Ferretti in the

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UK, and others saying, let's quit apologizing for abortion. Let's just stop.

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Let's quit apologizing for it and simply assert it as a right and don't even bother to defend it.

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Just assert it. That's what Anne Ferretti argues. Anne Ferretti, the UK's leading abortion advocate, wrote a piece that is so devastating to the pro -abortion side, you would think a pro -lifer wrote it.

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She argues that all attempts to draw a developmental line between a being with rights and one without rights fall apart.

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That it makes no sense to say the unborn aren't developed enough to have a right to life. She would look at our

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SLED acronym and say, that is absolutely correct. However, she says, we are just going to assert that women have a right to end a pregnancy just because they do.

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That's it. Raw assertion of power. This is what Katha Pollitt argues in her book

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Pro. It's Anne Ferretti and it's this gal. That's the new way some of their activists are trying to frame the abortion debate.

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The good news is the public is still somewhat horrified by this kind of language because the public kind of wants to condemn abortion but still leave it legal at some level, where these guys are trying to take it to a whole new level.

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Now, why do pictures matter in this debate? How do you counter something like that?

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Do you counter something like that with a syllogism or do you outflank them with fire even hotter than what they're doing?

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I say you show the pictures and let people's moral intuitions see just what it is, the choice that they're offering here.

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I'm interested in where a human life starts to exist.

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I see the forms of making and unmaking each other as sort of continuous processes.

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The other end of the spectrum is the process of learning how to die well and hold each other and let each other go at the end of our lives as well as at the beginning.

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But looking at the biology of this kind of hemichorial placentation helps me think about the violence that innocently a fetus meets out vis -à -vis a gestator.

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And that violence is an unacceptable violence for someone who doesn't want to do gestational work.

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All right, what you're hearing here is basically a rehash of Thompson's argument, the one we just looked at, the violinist, that somehow you are not required to use your body to sustain the life of another and that it's violence against the mother.

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Her child, though unintentionally, though innocent, is committing violence against its mother by forcing her to act as a gestational agent.

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Again, this is an appeal to absolute bodily autonomy. I've already talked about the problems with that that you end up with as soon as you say the only thing that matters is absolute bodily autonomy.

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But I have another question. How can a child force its will on anyone?

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The child just is, he just exists, that's all. He's not forcing his will on anything. I think that's a misstatement of what pregnancy is.

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The violence that that gestator meets out to essentially go on strike or exit that workplace is unacceptable violence.

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Are we born, baby, with a human heart and a human liver, a human being? Why don't you take your ideological questions?

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I don't have... No, listen, I want to say something to you. I don't know who you are and you're welcome to be here in Freedom of this

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Press. I am a devout, practicing Catholic, a mother of five children.

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All right, stop right there. I don't know who you are. I'm a devout

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Catholic. I'm a mother of five children. How does that have to do with anything about whether abortion is right or wrong?

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They're completely irrelevant. They have nothing to contribute to this discussion. And yet that's what she's starting with, right there.

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That somehow those things are supposed to make us think the answer she's about to give carries more weight.

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I didn't hear the question that was asked. I'm assuming it was a pro -life questioner who said something and she wasn't prepared to answer, so she personalized it.

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Let's keep going and see if we get a clue. The baby was born, my fifth child, my oldest child, was six years old.

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I think I know more about this subject than you, with all due respect. This is called pulling rank.

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You're trying to avoid having to argue by claiming you can just pull rank on the person.

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Again, I don't care if she's given birth to 20 kids. How does it follow that her moral reasoning is logical or correct?

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Tells us nothing. She's only ad hominem attacking the person who raised the question.

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And to respond to your questions, which have no basis in what public policy is that we do here.

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Well, I happen to agree with her on that, that public policy that she initiates has no basis in fact.

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That I'll agree with there. But again, I want you to notice her attempt to simply pull rank instead of actually engaging the objection that the question raised.

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Is that it? Okay, that was the last video. So you have a moment to grab something else off the table back there.

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We'll take a five -minute break, and we'll start again at 110 for the last teaching session.