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In this episode, Trent breaks down Daily Wire host Michael Knowles’s defense of the pro-life position in recent dialogues and shows what works and what needs work in his approach to the issue.
Narrator:
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast. I’m your host Catholic Answers Apologist and speaker Trent Horn. Today I’ll be examining how Michael Knowles from The Daily Wire defends the pro-life position by examining some of his dialogues and appearances in other podcasts. But before we do that, if you want to help us catch up to The Daily Wire when it comes to influencing a lot of people and helping our culture, then if you could subscribe to this channel and like this video, I would greatly appreciate it.
I want to begin by saying that this episode is not an attack on Michael Knowles or even a heavy criticism of him. I agree with many things that he says, though there are positions and approaches that he takes that I also disagree with. I also recognize that Knowles discusses a wide variety of issues, so nobody can be an expert on everything, and I’m not expecting him to have an expert grasp with a pro-life worldview. Finally, I know that in a live setting, like a dialogue, you don’t always phrase things exactly as you’d like to. I’ve been in that situation myself many times.
All that put together, please don’t consider this episode a slam on Michael Knowles. In general, he does a very good job of presenting the pro-life worldview. For the purpose of this episode, we’ll examine clips from a conversation he had with a pro-choice medical student and a recent conversation he had with a group of mostly pro-choice women on the Whatever Podcast. My goal in this episode is to point out a few things that Knowles does when talking about abortion that can be improved and I’m doing that in order to benefit everyone who listens to him and to provide some helpful advice when people who listen to him and see this when they encounter these same talking points in their own conversations.
But first, I want to commend Knowles for getting to the root of the abortion controversy. In his dialogues, he’s very good at stripping away the metaphors and euphemisms that pro-choice advocates often rely on. Take a look.
Michael Knowles:
How did the baby get into the Petri dish?
Remsick:
I believe these are aborted. And so this-
Michael Knowles:
You’re saying that a baby that has been sucked out and dismembered looks a little bit different?
Remsick:
No, they-
Speaker 4:
Right now, it’s a parasite that’s hurting the body.
Michael Knowles:
The difference between a parasite, though, and what you’re describing is your child. It’s human, it’s not a parasite. It’s a human being.
Speaker 4:
Is it really though, at that point?
Michael Knowles:
Yeah, yeah. It’s got…
Speaker 4:
I don’t. That’s where we disagree.
Michael Knowles:
No, it’s not just a matter of disagreement. It’s got unique human DNA.
Speaker 5:
I have a question…
Trent Horn:
My suggestion for Knowles and people who watch him is to always go back, over and over again to this weak point in the pro-choice position. Always go back to what abortion is, what the unborn are, and what abortion does to them. The biggest mistake that pro-life advocates make is if they engage pro-choice people on their terms, and treat abortion like a social problem instead of as a moral and legal problem. This happens when pro-choice people say, “Abortion should be legal because women are too poor or too young to take care of a child.” Pro-lifers make a huge mistake when they immediately say, “Well, nobody’s too young or nobody’s too poor. There are resources, there’s adoption, there’s government programs.”
Because the pro-choice person just ends up saying, “No, there isn’t. Because you pro-lifers vote against these things.” Or, maybe adoption isn’t best for the woman and they’re arguing about the best social solution. As we do that, we get further and further away from the one question we should be focused on, what are the unborn? Watch how that happens in some of these clips?
Remsick:
How expensive is it?
Michael Knowles:
Well, you know-
Remsick:
You just went through it with your wife.
Michael Knowles:
You need to buy some pre-natal vitamins. You know, got to go to some doctor visits. It’s good to have healthcare. We’re very lucky in this country that the very poor have healthcare through Medicaid.
Remsick:
They’ve actually found that about 40% of Americans cannot afford an unexpected $400 cost, whether that be for their home, for their health, for whatever.
Michael Knowles:
Yeah.
Remsick:
You are basically discounting the experience.
Michael Knowles:
Well, the thing is, the thing about those statistics though is they’re not quite right because it’s true that many Americans don’t have a lot of money, cash available, but Americans tend to have a lot of stuff because Americans carry a lot of debt.
Speaker 5:
It’s just sad scenarios, if a kid is born to drug-addicted parents.
Michael Knowles:
Well, they could give the baby up for adoption.
Speaker 5:
Yeah, but [inaudible 00:04:48].
Speaker 6:
You really think they’re going to make that smart choice if they’re drug addicted parents? Let’s say a girl gets raped, you really think she wants to have that reminder of her having a child?
Michael Knowles:
She could give the child up for adoption.
Speaker 5:
That child…
Speaker 6:
You keep saying that… [inaudible 00:04:59].
Speaker 4:
I would not want to go through pregnancy. You’re going through an entire pregnancy where your whole body’s changing. Your body-
Trent Horn:
I just want to say, it is completely valid to bring up the availability of adoption and the resources that are available for women who are experiencing unintended pregnancies. These are all valid points to bring up. I just don’t think it’s wise to bring them up initially to bring them up as sort of the first response to a justification for abortion, because it can easily lead us off track when people argue about whether those are good enough to help a woman with an unintended pregnancy. Because we can debate about what might be the best choice she should make. Should she parent? Should she place child for adoption? But we should all agree on the choice she should not make, which is killing her unborn child.
That’s why we need to focus on that first before we offer these responses. Knowles does do this on several occasions, so I’m not picking on him here. It’s just in other occasions he’ll bring this up immediately when I would’ve preferred to go right back to the one question, what are the unborn? Say something like this, “Yeah, I agree. These are serious problems, but would you kill a toddler for those reasons? If not, then we shouldn’t kill an unborn child for those same reasons, because the toddler and the unborn are both equally human.” Many pro-lifers call this trotting out a toddler, though it can work with a comparison to any born person. In fact, Knowles does use this approach in other parts of his conversation to great effect.
Michael Knowles:
But I made this argument, I said, “Well, no. I’m really in favor of abortion because the Freakonomics book told me that it decreases the crime rate if you abort these babies.” She said, “Cool, Michael, which of those arguments is not also an argument for killing young black men in the inner cities age 18 to 25?” The problem is…
Speaker 6:
They have life.
Michael Knowles:
Well, the babies have life.
Speaker 6:
They don’t.
Michael Knowles:
They’re only fetus, but-
Trent Horn:
Also, Knowles does a good job of summarizing what is the main issue we need to focus on in the abortion debate. Watch how he phrases it here.
Michael Knowles:
Which language should we use? One is dehumanizing, one is an anthropomorphizing, in other words, humanizing. Then isn’t the question that we have to answer, is this thing that we’re talking about a human or not? If it is a human, then we should only use the anthropomorphizing language. If it is not a human, then we should only call them a clump of cells. Because you say that the word baby is anthropomorphizing, and you said that the human being inside you is a human being. It’s appropriate to use humanizing language for human beings. At what point is the baby viable to live outside the mother’s womb? But isn’t the question that matters? The question that matters is, when is this thing a human? When is this thing alive? The only answer to that question just by definition, is at the moment of conception. Because conception just means the beginning of life.
Trent Horn:
To just recap, it’s fine to point out the resources to help women facing unintended pregnancies like adoption or pregnancy resource centers or programs to help women raise their children. But you don’t want to make that the primary argument, and you also don’t want to go down rabbit trails and get distracted and dwell on these side issues in the conversation. You always want to be bringing it back to what are the unborn? Knowles does that very well in these clips.
My only suggestion is when he says, “Well, is it a human being? It is, because we know life begins at conception. That’s the definition.” He said something like that. I would just be cautious about saying, “We just know life begins at conception.” People respond better to arguments than assertions. Now, you can make an argument to authority, you can cite embryologists, philosophers, legal scholars, or you can just make a simple argument.
I would probably tell these women, “Well, look, the unborn are growing so they must be alive. They have human parents and human DNA, so they must be human. They’re a whole organism, not a body part. They’re just a very small human being. Why don’t we treat them like other human beings?” All right, now in the next clips, watch and think to yourself how you might apply trot out the toddler in these exchanges.
Speaker 5:
Another argument is like, what if a girl was young enough, right? She’s so desperate that she’s going to go somewhere else or do it herself or something like that. How do you prevent that?
Michael Knowles:
Well, it’s interesting because you’re saying that illegal abortions would be more dangerous?
Speaker 5:
Yeah.
Michael Knowles:
But they’re not, actually. This is the weird thing. In the year before Roe v. Wade has a allowed abortion everywhere, do you know how many women died from illegal back alley abortions in America?
Speaker 5:
I don’t know how many.
Speaker 6:
What are the-
Michael Knowles:
39.
Speaker 5:
Really?
Michael Knowles:
24 women died from legal abortions.
Speaker 5:
So you’re pro illegal abortion?
Michael Knowles:
No, I’m anti all abortion. But when you look at the number of states where it was legal, illegal and legal abortions were roughly the same.
Trent Horn:
Now, there is merit in pointing out the exaggerations among pro-choice advocates surrounding the number of illegal abortion deaths in history. But I consider that a secondary fact. We should first say something like, “Are you saying it should be legal for bigger people to kill smaller people so that it’s safer for the bigger people?” When we do that, we immediately get back to the one question, what are the unborn? Are they just small people?
This is similar to when people bring up abortion for the case of rape. It seems callous, if the very first thing you say in response to this scenario is, “Well, that’s only 1% of cases.” Instead, we should use empathy and trot out the toddler to respond and then mention after we’ve laid the moral foundation of our argument that this only involves 1% of abortions. All right. Let’s look then at another exchange and see how trot out the toddler could be applied in it.
Speaker 6:
I know this girl who’s a friend of mine, and she didn’t know she was pregnant and she was on birth control, and she found out she was five months pregnant. She was like, “I cannot have this kid. There’s no way. I’m in high school.” This girl couldn’t do it.
Michael Knowles:
Why couldn’t she just have the kid and give the kid up for adoption?
Speaker 6:
That just changes your life.
Speaker 5:
It changes your life.
Speaker 4:
It changes your whole life. You say that like it’s the easiest thing in the world.
Speaker 6:
Like it’s easiest ever.
Speaker 4:
Just carry…
Michael Knowles:
Well, you’re talking about abortion like it’s the easiest thing.
Speaker 4:
It’s not.
Speaker 6:
It’s not.
Speaker 5:
It’s not.
Michael Knowles:
Yeah.
Speaker 4:
But life changes so much more after that fact.
Speaker 6:
You know you have a kid out there that’s like your-
Speaker 8:
Guys, one at a time. One at a time, please.
Michael Knowles:
Otherwise, you know, you have a kid in the ground because you killed the kid.
Speaker 4:
No, they’re not going to be in the ground because they’re not big enough to be buried. They’re not going to be… They would be disintegrated within two… They would decompose within hours, honestly.
Michael Knowles:
It depends, at five months the baby’s pretty well-developed.
Speaker 6:
So are you pro-life…
Trent Horn:
Instead of just proposing adoption, I might offer another scenario. Though I’m really glad that Knowles mentioned that a five-month-old unborn child is not like a little clump of cells. In fact, they’re close to being viable. If that child was born in some hospitals, the doctors would try to save their life. Imagine a case where a woman does not know she’s pregnant and she gives birth. I’d ask these women. She gives birth at eight months. I’d ask these women. “Should this mom just throw the baby into the trash? Because she does not want to choose adoption since it will change her life so much. If you say no at eight months, well, why not earlier?” Once again, it gets us back to the one question, what are the unborn? Knowles does a good job here at answering these women when they say, “Well, when you get earlier, it’s not human because it’s not conscious.”
Michael Knowles:
No, they have life.
Speaker 6:
No.
Michael Knowles:
No one-
Speaker 4:
They have life experiences? How are you alive if you have no memories?
Speaker 6:
Consciousness memories.
Speaker 4:
You have no conscious. How are you a living, breathing thing if you have no conscience?
Michael Knowles:
Should you be able to kill somebody who’s in a coma, who’s unconscious?
Speaker 4:
Honestly, yeah. If I was a vegetable, why are we having people on ventilators who are vegetables for years? Honestly, it [inaudible 00:12:40]. Yes. They should be dead too.
Speaker 6:
Yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker 4:
Pull the fucking plug.
Michael Knowles:
People could come out of the coma at some point, because people can be in a coma for years and then come out of the coma, but you think just kill them anyway?
Speaker 6:
Okay, see, you’re talking about life…
Speaker 4:
Honestly, if you’re going to be on a ventilator for six to 10… Yeah.
Speaker 6:
… like are you a vegan? Are you a vegetarian?
Trent Horn:
I’d also add a few other examples that these women might appreciate. For example, the wrongness of fondling an unconscious woman. Even if the woman will never be aware of what happened and it doesn’t cause physical injury, well, it’s still wrong to violate someone’s body like that, even if they’re not aware of it. Another example might be stealing an inheritance from someone that they never knew existed. That would be similar to how abortion literally steals life from an unborn child, even if the child never knew that that life was waiting for them was ahead of them.
Next, I want to talk about how Knowles grounds the morality of abortion. First, sometimes he uses language that is just too technical. If you’re having a conversation with someone who is not used to technical language or philosophical terms, I strongly recommend just use simple alternative words to communicate the same point. Notice in this clip how many technical terms that Knowles uses.
Michael Knowles:
Now, I’ll just do it really quickly as to why religion has to come into it, is because all of our political ideas rest on, as we have discussed, ideas of applied morality, right? What’s good and what’s bad? Morality rests on a basis of epistemology, which is how we can know anything at all. Epistemology rests on a basis of anthropology, which is the question of what is human nature? What is a human needing to know anything? Anthropology rests on a basis of ontology, which is what does it mean to be? Then ontology rests on a basis of theology, which is what is the fundament of reality, the…
Speaker 6:
Okay, so you’re saying it all goes back to religion but I’m saying you can’t go back to one religion because there’s multiple religions.
Michael Knowles:
Yeah. Religion is a habit of justice that renders to God what he is due. That’s what that means.
Speaker 6:
Yeah.
Speaker 4:
I don’t even understand what that means.
Speaker 6:
I think we’re all living in a video game.
Speaker 4:
Yeah.
Trent Horn:
You can do philosophy with anybody if you just don’t use really fancy terms unless it’s absolutely necessary. Then if you do use them, take a minute or two to define them. But beyond the technical language, the larger problem I see with Knowles’s approach here is that he claims that being pro-life is essentially a religious position.
Speaker 6:
I agree.
Michael Knowles:
Yeah. No, I mean, ultimately the image, because you brought up religion. Ultimately the reason is because man is made in the image and likeness of God, right? That’s why a man is so…
Speaker 6:
Once again, it’s religion for you. That’s your main idea.
Michael Knowles:
But everything ultimately is religious because that’s the fundamental of a human being.
Speaker 4:
What if I’m not religious?
Speaker 6:
Yeah.
Michael Knowles:
Well, everybody’s religious [inaudible 00:15:26].
Speaker 6:
No.
Speaker 4:
No.
Michael Knowles:
Well, you just admitted that you believe some things are better than other things.
Trent Horn:
The problem with this approach is that we can use natural reason to determine that some things are in accord with their nature and other things are not. One of the girls even essentially makes this point.
Speaker 4:
I don’t need a religion to tell me what’s good or bad. It’s common sense most of the time, what’s good or bad, not…
Trent Horn:
I just don’t think it’s wise to claim that the pro-life position is an inherently religious position. At least, when you’re making the initial case for why abortion is wrong. Consider Knowles’s answer to the question, what is the strongest argument for the pro-choice position? Check out his answer.
Michael Knowles:
The strongest arguments that you hear from people who are a pro-choice. The strongest argument for abortion would be that there’s no such thing as God, I guess. Because in order for abortion to be even remotely acceptable, we would just have to be stuff, we just have to be matter, right? There wouldn’t be good or bad or right or wrong.
Speaker 4:
We are matter, according to physics.
Speaker 6:
Honestly, I do think that there’s no good or bad.
Michael Knowles:
Yeah, according to physics but then according to metaphysics, we’re also a soul.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, but I believe in physics more than metaphysics.
Michael Knowles:
Well, the two go together.
Speaker 4:
But then…
Michael Knowles:
The way that…
Speaker 4:
They can’t coexist together, if you’re saying they’re different.
Michael Knowles:
No. Different things, we are all different people, and yet we coexist together.
Speaker 4:
But then you are saying that, I should now believe in God for me to not believe in pro-life.
Michael Knowles:
No, I mean, I can make plenty of secular arguments for anything you want. It’s just ultimately does come down to God because everything comes down to God ultimately.
Trent Horn:
Notice that you even hear one of the women saying, “Well, I don’t think there is a God.” It would follow for her that she should be pro-choice. I would instead say, “Look, do you think it is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being?” I might ask these women, “Is it wrong for a police officer to kill an innocent black man simply because he was annoyed and he has a stereotypical prejudice against this person?” “Well, of course it would be wrong for him to kill this innocent person.” Well, then we have to ask, “All right, if it’s wrong to kill, innocent human beings are the unborn innocent human beings?” Now we’re back to the main question.
At this point, you can bring up the question, why is it wrong to kill innocent human beings at all? Now, you could say you think it’s just an unexplained brute fact of morality, then just apply that brute fact to the unborn. But if you think this fact needs an explanation, then I would say maybe a religious explanation is the only one that will work. I’m actually sympathetic to the point Knowles was making here, because in one of my previous episodes, I explored a human dignity argument for the existence of God. I’ll link to it in the description below.
If we agree, for example, that it’s wrong to kill innocent human infants or mentally handicapped human beings who will never be rational, but it’s not wrong to kill a pig who can be quite intelligent, then there must be a reason to explain the difference beyond mere biology. Since the pig has more cognitive faculties than the infant or the disabled person. But if the humans in these examples have intrinsic value because God who is the source of goodness itself gave them that value, then that would explain the difference why humans have this intrinsic dignity. But notice I’m showing the religious foundation of the pro-life view after I’ve established the moral foundation. We all agree it’s wrong to kill innocent human beings, the unborn or innocent human beings. Therefore, it’s wrong to kill them.
Why is it wrong to kill innocent human beings? All right, well, now we can have a separate conversation from our discussion about abortion, about the ultimate foundation of ethics, of human value or of reality itself. Another thing I want to point out and commend Knowles for was addressing a dirty trick that the medical student, he dialog with, a woman named Remsick pulled when he was talking to her about abortion. She takes out a picture of the results of an alleged nine-week abortion, and they look in the picture like unrecognizable tissue. Take a look at this point in their conversation.
Remsick:
This is what a nine-week fetus looks like.
Michael Knowles:
Well, let me see.
Remsick:
I would like to, if you want to look at that.
Michael Knowles:
Sure.
Remsick:
And you would like to look at that, you can look at this.
Michael Knowles:
Oh, great. Yeah, yeah.
Remsick:
I know that you-
Michael Knowles:
It’s not like any ultrasound I’ve ever looked at, though.
Remsick:
Yeah, I know. That’s why I brought them. Because when it comes…
Michael Knowles:
This isn’t an ultrasound?
Remsick:
No, this is a nine-week fetus in a Petri dish.
Michael Knowles:
In a Petri dish?
Remsick:
Mm-hmm.
Michael Knowles:
Why do you have the thing in the Petri dish?
Remsick:
To discount misinformation that is spread about this issue, just like you do.
Michael Knowles:
How did the baby get into the Petri dish?
Remsick:
I believe these are aborted.
Trent Horn:
This is highly misleading. I’ll assume that what she means by a nine-week abortion is one done on a woman who is nine weeks pregnant, but pregnancy is counted from the last menstrual period. A nine-week pregnancy would have a seven-week-old embryo within the mother’s body. At seven weeks, the child is about 15 to 20 millimeters in length, and that Petri dish looks like it’s about 60 to 70 millimeters in length. We’re not really zoomed in enough to be able to make out the child who as we’ll see, was probably injured in the abortion itself. Here’s a clip from the Endowment for Human Development. This is not a pro-life organization, by the way, that shows the distinct features of a seven-week-old human embryo. Also, because the child was aborted, he or she may be disfigured in the process of the abortion. This is a point that Knowles brings up.
Michael Knowles:
What’s very silly, I think about showing pictures of aborted babies is, it would be as though if you were to ask me to show you a picture of what does an Italian guy in New York look like? Okay. I showed you a picture of a young 25-year-old Italian guy splayed out on the street, chopped up bleeding dead. Versus an Italian boy eating a bowl of spaghetti or something like that. Those two pictures would look very, very different. The trick, the deception that you’ve engaged in, is you’ve taken a baby who has been killed for abortion and been separated from his mother and splayed out and squeezed out and looks unrecognizable, and you’re pretending…
Remsick:
No.
Michael Knowles:
What you’re pretending is that cadaver is what a baby who has not been killed by his mother, who is still in the womb, and who is growing and who is exhibiting all the signs of life and is moving and who has little fingernails…
Trent Horn:
I’d also add to Knowles’s analogy. It would be like saying, “This is what a 25-year-old Italian man looks like when the picture is taken from a top a skyscraper looking down at his disfigured body. We’re not able to look clearly at the image.” But even if this was an earlier abortion of a four-week-old embryo, I would bring up the point that our appearance does not change our value. There are human beings who are horribly disfigured who don’t look like other human beings. There are robots and virtual chat bots that can look just like humans and fool us, but they aren’t. Appearance is irrelevant to our value.
Finally, let me address an argument the medical student uses that Knowles does not fully rebut. She basically asked Knowles if there are any other cases where one person is forced to allow another person to use their body. To which Knowles says, “No, motherhood is unique.” Listen to their exchange.
Remsick:
Can you tell me a scenario where you can force someone to use their body to save the life of another individual?
Michael Knowles:
Of a situation other than motherhood?
Remsick:
Mm-hmm.
Michael Knowles:
No, no. I think motherhood is unique.
Remsick:
Okay, so you can’t describe any other scenario where one human can be forced against their will to use their body to save the life of another person. You are arguing that in no other case can someone use someone else’s body against their will, unless we’re talking about motherhood.
Michael Knowles:
Right. Motherhood…
Remsick:
Motherhood. Right.
Michael Knowles:
Yeah, motherhood.
Remsick:
You only think that we should remove bodily autonomy from people with uteruses?
Trent Horn:
Here, I would raise two points to Remsick in response. First, there are examples that meet her definition. For example, men are required to register for selective service for the draft and use their bodies in war to save the lives of other people who aren’t fighting the war.
Men also have to pay child support, which involves forcing a man to expend calories, which uses his body to work in order to give money to someone else. Now, the medical student might say in response that this isn’t the same because it isn’t the use of an internal organ.
Michael Knowles:
I wouldn’t be opposed to a law that says, if you see a little kid drowning in a pool, you have an obligation to jump in the pool and pull the kid out. I mean, I think that would be perfectly reasonable.
Remsick:
That’s not the same thing as using your internal organs and…
Michael Knowles:
Well, that’s different. Yeah, your internal organs that would be unique to motherhood. Yeah.
Remsick:
Right, and so the fact that there is no other scenario where you can force a living person to use their body to save the life of another person means that you are trying to grant fetus’s rights that no other person on his behalf…
Trent Horn:
If that’s the case, then I would say the law would or at least should, require a mother to breastfeed her child if this is the only way to keep the child alive. Such as if she lived in a rural area and had no other person to help care for the child and didn’t have access to formula. In this case, Knowles was actually right on point because breastfeeding is an extension of motherhood, which he said was a unique case, but it involves a born child. My second point would be this, I’d ask Remsick. “All right, when is it okay to directly kill an innocent human being?” I’m not talking about indirect killing in war or self-defense, I’m not talking about letting a dying person die naturally and withholding a heart-lung machine from them. I’m talking about an act that ensures an innocent human being will die, because that’s what happens in abortion.
Abortion is not just about ending a pregnancy because if the child survived the abortion, the doctor could be sued for wrongful life. I would then say that she’s making the case that it should be legal to directly kill an innocent human being, even though we don’t allow the killing of innocent human beings in any other context. She’s the one who’s being arbitrary. At this point, you should also point out that abortion, it is direct killing. It’s not like choosing to withhold a kidney. It’s more like giving someone a kidney and then violently taking it back again, killing them in the process. Knowles also makes another good point, it’s not like giving someone a kidney because my kidney is made for my body. No one else has a natural right to it. But things are very different when it comes to the uterus.
Michael Knowles:
I really need both of them. I could give them to someone else, but it would be wrong if the government came in and said, “Michael, we’re taking your kidney now because Bronte needs it.” I might give it to you voluntarily, but I certainly wouldn’t want someone coming in gunpoint taking my kidney away. That would be wrong. Even if you were in dire straits. I still might give it to you, but I don’t want someone taking it from me, and I don’t think that I have an obligation to give you my kidney, right?
Remsick:
Right.
Michael Knowles:
Because my kidney is for filtering my blood. That’s what it’s for.
Remsick:
Right.
Michael Knowles:
In the same way a woman’s womb is for nurturing a child. That is the telos, that is the purpose of the womb. It serves no other purpose. I don’t think that the analogy that you’re making here is apt. I think once again, it gets back to the unique status of motherhood.
Remsick:
The same thing can be said for your liver, right? Your liver…
Michael Knowles:
Well, no one wants my liver. I promise you.
Remsick:
Well, but the purpose of your liver is to detoxify your blood. It can process alcohol, it can process all kinds of toxins. But if I don’t ingest those toxins, then my liver doesn’t have to do that job. If I don’t choose to harbor a fetus, my uterus doesn’t have to harbor that fetus.
Trent Horn:
It’s true that just because a uterus is made for children, that does not mean you’re obligated to have children. After all, some women choose to be nuns or consecrated virgins, and they’re not doing anything immoral in not using their uterus to gestate a child. But if you do engage in an act ordered towards bringing a human being into existence, then you have an obligation towards the human being you created. The most minimal obligation being providing that human being with food and shelter, which for an unborn child, can only naturally be found in his mother’s womb.
All right. That concludes my analysis of Michael Knowles on abortion. Please remember that even though I’m offering some criticisms of Knowles, I think overall he does a very good job of articulating the pro-life position. I’m glad he was in these particular dialogues to articulate it. It’s just, and it’s very common. He might say to me, “Yeah, I would’ve phrased that a little differently when I was engaging these people.” Hey, the same thing happens to me a lot. I just hope this is helpful for everyone so that all of us can grow in our ability to be persuasive defenders of human life at every stage of development, from conception to natural death. Thank you guys very much, and I hope you have a very blessed day.
Narrator:
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