December 4, 2023 Show with Scott Klusendorf on “The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson,

19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports

legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning

issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man

sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to

have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener,

with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of

humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at

ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday

on this fourth day of December, 2023, and today

we have a returning guest to the program to discuss very important

matters, one of the most important matters that anyone can discuss,

and that is the sanctity of human life and the prevention of

having babies murdered in their mother's womb.

And today's guest to conduct that conversation with me is Scott Klusendorf.

He should be no stranger, especially to those who love and regularly watch or listen

to Todd Friel's programs, Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, and

today we are going to discuss, even more specifically, the new

expanded second edition of The Case for Life, Equipping

Christians to Engage the Culture.

Welcome back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Scott Klusendorf.

Always a delight to be with you.

Great.

And as Scott knows, there will be a point in the program where

I give him some brotherly pushback because Scott identifies himself as

a pro -life incrementalist, and I have come to identify myself as

an abolitionist, but I will bring that up later on towards the end of the program

where he makes the distinction in his book in one of the later chapters.

But first of all, Scott, tell our listeners about this

organization where you have labored for a number of years on a mission to

rescue children from murder, torturous murder, in the abortion mills.

Yeah.

Life Training Institute was formed in 2004 with the express purpose of

equipping Christians to make a persuasive case for the pro -life view in the public square.

So we're a little bit different than other pro -life groups.

For example, we don't do presentations on abstinence or on post -abortion

testimonies, though we support those ministries.

Rather, we are about equipping believers with reasons why the pro -life position is

true and reasonable to believe.

So we go into Catholic and Protestant high schools.

We do assemblies where we give students the case for the pro -life view.

And by the way, Chris, for the vast majority of them, they've never heard it.

The most common response we get is, we've never heard a case for the pro -life view.

You're the first person to do it.

And that's sad because a lot of pro -lifers wrongly assume that our problem is messaging,

that we need a more market -friendly, more seeker -friendly driven pro -life message.

The real problem is students haven't heard the message.

The gatekeepers have prevented them from hearing it.

And so when they hear it from us, they're just shocked that there is a rational case for the pro -life view.

And as far as your book is concerned, the first edition had been out for a number of years.

What have you added to it that compelled the second edition, the second larger edition?

Yeah, you're right.

It's larger.

In fact, it's almost twice as big as the original.

And no, we didn't use larger type and thicker paper.

There are three main additions to the book.

The first edition is, there's a whole section in there on what are the worldviews that are

driving the abortion debate.

So we look at worldviews like naturalism, the belief that the universe came from nothing and was caused by

nothing.

How does that worldview impact the abortion debate?

We look at postmodernism, the belief that reality can't be known because we're all trapped behind our own sense

perceptions.

And we look at the new kid on the block, wokeness or critical theory.

And how does that impact the abortion debate?

And in a post -Roe world like ours, Chris, what tends to happen is we start talking to people about

abortion and we think to ourselves, why aren't they getting what I'm saying?

And it's a good chance that we're talking to a worldview there, that if we don't address that worldview, we're going to talk

right past the person we're speaking with.

So I thought it would be helpful if we understood what the competing worldviews are.

And then I make a case why Christian theism provides the best explanation for human rights,

human equality, and human dignity.

And then the second big addition on this, I survey the major players on the

other side.

Who are the pro -abortion thinkers in academia that are driving the idea debate and making

abortion plausible to millions of our fellow citizens?

So we survey Michael Tooley, Peter Singer, Kate Griesley, who's a newcomer, but

boy, she's a force to be reckoned with.

David Boonin, for example, and Giubilino Minerva, who argued for after -birth abortion.

So I updated the book by taking the latest arguments from academia and surveying those,

giving the reader an overview of the larger contours of their argument, and then going into how we might

provide some initial responses.

The third thing I do that's new is I decided I was going to give my readers marching orders.

I don't want them to just read a book and stuff the knowledge.

So I give the reader a plan for reaching his or her community with a pro -life message.

And I tell them how to go about contacting schools to get in to make talks and how to get into

church groups.

And then I talk about what your pro -life presentation should look like, the content, how you should structure it.

And then finally, I go into what does a pro -life church look like?

That's important because I think a lot of us as pro -lifers, we go, you know, we're disappointed in our churches.

They're not doing enough.

And I agree, they're not.

But it's not enough to just say, hey, pastor, you've got blood on your hands because you're not talking about abortion.

We ought to be able to say, here's what a pro -life church looks like and give that pastor a plan so he

can turnkey it and help save lives.

So those are the big additions.

Well, it seems to me when I watch discussions

about abortion on television and you hear leftists

defend abortion, you very rarely, in

fact, I never these days, I don't even know when the last time I actually heard this.

But, you know, back in the 80s and the 90s, perhaps, you would

frequently hear from leftists and pro -abortionists,

or should I say pro -infanticide advocates,

that, well, nobody knows for a fact when life begins.

I never hear that anymore.

To me, the arguments, the rhetoric, the apologetic that I

hear from pro -infanticide representatives, advocates,

is that that isn't even an issue.

That doesn't really matter.

It is the enthroned choice of a

woman, for whatever reason, she does not want to have a child.

She may end this life, and it could

be as insignificant a reason as she doesn't want to interrupt her

career.

She doesn't want to gain weight.

She doesn't want to go through mood swings.

I mean, it could be anything that would, you know, when they say the health of the

mother and they give it other candy -coated

labels to make it more palatable to the general public

and also to further salve their own consciences, they

really don't seem to care whether that is a child, a baby, a human being within the womb

of the mother.

And what made it even more vividly crystal clear was when the former governor

of Virginia very calmly

described the after

-birth abortion, so -called, where when a child was born accidentally

during an attempt to murder this child, what are we going to do now?

And basically, we're going to make this child comfortable, perhaps in a box somewhere,

until the mother and doctor make the ultimate decision.

And of course, it would be the mother ultimately, even over the doctor, on whether or not this baby

is going to be fed and nurtured and kept alive or just allowed to die.

I mean, that just makes it even more vividly clear that the question

of when life begins doesn't even come into the argument anymore, does it?

It does and it doesn't.

You're right that merely pointing out that life begins at conception is no longer in many cases

a sufficient argument for our critics, but it's still a necessary one.

And the reason we know that is at the street level, over and over again, what we hear are

people who don't make an argument that the unborn aren't human, they simply assume the unborn aren't human.

It would be like me knocking on your door, Chris, and saying, hey, Chris, when did you start stealing my

computer equipment?

And you protest and say, I didn't steal your equipment.

I didn't.

And I reply, I didn't ask you that, Chris.

I asked you, when did you start?

Well, you would rightly say, wait a minute, you're assuming the very thing you're trying.

To prove.

And we still hear all the arguments at the street level about choice and who decides trusting women to make

their own decisions, economic hardship, rape and incest, all these arguments that assume the

unborn aren't human.

And the reason we know they're assuming that, they would never make those arguments if we were talking about killing two -year

-olds or five -year -olds.

They only make those arguments when we're talking about killing the unborn, which means they're assuming

something about the unborn.

They're not assuming about the toddler or the two -year -old.

So you're right that it's no longer sufficient to merely talk about when life begins, but it's still

necessary to make that case as our cumulative case of evidence that we're presenting to a

secular culture.

Among the names that you were listing earlier of the academics

that are in the forefront of the

apologetics to defend infanticide, I was almost certain, and I could be wrong, I'm not going to mention

his name because I'm not certain I was correct in my memory, but wasn't one of those individuals that you

mentioned an Ivy League professor who actually believes that women should

have the legal right to murder a young child years after it was born?

Well, Peter Singer and Michael Tooley both are honest about where the implications of their

argument lead.

Both say that if we're going to argue that cognitive awareness, meaning what they

term mental continuity, the ability to see yourself existing over time, if that is the

threshold that we all have to cross before we have a right to life, you can't limit the right to

kill to abortion.

You've got to be consistent and apply it to newborns and cognitively disabled persons

as well.

Their conclusions are absolutely horrific, but Chris, they follow in line consistently once you

grant the premise that what gives us our value is not our intrinsic nature as human beings, which as

Christians we know bears the image of God, but rather you ground human equality and dignity in a

performance view that says you only have value when you have certain functions that you can fulfill

cognitively.

Once you buy into that performance mindset, you cannot limit your victim class to the unborn.

You've got to be consistent.

So Peter Singer, Michael Tooley, Marianne Warren and others candidly admit that their

positions allow for infanticide.

Now, are there any so -called pro -choice advocates of note that are

responding with disgust and outrage and protest against their so -called

fellow pro -choice advocates, but who have gone beyond

any reasonable idea of what that is into this satanic,

Hitlerian concept that you've described?

Well, a thinker like Kate Griesley, for example, at Oxford in the UK argues that birth is the

decisive threshold.

Now, I don't agree with her, and in the book I explain why, but she does draw the line at birth.

David Boonin wants to draw the line at birth.

He wants to say that you and I are identical to the embryos and fetuses we once were, but just

because we're identical to the embryos and fetuses we once were, it doesn't follow we have the same right to

life then as we do now.

So Boonin differs from guys like Tooley and Singer in that he doesn't say that

wasn't you back then the way that Singer and Tooley do.

Singer and Tooley say you didn't even exist as an embryo, fetus, or newborn.

A physical body existed, but you didn't show up until your cognitive self showed up.

Boonin says, no, that's ridiculous.

You and I are identical to the embryos we once were, but we don't have the same right to life then

as we do now.

So he tries to draw the line at birth.

Kate Griesley tries to draw the line at birth, and both are unsuccessful, as I point out in the book.

But how vociferous are these pro -choice advocates in their

denunciation of the advocates of murdering children years after they were

born?

Well, they can turn on each other.

For example, Kate Griesley does a great job absolutely destroying the bodily

rights argument that was first put forward by Judith Jarvis Thompson and that David Boonin now tries to use,

the idea that even if the unborn are human and persons with a right to life, we can still kill them in the name of

bodily autonomy.

Kate Griesley, to her credit, says, no, that's not going to work.

You cannot intentionally kill an innocent human being in the name of withholding support.

You first have to demonstrate that that's not a person to begin with.

And if you don't do that, you don't have grounds for intentionally killing an innocent human being.

So I salute her for that, though her conclusions are still deeply problematic.

Well, why don't we begin to have you unfold

the most prominent arguments in defense of infanticide

that these leading academics have presented to

society in efforts to further equip their

advocates in keeping legal the murder of

unborn children?

Yeah, and to make it easier for your listeners to track with this so they don't think, oh, no, we're going to get lost in the academic

weeds here and I need to pull over and take notes.

There's really two types of arguments that are used to disqualify the unborn from having a right to life.

There are those that ground the right to an abortion in identity and those that grounded in

performance.

And they're not the same argument.

For example, Michael Tooley, as I mentioned a moment ago, and Peter Singer and Giubilini Minerva, who

argued for afterbirth abortion, all say that you did not exist as an

embryo.

There was no you there.

You didn't exist at all.

And you even didn't exist once you were born.

You did not exist until you had what they refer to as mental continuity.

You're not a rational agent with a right to life until you can desire yourself existing over time.

And since fetuses and newborns cannot do that, they are not present.

Therefore, if they are killed, there's no person killed because there's no subject there to

kill.

David Boonin's going to take a different approach.

Boonin's going to say, no, that's not right.

We did exist as fetuses and embryos.

However, as I mentioned a moment ago, he says we didn't have the same right to life then as we do

now.

We only have it once we can immediately exercise desires for something.

And until we have immediately exercisable desires, we don't have a right to life.

And both of those views, though, notice that both of them are parallel in that they both

assume a performance view of human value.

And what I mean by that, Chris, is this.

They both assume and assert, I should say, that what gives us a right to life is our ability

to immediately perform or exercise certain cognitive functions.

We're not equal and valuable by nature, which is the biblical view.

We're equal and valuable only to the extent that we perform at certain levels of cognitive

proficiency.

So once you lose that or before you gain that cognitive proficiency, you're not a person with a

right to life.

You may exist in the case of David Boonen or not exist in the case of Singer and Thule.

But nevertheless, you don't have a right to life until you can have that cognitive performance

achievement.

So that's the big picture.

That's the way to simplify this for listeners.

And please explain in detail, how do we respond to those arguments?

Well, let's take Peter Singer and Michael Thule first.

The first thing to point out is, notice that we can always ask guys like Peter Singer and Michael

Thule, why is having self -awareness over time value giving in the first

place?

And the big mistake a lot of pro -lifers make, Chris, when Singer brings up these topics or Thule

or other pro -abortion advocates, when they say to us, oh, that unborn fetus isn't even self -aware, the first thing we

do is we go to fetal development and we say things like, well, that child in the womb has brainwaves by week

13 and is dreaming in his sleep by week 20.

Wrong answer.

You just conceded the premise that cognitive awareness is what gives us value.

Don't concede the premise.

Push back against it.

How self -aware do I have to be not to be killed?

And why that level of self -awareness and not something else?

In other words, these thinkers are tossing out arbitrary standards and thresholds that they

need to defend as being value giving, and they don't do it.

They just throw them out.

The second thing I would point out is their argument results in savage inequality.

If our right to life is based on something that none of us shares equally, like self -awareness or

viability or physical development, if Singer is right that cognitive awareness is what gives us

value and you have more of it than me, you have a greater right to life than me and human equality is out

the window.

In addition, I think we can point out that this raises troubling counter examples.

Let's say, for example, we grant Peter or David Boonen's thesis that having present desires is what gives us

a right to life.

Suppose a doctor, to borrow an example from my friend Francis Beckwith, suppose an enterprising

physician alters the brain of a developing fetus in utero so that it never has

desires.

He surgically removes that part of the child's brain.

The child is then born, and then when the child is 10 years old, he's killed so his body parts can be

used for harvesting organs for other ill people.

Do we think that's wrong?

Well, if we do, something else other than having present desires is what's giving value here.

Wouldn't it be the nature of the being?

Human beings by nature should not be treated that way.

So for Boonen to even oppose that terrible counter example I just gave you, he can only do

it by borrowing from the pro -life worldview that says humans are valuable by nature, not

function.

And this is where the biblical worldview is so much superior to the secular explanations that are out there.

The biblical worldview says each and every human being has value because he bears the image of his maker, and she as

well.

But the point being that our value is based in our nature as endowed

entities, not based in our performance.

It's grounded in our nature, which as Christians we know bears the image of God.

And if we ground human equality in our common human nature that all of us share equally, that doesn't

come in degrees like self -awareness does, like physical development does, we have a good foundation

for human equality.

And what, in your opinion, in your experience, is

the most—or should I say are the most common arguments

that women use, or any pro -infanticide advocate may use,

to defend killing an unborn child?

The average layperson that may not be as in -depth in their explanation

to defend themselves.

What, over the years, the many years that you've been seeking to rescue

unborn children from infanticide, what are the most common things people

say, and what are your responses to them?

At the street level, the three biggies are dangers from illegal abortion, that if we restrict abortion,

women are going to die in the back alleys of America, and blood's going to flow in the streets.

Rape and incest.

And then a third one that is not quite as common, but it does come up, is economic hardship.

You're going to force poor women to bring another child into this world that they can't afford to feed.

That's cruel and inhumane punishment.

Now, notice, Chris, at the street level, all three of those objections assume the unborn aren't human.

And I want your listeners to get in the habit of every time they hear an argument for abortion, they ask themselves

this question.

Would this work as a good argument for killing a toddler?

If not, the objector is assuming the unborn aren't human.

So I want to point that assumption out to them, that they're assuming the unborn aren't human.

Would anybody kill a toddler because his mother can't afford to feed him?

I mean, the homeless are unwanted and they cost money, but we don't intentionally kill them.

If the unborn are human beings, they too should not be killed simply because they're costly.

When human beings get expensive, that's not a good reason to intentionally butcher them.

I would also point out that when it comes to back alley abortions, we as pro -lifers need to be very careful here.

We are in a culture today that is absolutely convinced that the pro -life movement hates women

and wants them to die, especially on the heels of the Dobbs decision.

Now, listen, don't get me wrong.

Reversing Roe v. Wade was absolutely a good thing.

We should all be glad about that.

But since then, our opponents have worked overtime not to advance academic

arguments necessarily, but to scare the public into believing that we hate women and want them to die.

And so what they will do is say things like, well, you don't care about that poor woman and you don't care about the woman who gets an

illegal abortion.

You just want her to die.

So the first thing I'm going to do when someone raises the objection of illegal abortion, I'm going to show some empathy.

I'm going to say, you know what?

It's a tragedy when any woman dies from an abortion, legal or illegal.

And I'm going to show a little empathy there to show I have some heart.

But then I'm going to point out to them that their objection assumes the unborn aren't human.

What's wrong with a law that says you can't intentionally kill an innocent human being and we're not going to

make it legal for you to do it just so other people who want to do the killing can get away with it?

I get that.

And that's a question they need to answer.

But I'm also going to point out that we don't fault the law for restricting bank robbery, even if it would

make it safer for felons.

We recognize that when innocent human life is involved, we're not going to make it legal for you to intentionally

go kill another innocent human being in the name of safety for the people who want to do the killing.

And then the third thing I'm going to point out is statistics.

And this is, again, where pro -lifers can sometimes misstep.

They hear about the illegal abortion objection and right away they go to statistics and they say things like, well, most

women prior to Roe v. Wade who got illegal abortions did not die.

In fact, they say it's not true that five to 10 ,000 women a year died from illegal abortion prior to

Roe v. Wade.

They're right about that.

But before you show some empathy, you don't want to just go to statistics.

But once you have shown empathy and shown how the argument assumes the unborn aren't human, it's perfectly

acceptable to point out the faulty statistics here.

There is no credible evidence that five to 10 ,000 women a year died from illegal abortion.

And very quickly, Chris, I'm going to give you four pro -abortion sources for that.

These are not pro -life sources.

They are pro -abortion sources.

Source number one, Dr. Christopher Tietz, who was a Planned Parenthood statistician in the 1960s,

during the time when people like Barbara Boxer and other abortion advocates were trying to convince us that

thousands of women died every year from illegal abortion, Christopher Tietz said this, that claim

is, quote, unmitigated nonsense.

That's not a pro -life source.

That's a pro -abortion source.

Source number two, Dr. Mary Calderon, Planned Parenthood's medical director during the 60s and 70s, again,

when all these illegal abortions were allegedly happening.

She writes in the American Journal of Public Health that the claim of high legal abortion numbers is

falsely wrong, grossly wrong, and that if truth be told, the death number from illegal

abortion is so low it's not even worth commenting on.

And she gave two reasons why.

Number one, with a widespread introduction of penicillin in the late 1940s, all surgical

procedures became safer, including abortion.

Women weren't dying from post -op procedures the way they were prior or post -op infections

the way they were prior to the introduction of penicillin.

The second reason why women weren't dying, she says, is that most illegal abortions were not being done

by a rego in a back alley with a rusty coat hanger.

Rather, illegal abortions were being performed safely by doctors in good standing in their community

who simply skirted the law.

Source number three, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who later became pro -life, but while he was still an

abortionist, admitted to the New York Times that he presided over 60 ,000 deaths and

that the numbers that he and others made up about 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 deaths a year from illegal abortion were made up

out of thin air.

Those are his words, not mine.

A fourth source is Dr. Daniel Callahan, who was head of the Hastings Institute before he

retired from that.

In his book, Abortion Law, Morality and Choice, Callahan writes that the claim of 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 deaths

a year is not even feasible from a mathematical standpoint because he points out that only

35 ,000 women a year of childbearing age die from all causes.

To say that one cause accounts for 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 deaths a year, that being illegal abortion,

stretches credulity to the breaking point, he says.

Notice I didn't cite any pro -life sources, though.

Those are all pro -abortion sources making that claim, and I think we're wise to use those sources.

Well, we are going to our first commercial break right now, and I would like to

say right away, for those of you who happen to identify as abolitionists,

you can rest assured that we will have a representative of that position tomorrow

on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

His name is Pastor Brian Gunter of the First Baptist Church of

Livingston, Louisiana.

So you don't have to complain that your side is not being heard, which, by the way, is my

side.

And also, my guest today, Scott Klusendorf, has graciously accepted an

invitation to debate Jason Storms, the National

Director of Operations for Operation Save America.

He is an abolitionist, and the two have agreed to debate one another on Wednesday,

the 21st of February, 2024.

So you might want to mark your calendars for that.

But if you have any questions for Scott Klusendorf, our email address is chrisarmson

at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside

the USA.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter, and I can readily understand whenever a

conversation about abortion is the topic at hand,

there will likely be people listening who have very private, personal, and painful

stories that they want to ask.

About.

So you can feel free to remain anonymous.

But please, if it's a general question, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

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We are now back with Scott Klusendorf.

We were discussing his new second edition, the larger version

of the Case for Life, equipping Christians to engage the culture.

And our email address again is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

If you have any questions for Scott, chrisarnzen at gmail .com gives the first name at

least, your city and state of residence, and your country of

residence if you live outside of the USA.

And we have, I was going to wait a while to take listener questions, but I think this will help further solidify

your position, Scott.

We have Benson in Casey County, Kentucky.

And Benson asks, can you clarify, do you believe that a baby is a true

human from the very second of conception in the mother's womb?

Yes, the science of embryology is clear that from the earliest stages of development, from the

one cell stage, the unborn are distinct living and whole human beings.

They're not part of another human being like skin cells on the back of my hand.

They are already whole living members of the human family.

They just have yet to grow and mature, but they are clearly one of us.

They count as one of us, yes.

And they have different DNA than the mother, correct?

That's correct.

Different blood type.

It can even be a different gender than the mother, at least half the time.

Yes.

So we know that the unborn are not part of the mother's body because we could take an IVF embryo

that was conceived in utero by two black parents, put that embryo in the body of a surrogate that's

white, and that baby is going to be born black.

We know conclusively that the unborn are not merely part of the mother's body.

Right, yeah.

The argument a woman has the right to do whatever she wants with her own body,

number one, that's not even true.

Suicide is not legal.

If you are known to have attempted suicide, you will be taken to a psychiatric

institution involuntarily.

And so this myth that a woman has the right to do whatever she wants with her own body is not true, but it's

not her own body we're talking about.

It's a separate human being.

You're correct.

And there's two types of people who bring up this bodily autonomy argument.

The street -level activist who simply says, well, I have a right to my own body.

How dare you tell me what I can and can't do?

And you're right.

What you just said is enough to refute that.

The unborn aren't part of the mother's body.

They are distinct, living, whole human beings.

But there's an academic version of this argument that I cash out in the book, first put forward by

Judith Jarvis Thompson, that's a little more nuanced.

It's no more persuasive, but it's helpful if your listeners at least know the genesis of this argument.

And the argument goes like this.

Let's grant the unborn are human from conception.

Let's further grant, says Thompson, that they are persons with a right to life.

Abortion is still justified, even if they are persons with a right to life, because you cannot

force one person to use their body to sustain the life of another human being, even if

that other person is undeniably human with a right to life.

And she uses a little example to try to make her point.

She says, imagine you wake up one morning and find yourself surgically connected to a world -famous

violinist that's been put there by the Society of Music Lovers.

And this world -famous violinist has a kidney ailment.

He is going to die if he can't use your body to sustain his own life for nine months.

And you're waking up in the hospital.

You're groggy.

You're trying to figure out what happened.

And as you're waking up, you're trying to disconnect from the violinist.

And the chief surgeon appears at your bedside and says, I know this is an inconvenience for you.

I know you don't like being hooked up to this violinist, but he has a kidney ailment.

And if you disconnect, he's going to die.

So although this is an inconvenience to you, too bad for nine months, because he's a person with a right to

life, he gets to use your body.

And then Thompson poses this question.

It would be nice if you let your body be used that way, but must you?

And for many people, this is a persuasive argument, because they think to themselves, wait a minute, you can't force me

to give someone else a blood transfusion against my will, even if it will save their life.

Therefore, abortion is certainly permissible.

The fetus cannot demand use of the woman's body if she wants to withhold that support.

And that's what abortion is, according to this argument.

The justifiable withholding of support.

But I think right away, Chris, some of your listeners can see problems with this argument.

In order for it to work, a woman being hooked up to her own child must be

parallel to you being hooked up to the stranger violinist in morally relevant ways.

And of course, the parallels start collapsing all over the place.

And here's the biggest problem.

Abortion is much more than merely withholding support.

Suppose, Chris, that I have a form of blood cancer and I need your blood to sustain my life.

Let's say you withhold that support.

That doesn't give you the right to slit my throat in the name of withholding support.

And therein lies the problem.

Abortion is much more than withholding support.

It's intentionally killing another innocent human being.

I think Francis Beckwith puts it real well.

He says calling abortion merely the withholding of support is kind of like suffocating someone with a

pillow and calling it the withdrawing of oxygen.

There's a whole lot more going on here than merely withholding support.

So that's the primary weakness with Thompson's bodily rights academic argument, a weakness that

pro -abortion advocate Kate Griesley, that I mentioned earlier, points out in very clear detail.

And her argument in her article she wrote critiquing Thompson is just brutal in showing

that you can't get from a right to withhold support to a right to intentionally kill.

Griesley says you've got to prove the unborn are not persons.

And if you don't do that, the case against abortion stands.

Yes.

And by the way, Benson in Casey County, Kentucky, please give us your last name and your full

mailing address because you have just won a free copy of The Case for Life,

the second larger edition by our guest Scott Klusendorf.

And we'll have Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, ship that

out to you as soon as possible.

And we want to thank Crossway for providing us with these free copies.

Also, let us know whether or not you're a first -time questioner because you will also receive a brand new

New American Standard Bible as we always give away to our first -time

questioners.

And the left, the pro -infanticide crowd are very

schizophrenic when it comes to whether or not to recognize the unborn as babies

because you will frequently hear from the lips of leftists in

the major media when they learn someone is pregnant, they will refer to that baby as

a baby as long as that woman is thrilled to death that she is carrying

this baby.

And on top of that, it's quite interesting that

on most occasions that I've heard, if a pregnant woman is murdered,

the perpetrator, the murderer is typically charged with double homicide.

And I heard on one occasion a major feminist

organization, NOW, I don't even know if NOW exists anymore, some of the

feminists seem to have gone into the closet and hiding now that the transgendered issues seem to have wiped out

the concerns of feminists.

But I believe that the NOW organization protested

the charge of double homicide against a notorious husband who murdered his pregnant wife.

But then I think because of the outcry against them, they kind of backed away from that opposition, if I'm

not mistaken.

But can you imagine, here they are, feminists, and this man murders his wife,

a woman, and they want the husband to receive

a less severe charge.

Yeah, you're right.

That's the case of Scott Peterson.

And even in a liberal state like California, I mean, it's hard to imagine you can get more liberal and leftist than California.

The jury convicted him of two charges, killing her and killing the child.

So he got convicted on both of those.

And that's the kind of mental schizophrenia that you're talking about here that we see in our culture today.

Here's another example.

A woman is pregnant and she's driving to the abortion clinic to have an abortion.

Let's say she has an accident on the way, and the doctor that's going to perform the abortion collides

with her vehicle and kills her unborn child.

In the majority of states, he's going to get ripped for vehicular manslaughter at a minimum.

But if she gets to the clinic and he kills the child there, everything is okay.

So you can see how crazy this is.

You end up creating great cognitive dissonance when you put these kinds of examples to people who want to straddle

the fence like this.

Right.

And in your experience also, let me

preface this by saying my friends that I know personally,

who are very passionate, active individuals

seeking to rescue children from murder at the abortion mills,

those that are right in the front lines, those that are actively,

frequently, weekly, if not daily at abortion mills,

proclaiming the gospel and warning women not to murder their babies,

they have all told me that in their experience, every woman that they've

encountered knows that she's killing her baby.

There is no excuse about, we don't know when life begins or anything like that.

Is that your experience?

There are different levels of knowing.

I think every woman knows through the witness that is in there that Paul spoke of in Romans 1

and 2, they know that's written in the law of their hearts.

There is a God -given sense of right and wrong.

They don't necessarily know at the same level the abortion doctor does, a point I'm sure we'll get to in a

minute, but they do know that it's wrong in many cases, but does their

knowledge of wrongness match that of the guy killing the child?

And I would argue no.

Well, we have to go to our midway break right now, and if you have a question, please submit it to

chrisarnson at gmail .com.

As I've always said, give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and country of residence, and

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From all over the world.

Here's Joe Riley, a listener in Ireland, who wants you to know about a guest on the show

he really loves hearing interviewed, Dr. Joe Moorcraft.

I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener here in Atai, in County Kildare, Ireland.

Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe

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Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church, unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards, and Dr. Joe

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Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Iovino and thanks for listening.

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He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

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Before I return to Scott Klusendorf as we continue our discussion on his

second edition of the book The Case for Life, which is not only the second edition, but a much larger edition.

Before we continue that discussion, I have some important announcements to make.

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Now, last but not least, if you are not a member of a Christ honoring, biblically faithful, theologically sound,

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ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

And before you go on to, as you had mentioned before the break, you were going to do the

fact that physicians, so -called, know exactly what they're doing when they're murdering a baby.

Going back to the hypocrisy or the schizophrenia of the left is that

even if you are watching a news program on an obviously

left -leaning television station, when a young girl

gives birth to a baby, murders it, and throws it in a dumpster, the anchor

person, whether it's a man or a woman, always speaks of this as a

horrible, wicked thing.

They may not use the term wicked, but they are speaking of this with

emotion and are typically describing it as an utter and horrible

tragedy and are fully supporting, it seems, any kind of arrest

of this girl for doing that.

Isn't that a bit schizophrenic where they could be just gleefully

supportive of a so -called woman's right to have an abortion, yet if a girl,

instantly after giving birth, kills the baby, that's a horrible thing.

Well, you're right, Chris.

There is schizophrenia there, but keep in mind the worldview that's driving that.

It's a performance view of human value that says human nature is not what gives us our value.

These attributed traits we have that none of us share equally is what gives us value.

So in their mind, and they're mistaken, but in their mind they say it's horrible a newborn was

killed, but a preborn child is not a human person with a right to life, only the born is,

because it can't function a certain way yet.

So in their worldview, there's not an inconsistency.

You and I see it immediately.

It's very easy to say, wait a minute, what's the difference between the child in the womb and the one outside

that justifies intentionally killing him?

And of course, there is no good reason for saying it's OK to kill that child in the womb.

But in their mind, in their worldview, the born child is a human person with a right to life.

The unborn one is not.

So that's why they can juggle this in their own minds.

They're wrong.

We see the inconsistency, but oftentimes they do not.

And now delve into what you hinted at earlier about the reason

physicians have absolutely no excuse to defend themselves for murdering

unborn babies.

Well, for example, I'll give you some examples of this.

Dr. Warren Hearn, who's written the book Abortion Practice, which is the medical teaching text that teaches

abortion procedures worldwide.

I've got two copies of it here.

If you ever want to read something that will churn your gut, read that before bed at night.

He goes into detail about how dismemberment abortions are performed.

But Dr. Warren Hearn himself at a Planned Parenthood conference told attendees that it

was no longer possible to deny that second trimester abortion is an act of

destruction.

In fact, he went so far as to say the following, and I'll quote him directly.

We have reached a particular point in this technology, meaning second trimester dismemberment

abortion, where there is no possible act of denial that this is

the death of a living human being.

And he puts it this way.

He says, the sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current.

That's pretty graphic.

That's not a pro -life advocate.

That's Dr. Warren Hearn.

If you go back as far as 1970, there's a journal article in the American, or I'm sorry, in the

California Journal of Public Health that says that everyone in medicine and philosophy

knows that abortion involves intentional killing, but we've got to use deliberate language

to try to fool the public into believing it's not.

And the interesting thing about this editorial, the authors admit that this is intellectually

dishonest, but they also admit that if we don't use language to fool the public, it's going to

be very hard to talk them out of their ingrown belief that abortion is anything but intentional killing of an

innocent human being.

OK, we have Beauregard in Duck, North Carolina,

and Beauregard says, Speaking of schizophrenia in the public eye,

can you name anyone on the left who opposed the arrest and

incarceration of Kermit Gosnell?

And perhaps you should explain to our listeners who might be unfamiliar with that name, who that is.

Yeah.

Kermit Gosnell was a late -term abortionist in Philadelphia who was convicted of killing

children that survived his abortion procedures.

There were cases where the child survived and was born alive, and he intentionally killed them.

And the evidence that was corroborated proved that he had done that, and he got prosecuted for that.

This happened in Philadelphia going back about a decade now.

And if you want more on that, an article I wrote for the Christian Research Journal about Gosnell.

But in terms of the press, all you heard was crickets.

You didn't hear anything about this.

They covered it up.

They just refused to talk about it.

And they certainly didn't show the results of the fetal parts that were stored throughout his

facility, very grotesque, rotting fetal parts that were found in refrigerators,

buried in his own backyard in some cases.

And all of this, the media covered up.

And I'm not aware of any journalist on the left that came clean and said, hey, let's call this what

it is.

Let's at least show it to the public.

No, they covered it up.

They covered it up, but they also did not oppose his arrest and incarceration either.

No, they were, you know, it's interesting, the abortion industry will eat its own if it helps its PR machine.

We saw that with Gosnell.

We saw that with other abortionists who have done the same thing like Willie Parker.

Willie Parker was considered God's abortionist.

He was the hero of feminists up until about five years ago when Dr. Mike Adams debated

him and destroyed him at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.

And after that debate, Willie Parker's stock just plummeted.

In fact, your viewers ought to watch that debate.

It's a tremendous example of how to take out an abortionist who unapologetically wants

to defend child killing.

And Mike just did a great job dismantling the guy's argument.

In fact, it was interesting.

Mike knew Willie Parker's book better than Willie Parker knew his own book.

But the abortion industry will eat its own and toss you under the bus if you're no longer serving

its purposes.

And that certainly happened with Gosnell.

It happened with Willie Parker and it's happened with others too.

And by the way, Beauregard, please give us your full mailing address and last name.

So that we could have Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service CVBBS .com ship you a free

copy of the book.

You just won The Case for Life by Scott Klusendorf.

This is the second larger edition.

And we thank Crossway once again for providing us a limited number of these free

giveaway copies.

We have an anonymous listener in Syracuse, New York, who asks

if a child, specifically a daughter, is hell bent on having

an abortion, would you as a Christian permit that child to still

live under your roof after committing murder?

I don't believe we should ever cut off our children, whatever they do, because if we do that,

we take away the most obvious way we can convert and witness to them.

So I wouldn't cut the child off, but I would certainly do everything I could to stop

that, including move the child to another city if I needed to, to get them away from that choice.

I would go to whatever lengths it took.

But you know, as a parent, to say I'm going to cut my child off and just

break relationship with them, I'm severing the one tie that might be the thing that brings them back

to Christ.

Parents are very influential, even in their adult children's lives.

I'm learning that with adult children today.

I still have a role to play.

I certainly am not going to condone that.

I'm going to literally crawl over my dead body to get to that abortion clinic.

That's what's going to happen.

I'm going to make it incredibly difficult for that.

But to say I'm going to cut off my own child, no, I'm not going to do that.

Now, asking or insisting that a

child, at least one old enough to fend for itself, insisting that they

leave your house is not necessarily cutting them off, though.

For instance, I have heard Christian pastors counsel people

that if a child refuses to stop having

promiscuous sex and things like that, that they're no longer welcome in that house.

If you are able to somehow maintain connection with your child and say you refuse to

abide by my rules, you're going to need to live elsewhere, so be it.

But I thought the question was frame more along the lines of a needy child.

I was thinking more along the lines of a teenager.

I wasn't thinking necessarily only adult children, but I'm certainly not going to sever

relationship, and I'm also not going to condone what they do.

I'm going to oppose it with everything in me.

Will Anonymous please provide for us your full name and mailing address?

We obviously won't disclose that information on the air.

And we will have Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com ship you a copy of

The Case for Life by Scott Klusendorf.

And we thank Crossway once again for providing us these free

copies that we have been giving away.

And if you could, before I go on to any more listener questions, move on to

some other primary examples of how you defend

a pro -life position and the prevention of

having children murdered in their mother's womb.

Well, one of the things I like to do is use visual imagery to depict abortion.

At virtually every talk I give and any talk our team gives, whether it's a school or a

church or a worldview conference where we speak often, we show graphic imagery of abortion.

And there's a reason for that, Chris.

It's controversial.

Some people don't like it.

But it is important to change how people feel about abortion as a predicate to changing how they think and ultimately

behave on the issue.

Pictures change how people think.

I'd rather picture change how people feel.

And we know this.

A lot of us have paid money to go to the theaters to watch movies like Saving Private Ryan, The Passion of the

Christ, Hacksaw Ridge, or we've seen miniseries like Band of Brothers or

other series that depict graphically horrific things.

But we watch them and sometimes encourage our older children to watch them because those images,

though gruesome, convey truth in a way that words never can.

What is going to be more effective if I walk into an auditorium of non -pro -lifers and

simply assert the conclusion abortion is murder?

Or is it going to be more effective for me to show them that it's murder?

And this is something that we have found to be very effective, that once we show the pictures of abortion, as

Greg Cunningham points out, abortion protests itself.

It's one thing to shout a conclusion abortion is murder.

It's quite another to confront the audience with the actual evidence and make them defend what

is indefensible.

So I would rather work less hard defending my claim that abortion is murder and

simply show the pictures and defy my audience to come to any conclusion

other than this is a terrible injustice.

And so when you're talking about visual images, you're not only talking about enlarged

still photographs, but films.

Are there any specific films that you can recommend?

Yeah, I use film.

Yeah, we have one on our website at thecaseforlife .com.

We show a short 55 second video called This is Abortion.

And I have shown this at pregnancy center banquets.

I show it at churches.

Because, Chris, I'm convinced that even pro -lifers may be only attitudinally

opposed to abortion.

They're not behaviorally opposed.

How do I know that?

Because that's where I was.

In 1990, I was an associate pastor at a church.

If you had asked me, Scott, are you pro -life?

I would have said yes.

But here's the thing, Chris.

I wasn't lifting a finger to stop the killing.

And I happened to go to a presentation that the local pregnancy center director, Lois Cunningham, put together.

And she invited a whole bunch of pastors to come hear a speaker that would make a case for the pro -life view.

I went expecting to see a hundred of my fellow colleagues.

I got there.

It was me, four other pastors, and their wives.

And thankfully, the speaker, Greg Cunningham that morning, what he did is he gave a very

persuasive defense of the pro -life view.

And I thought to myself, I like this guy.

He doesn't hurt the brain to listen to.

He's logical.

He's persuasive.

And as a lawyer, he laid out his arguments very well.

But then he did something that changed my life forever.

He showed an eight -minute video depicting abortion.

And I sat there and wept, Chris.

I thought, I am no different than the priest and the Levite who passed by on the other side.

I say I care about this, but I'm not lifting a finger to stop it.

And that day I went home from that breakfast and I took that VHS tape that he showed.

By the way, for any of your listeners wondering what VHS tapes are, they were these rectangular things we used to watch movies from.

And go look at an old VeggieTales VHS or find one somewhere.

You'll know what I mean.

Google it.

But I showed that tape to my wife, Stephanie, and she said, hey, whatever.

I'm with you.

And bottom line, six months later with the blessing of my church where I served as an associate pastor,

I left that profession to begin exploring how I could equip believers to make a persuasive case for

life in the public square.

And it was the images that moved me from attitudinal opposition to abortion to behavioral

opposition.

And I think one of the things that happens, Chris, it's very tempting for pro -life advocates to shout

conclusions rather than establishing facts.

And when you show videos like what I'm talking about here, you don't even have to use the word murder.

The video speaks for itself.

As Greg says, it protests itself.

And this creates tremendous cognitive dissonance in the minds of the viewers where they now have to justify

the indefensible.

So I'm assuming that our listeners who want to utilize this as a tool don't have to get their

own copy of or

They can download it.

Right from your website.

Yeah, caseforlife .com.

Just go to the Vimeo link in the corner of the video and they can download it.

At caseforlife .com.

Okay.

In fact, I encourage them to do that because then they can use that video and they don't have to go spend money to buy it.

It's right there.

Now we use the video carefully.

We warn audiences.

We scan the audience for young children to make sure that parents have either removed them or are

covering their eyes during the 55 seconds.

And we use this video as a tremendous opportunity to share the good news of the gospel.

The good news of the gospel makes a whole lot more sense against the bad news of what abortion is.

When you talk about sin in concrete terms and then give people the bad news of how they

are guilty of this and then point them to the remedy, you've got a winning combination for

helping them understand their need for the gospel.

Yeah, I can recall, speaking of visual images, I can recall years ago, this would have been back in

the 80s, the woman who led me to Christ, dear friend of mine, Susan.

She had a friend.

She developed a friendship with this woman.

I don't even remember where, might have been a hairdresser or something.

And this woman was pregnant and she was determined to have an abortion

because she was a crack addict and her doctor told her, the best thing for you to do is have an

abortion because this baby is likely going to be born with some very serious birth defects and

problems.

So my friend Susan sat down with her with a very large coffee

table book that contained full color photographs of every stage of

development in human life in the womb.

And the woman was shocked and did not have the abortion and she gave birth to a completely

healthy baby, which shows you the doctor.

And sometimes, Chris, that's enough.

Sometimes just seeing the nice pictures is enough, but there are other times it's not.

Yes.

And this is where the graphic images really play a role because they break through people's

denial and it confronts them with the truth and they can't rationalize it away.

Well, let me ask you a question that I've brought up on this program before.

Speaking of the dramatic films that

clearly are revealing that abortion is the torturous and brutal murder of a baby.

Years ago, this would have been the early to mid 90s, I suppose.

Pat Buchanan was running for president for the Reform Party.

And yes, and he was being interviewed by

a fundamentalist Baptist who had a program called the Fundamental Baptist Forum.

And it's interesting that this fundamentalist Baptist had the Catholic Pat Buchanan on the show.

But but anyway, it was a live call in show.

This is before I had my own show.

And I called in and I said, Pat, I have an idea.

And I was wondering what your thoughts are on it.

I think that we should demand and and do everything we can to make happen.

Before every election cycle, we have to have televised

a film of an actual abortion so that the public can be

educated on what exactly they are voting for.

And I was shocked that Pat Buchanan, the poster boy for conservatism at the time,

said, oh, we wouldn't want to do that.

I said, excuse me at all.

That would be hard.

He said that would be horrible.

And I said, what do you mean?

He said that would be like televising an execution.

I said, exactly.

That's my point.

I was shocked that Mr. Conservative was totally opposed to this idea that I had.

Well, Chris, you and I both know there are politicians and pastors that say they're pro

-life.

But when it comes to doing something that will actually save lives, they buckle and run.

And how many times I look, you know, people ask me, what's the one thing that bothers you the most

about the abortion debate?

It's really not Peter Singer.

It's not David Boonen.

It's not my opponents on the other side.

It's not people in the pro -life movement that oppose me.

What it bothers me the most are gatekeepers who claim to be on our side and they

participate with Planned Parenthood in covering up the very evil we're trying to expose.

And this goes against scripture on multiple levels.

I mean, I'll just cite one example, Ephesians 5.

We're not to cover up evil, we're to expose it.

And I could go on and on.

But the point here is we cannot win a social reform cause if we're going to

participate in covering up the very evil we are opposing.

And a lot of pro -lifers have no stomach for giving the public what it needs.

And that is the truth on what abortion is.

It's the intentional killing of an innocent human being.

And they're running away from this and it's not going to serve us well.

Now, just out of curiosity, these films you have, do you have films of the baby being murdered at

different stages of development?

Yeah, the 55 second clip that I referenced on our page shows a first trimester

sequence where you see severed hands and severed feet.

It shows a second trimester sequence where you see the limbs dismembered.

And then it shows a third trimester child that is being delivered intact but

clearly has been killed.

So you see all three trimesters represented in that video.

And what are the most common stages of development?

That a baby has reached when it is murdered through abortion.

The most, the overwhelming majority of abortions are performed first trimester.

But our opponents love to point that out.

They say that, oh, the overwhelming majority are performed in the first trimester.

Only 10 % are late term abortions.

OK, but when you're talking a million abortions a year, 10 % is a sizable number.

And they downplay these numbers.

Imagine somebody saying, you know, most rapes are not included in

sexual assault.

The woman doesn't get fully raped.

That only happens maybe 10 % of the time.

So let's not concern ourselves with it.

Well, if you were a politician and said something like that, you'd be run out of town with a pitchfork.

The fact that most abortions are late or early term does not mean they're

justifiable, nor does it mean the remaining late term abortions are not a big deal.

And I just recently saw, I can't remember who it was, but some

female leftist pro -infanticide advocate

scoffed at the idea that women are having late term

abortions even up to the ninth month.

Oh, that doesn't happen, she said.

So there is actually more than just a

refocusing on first trimester as being the most common.

There is downright deceit happening with people.

Well, there is.

And before phone books became obsolete, because now we have Google, all you had to do was open the

phone book in a big city and you would see late term abortions advertised up to 28 weeks in some

cases.

So this claim that they're not happening is bogus.

They do happen.

Admittedly, they don't happen at the same level as early term abortions, but they are happening.

Now, I wish I could find, I have tried to find on YouTube a clip

of The View, that wonderful program.

That bastion of conservative thought.

But I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears on one of

the occasions when Ron Paul was interviewed, uh, not Rand,

his son, but Ron Paul.

He was talking about late term abortions and describing it

in at least a limited detail.

But he was doing a, he was providing a description of what was going on.

And all the while before then, Joy

Behart was obviously defending abortion and, you know,

giving negative feedback to Ron.

But when he mentioned the late term abortion at the ninth month, a partial birth abortion,

I think specifically he was talking about.

She said,.

Well, that's different.

That would be murder.

I wish I could find that because I don't think you would ever hear her admit that today.

Yeah, that's quite a remarkable concession from anybody on the other side.

In fact, they have worked over time to downplay partial birth abortion.

They do it two ways.

They say it rarely happens.

And when that doesn't fly, they come back with, well, you're using imprecise language.

It's not partial birth abortion.

It's DNX.

As if somehow we're, our language determines what something is.

This is a thoroughly postmodern attempt to change the subject.

Look, with partial birth abortion, the child is delivered breach with only the head left in the birth canal.

We puncture the skull and suck out the child's brain.

That's a good description of what's happening.

Partial birth abortion.

So our critics can try to say it's not a big deal, but we know it is.

And by the way, when they try to tell us that late term abortions don't happen, here's a copy of Warren Hearn's book,

Abortion Practice, which I mentioned to you earlier.

Your audience can't see it, but you can see it, Chris.

And I've read this book through and through, and I'm here to tell you that this book

describes in excruciating detail, nauseating detail, how you go about

dismembering a late term fetus.

So people who say this isn't happening need to consult their own medical textbooks, and they'll get a different picture

altogether.

Well, I think now is about time for me to bring up my little pushback that I had

mentioned earlier.

And this is not going to be exhaustive.

First of all, as I said before, we have Brian Gunter, who is an abolitionist on the program tomorrow.

And my guest, Scott Klusendorf, is going to be, God willing, debating Jason

Storms, another abolitionist, on February 21st of 2024 on

this program.

But I was an abolitionist, really, before the term

came into vogue.

Early on in my Christian life, when I became pro -life, because that was really the only

word that was used to describe somebody who was against abortion, or at least the most popular one,

I always had an unsettled attitude or

response to the attitudes of most, if not

all, pro -lifers that I had any kind of connection with,

or to whom I was a witness to their

explanations of their worldview and so on.

I very rarely saw, if ever, a consistency,

a logical consistency in their view that

abortion is murder, because it seemed to, on one level or another,

always be some kind of a lesser degree of murder in the way that

they were responding to how to come up with a solution and a prevention to this.

And one of the things that seems to be at the core of the divide between

abolitionists and those who describe themselves as pro -life, like you,

is the issue of making abortion

across the board a crime where the

guilty parties, whether it be the mother who is voluntarily having the baby

murdered, or the boyfriend that coerced her to do it, or the husband or the father

that coerced her to do it.

And to me, that doesn't seem to be logically consistent.

If you're viewing a baby, recognizing that a baby, no matter what stage of development,

even at conception, is a human and to abort it is murdering it,

why wouldn't you have a desire to see that outlawed in every single

way, shape, and form?

And even the abortifacient, I believe they're called, the pills that kill babies

in the womb, that women can do they can partake in these or consume these in the comfort

of their own home.

So if you could respond to that.

Yeah.

Well, here's what I would say.

What's wrong with a law that says you can't intentionally kill an innocent human being?

And if you do, there will be consequences.

I agree.

There should be consequences.

However, what those consequences should be will depend on a number of factors that don't

necessarily mean that pro -lifers are compromising.

For example, to pin the murder charge on the mother the way you might want to pin it on the abortionist,

you're going to have to meet a number of legal thresholds that are very, very tough to overcome.

First, you've got to meet the meeting of the mind's threshold.

In other words, to convict the mother of co -conspiracy and co -cooperation with the abortion

doctor to commit murder, you have to prove that her knowledge of the abortion act

matches his exactly.

That is almost an impossible threshold to meet, Chris.

In fact, can you pick up right where you left off?

Because we have to go to our final break.

Yeah, please.

Please don't forget.

Please don't forget where you left off.

We'll be right back, folks.

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Welcome back.

And if you could, Scott, pick up where you left off on those items in response to my

seeing inconsistency amongst pro -life folk in not treating

abortion as a crime as they would with the mother throwing the baby in the

dumpster after it's born and any other murder that may take place.

Right.

And I'll do this quick because I know we're short.

But the thing you've got to realize is pro -lifers are not necessarily compromising morally

because they propose a lesser penalty for the mother than they do the doctor who does the direct killing.

And the reason for that is this.

Legally, to convict the mother as a co -conspirator in murder, the way you want to convict the

doctor or the abortionist, you have to prove there's been a meeting of the minds.

You have to prove that her knowledge of what's taking place matches his.

And I already mentioned Dr. Warren Hearn's book, Abortion Practice.

In that book, he talks about turning the ultrasound machine away from the woman so she does not

see what's happening with abortion.

He also talks about hooking up a fetal monitor, a Doppler to measure fetal heartbeat, but making sure the

mother doesn't hear it.

Obviously, the mother does not know everything the doctor knows.

You also have to prove premeditation, willfulness, and deliberation.

In other words, cold -blooded intention.

That's going to be very hard to prove against the mother.

And pro -lifers recognizing that the primary way to stop abortion is to cut it off at its source, which

means nail the medical establishment that's doing it, wants to make sure the doctor gets prosecuted to

cut off the supply.

And you're going to need the mother's testimony to convict that doctor as well.

And you're not going to get it if you're going to charge her exactly the way you charge him.

So pro -lifers have come up with other things.

They said, well, wait a minute.

Maybe instead of a murder charge, what we need here is a charge of solicitation to do an illegal act.

That's a lesser penalty, but it still is a consequential one and starts the process of re

-educating the public.

We've had 50 years, Chris, of women being told abortion's a positive good.

And now we've thrown the car in reverse and to just dump, jump right there to, oh, abortion's great.

Go have as many as you want to do it.

We're prosecuting you for murder.

No DA, no jury in the country is going to prosecute a woman if there's a law that says

you get convicted of murder if you have an abortion.

It's going to become an unenforceable law, much like our current border is under the Biden

administration, where the Biden administration refuses to enforce the laws we have and our laws become a

laughingstock.

So I think we need to recognize the ultimate purpose here is to protect children.

Let's pass laws that say unborn children are human beings from conception and you're not

allowed to kill them.

And let's protect children from conception and hash out the consequences of what that looks like in terms of

penalty as the culture becomes progressively more pro -life.

Okay, I'm going to read half of, or should I say the second question

of Virginia in Viroqua, Wisconsin, because her first question

is really the same I asked.

Do you agree with the sentiments expressed by the 1970s pro -life organizations that

women are always victims of abortion and should not be held accountable, even if it is

able to be proven that they are willingly, with knowledge, committing murder against their own

child?

And who should be held accountable in your view?

Obviously, there are women who brag about having abortions.

There are women who brag about even calling it murdering their children.

So how do you respond to that?

Well, again, coming back to this, I do believe there should be consequences.

I have not said there should be no consequences.

What I'm saying is there are hurdles to prosecuting an aborting mother for murder.

You're going to have to overcome the hurdle of the meeting of the minds.

You're going to have to overcome the whole problem with proving that she knows what the doctor

knows.

And if you can't do that, the case against her and the doctor collapses and he walks too.

So if we really want to get at the source, let's prosecute the source.

We do this with drugs all the time.

With drug enforcement, we prosecute the dealer at a different level than we do the single pot

user.

Although I would argue both have done wrong.

There's a harsher penalty for the dealer than there is for the end user who smokes a joint.

And nobody gets bothered by that.

But with abortion, all of a sudden, we've got to prosecute both the same.

But keep in mind too, culturally, women have been told this is a good thing.

They're being pressured by boyfriends.

They're being pressured by authority figures to get abortions.

Do we prosecute the counselors the same way we prosecute the doctor?

I mean, shouldn't we prosecute everybody that's involved in forcing or moving this woman toward an abortion?

I think to be consistent, if we're going to take the view, we have to prosecute for murder.

All of them should be too.

And that creates a legal mess.

How do you determine who's culpable in this decision?

That becomes a big problem too.

So pragmatically, it is a deep problem.

And if we really want to end abortion, we should work at protecting the children.

Let's protect them right now.

One of the questions I love to put out there is if a law were passed protecting children from

conception, but specifically stated, well, women would not be prosecuted for

murder.

Will you support that bill?

Or will you let those children die because we can't prosecute the mothers for murder?

I think we need to work prudentially, which isn't compromised.

It's just being wise as we try to work in the real world we live in.

We live in a constitutional republic, and there are people who disagree with us on this issue, and they vote.

We don't have legal power.

And to protect all unborn children and get the society we want, we have to have legal power to go with

our moral power.

And right now we don't have that.

Alan from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Please explain why you believe that a pregnant woman who knowingly and deliberately purchases and swallows an abortion

pill to murder her child should be totally immune, even from prosecution.

OK, Alan, as I said a moment ago, I do believe there should be consequences.

I gave the reasons why pro -lifers historically have chosen not to prosecute for murder

because of the hurdle of the meeting of the minds and because no D .A. is going to enforce that after

50 years of legalized abortion.

And so pro -lifers, recognizing our primary goal is to save children, have focused on that

rather than saying, let's just automatically prosecute women for murder.

We're going to try to stop abortion at the supply.

I do think women who take RU46, there should be legal consequences for that.

But if you're going to say it's co -conspiracy to murder, you're going to have to overcome that meeting of the minds

hurdle.

And I'd like to know how we're going to do that legally.

It's near impossible.

And thank you, Shane, from Louisville, Kentucky, for sending in a question, but it's already been answered, as you heard.

Last question from me.

What is your reaction to so -called pro -life, so -called conservatives like

Sean Hannity of Fox News and others, who are actually urging, almost begging,

or even demanding that Republicans running for office

start at least including rape and incest and the life of the mother

in their reasons why abortion should be legal?

Well, I think Sean Hannity is a morally untutored pro -lifer.

He does not argue consistently.

Look, if the unborn are human and have a right to life, you don't get to kill them just because you don't like

the situation that caused their conception.

Children conceived through rape are human beings just like you and I.

They are image bearers.

Now, that does raise the question, if you have a chance to ban all abortions but rape and you don't

have the votes to protect all children, are you compromising in voting to protect as many as

you can, provided you keep coming back to protect all of them?

And I would argue that you should always do, as a pro -life Christian, you must always do the greatest moral good

you can, given the constraints upon you.

And that means working legislatively to protect as many humans as we can and never giving up

until all are protected.

And the problem I have with Hannity, that's not an incremental approach.

That's a permanent compromise approach.

In other words, Hannity is saying we should allow rape.

The pro -lifer is saying I don't accept rape, but I will protect as many children as I can

while I remain committed to my principle that all be protected.

And Chris, one thing that I think is generating a lot of confusion, all pro -lifers that I work with, and

I include myself in this, we are all abolitionists in principle.

If there were a button on my desk right now that said press this and all abortions become illegal

and all unborn children become protected, I would push that button.

The question is, what do we do when we don't have that button?

What do we do in practice when we don't have the votes to protect all children?

And the answer is we must never settle until all are protected.

And in the meantime, though in principle I'm an abolitionist, in practice I will work incrementally to

protect as many kids as I can.

And don't forget folks, tomorrow I do have abolitionist Brian Gunter, a pastor in Louisiana,

to also provide his views, his worldview as an abolitionist.

So please don't think that your side is not going to be represented.

If you could, Scott, provide our listeners with all of your contact information.

Sure.

You can visit us at social media at caseforlife .com or you can visit us

at scottklusendorf .com.

A lot of my podcasts are there.

I would also recommend prolifetraining .com where you can get written

apologetics articles where I've written case defending the pro -life view.

You can look at that case there.

And of course, I would encourage all of your listeners to pick up the new copy of the Case for Life second edition.

If they bought the first copy, I promise you we did way more than just put a new cover on this thing.

As you noted, Chris, this thing is a lot thicker than the previous one.

Well, thank you so much, Scott, for agreeing to be on the program today.

I want to thank everybody who listened.

I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than

you are a sinner.

Amen.