The holiday season is upon us, and it’s a time where families get together to express gratitude and celebrate their time together. Yet when any group of people comes together, there’s a chance that uncomfortable conversations will pop up – including about abortion.
Being pro-life right now is hard. After the fall of Roe v. Wade, pro-abortion rhetoric ramped up to an all-time high, as did violence and threats towards those in the pro-life movement. Misinformation and lies are commonplace, and emotional stories about the so-called “necessity” of intentionally killing children in the womb are frequently seen in the media. It all adds up to a difficult topic that can be a minefield to navigate. But it doesn’t have to be scary – with a little bit of preparation, you can engage in a winsome discussion about protecting the most vulnerable people among us this holiday season.
Be Compassionate
The prevailing narrative right now is one of pro-life cruelty. According to the pro-abortion media, the pro-life movement cares only about preborn children, and once they’re born, they no longer care. And the pro-life movement especially doesn’t care about women, right?
Of course, as pro-lifers, we know that isn’t true. Pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) work tirelessly to help women and their families. In addition to saving hundreds of thousands of lives, they serve millions of people every year. Services provided include ultrasounds, pregnancy and STD tests, prenatal and parenting education programs, and material goods — like diapers, clothes, cribs, car seats, and more. All of this is often provided at no cost. Reminding pro-abortion guests of the compassionate help given by PRCs and other pro-life organizations is a good place to start.
It’s also important to note that while it may seem compassionate to simply “end a pregnancy,” abortion kills a human being, and does not actually help women. To the contrary, abortion further perpetuates the injustices women routinely face. From being coerced into unwanted abortions to battling pregnancy discrimination at school and the workplace, abortion upholds a misogynistic status quo.
Why should the world bother to support women and their children when it’s so much easier and cheaper to just get rid of preborn children instead? That’s a shallow and false notion of compassion; no woman should be forced to choose between her education or career and her child. No woman should feel that she must get an abortion or face being kicked out of her home or murdered by her partner. Yet these are the realities of our abortion-friendly world. Where is the compassion in that?
Finally, remember that the people you’re debating are just that: people. It can be frustrating to see someone advocate for the horrors of abortion, but most people arguing in favor of it truly believe they are helping women by doing so. Keep in mind that most of the time, people espousing pro-abortion talking points may have good intentions, but are sorely misguided and misinformed.
Remember the Facts
There is a great deal of misinformation surrounding abortion right now, particularly regarding the so-called medical “need” for abortion. That means it’s especially important to arm yourself with the facts.
Despite frequent claims otherwise, for example, the world is not at risk of overpopulation; in fact, the biggest threat to much of the world right now is the falling birth rate, which is set to have catastrophic consequences.
And all those women who supposedly needed an abortion due to a medical emergency? Virtually every single circumstance appears to involve some sort of medical negligence – but in cases of things like pre-eclampsia or cervical incompetence, the standard of care is not, and never has been, to intentionally and directly kill the child. A premature delivery may be required, and the baby may not survive such an early birth, but that is not the same thing as the intentional, targeted taking of a preborn life.
It’s important to show people what abortion does to a human being. It’s not just a quick little “procedure” without consequence. The video below shows the most common abortion procedures: the abortion pill, first trimester suction aspiration, second trimester D&E, and third trimester induction abortion.
Additionally, the majority of these stories take place in the second and third trimesters, when abortion procedures – according to best practice – take days to commit, compared to the hour it takes to perform an emergency c-section. In an actual medical emergency, a doctor is not going to perform a multi-day procedure. As the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) has explained:
There are times when separating the mother and her unborn child is necessary to save the life of the mother, even if the unborn child is too premature to live. In those tragic cases, if possible the life of the baby will be attempted to be preserved, and if not possible, the body of the unborn child is treated with respect, recognizing the humanity of the life which is lost in the separation. In contrast, the purpose of an induced abortion is to produce a dead baby.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defined legal induced abortion as an “intervention performed by a licensed clinician (e.g., a physician, nurse-midwife, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant) that is intended to terminate a suspected or known ongoing intrauterine pregnancy and produce a non-viable fetus at any gestational age.”
The tragic cases being exploited in the media are meant to tug at a person’s heartstrings, and it’s understandable why they would: women in these scenarios are experiencing awful, heartbreaking circumstances, made only worse by doctors unwilling to give them the best medical care possible. But that does not mean the answer they needed was the intentional killing of their children.
It’s also worth brushing up on other facts – such as the dangers of the abortion pill regimen, why abortion is not the right answer to rape, and why miscarriage is not the same thing as an abortion and treating a miscarriage is not illegal in any state.
Bring the Humanity
One of the ways abortion is able to thrive is through the dehumanization of preborn children. It’s important to therefore remind people of the inherent humanity each human being intrinsically possesses – from the moment a new human organism with distinct DNA is conceived at fertilization. And this isn’t an argument based on emotion or politics; it’s based on scientific fact.
Fetal development makes it clear that preborn children are living, growing human beings. From the moment of fertilization, a preborn child is already an entirely distinct person from his or her mother. His ethnicity, hair color, gender, eye color, and other individual traits have already been decided. This includes the child’s DNA – which from that moment of fertilization is entirely unique from his mother’s or father’s.
Within three weeks, there is already a beating heart — and not just a meaningless electrical throbbing, or a manufactured tool to control women, as abortion advocates like to claim. The heart, though not fully formed, is not only beating, but it is pumping blood throughout the child’s body. This is not a false claim made up by the pro-life movement, but a fact found in scientific literature. Without a child’s beating heart, his body could not continue to grow and thrive through the rest of pregnancy.
The first trimester alone, when the majority of abortions take place, involves an incredible amount of development and growth. Brain waves can be detected by six weeks, and preborn children can respond to touch by seven weeks. By eight weeks, emerging research has determined that preborn children can feel pain.
Yes, a preborn child resides within his mother’s womb. But he is still a living human being, and all human beings have an intrinsic right to life. And in case anyone brings up the “clump of cells” argument, remember – literally everything on Earth could be described as nothing more than a clump of cells. The pro-life position is not one of merely feelings, but of facts.
Forget Politics and Religion
Far too often, being pro-life is derided as something solely for conservative Christians, and no one else. Yet abortion is an issue that transcends religion and politics; indeed, pro-life Americans can be found throughout every belief system, both religious and political.
Did you know that millions of Democrats identify as pro-life? Even more disagree with the party’s extremist position on abortion, that it should be readily available at any time, for any reason, without parental knowledge or consent, and paid for with taxpayer dollars to boot. It doesn’t matter if one is a Republican, a Democrat, or something else entirely; the importance of protecting all human lives is a belief that can be found everywhere.
Abortion is not a matter of religious beliefs, either – see the section above on the science of preborn humanity. It’s an issue of human rights, which is why there are people who are atheist or secular pro-lifers. One does not need to be religious to understand that homicide is wrong, and abortion is literally the homicide of preborn children. Opposing that homicide does not rely upon religious beliefs.
It will likely be a difficult and trying conversation to discuss abortion with people who describe themselves as “pro-choice.” But even if you didn’t change someone’s mind with one conversation, rest easy knowing that the seeds have been planted. Remaining sure in your beliefs and explaining them in a loving, winsome manner can go a long way towards changing hearts and minds and saving lives.
