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In this episode Trent examines the aftermath of Roe v Wade being overturned and talks about the one mistake pro-lifer must avoid that they have ample opportunities to talk about abortion.
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
With Roe versus Wade being overturned, it is not the end of fighting for the unborn. It is a new beginning. And because of that, we want to make sure that we don’t blunder, that we don’t argue for the unborn in an unproductive way, or in a way that causes people to reject or not take seriously the pro-life argument. So that is what I want to talk about today. Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. And what I really want to focus on is the dialogue people are having about abortion. More people are talking about abortion now than probably they have in decades. And that’s a good thing. The pro-choice movement has won for the past 50 years by getting people to not talk about abortion.
Trent Horn:
And now people are talking about it that they’ve always wanted people to not talk about abortion. Because when you talk about it, people see that it’s unseemly, it’s gross and they naturally don’t want to support it. Or at least they’re ambivalent about it. And so pro-choice advocates even a few months ago, I tried to get them to debate to co-sponsor a debate with Nathan Nobis at Emory University. They said, “No, we’re not going to do that.” And they do that to their own peril. What’s funny is now pro-choicers are getting a taste of their own medicine. I mean, I’m really amazed that it took two days for the media to move on from Dobbs and to go on to other stories. That’s just how the news cycle works. So I know a lot of pro-choice people they’re feeling the same gripes that I felt for a long time. There’s pro-choice Democrats who say, “I voted for these politicians and they didn’t keep their promises on abortion.”
Trent Horn:
Like Obama codifying Roe V. Wade into federal law. He said he would do it, I think in ’07. And then he said in 2009, it’s not a high priority for him. Or saying, “We’re making these protests. We’re doing these things. We’re not getting enough attention from the media.” I wanted to post a meme online with John McClane from Die Hard, where he says, “Welcome to the potty, pal.” As in, oh really? People don’t want to listen to you or give you air time for your reviews and they’re moving on or they’re not caring about abortion or politicians don’t keep their promises. You’re feeling that from your perspective as a pro-choice Democrat? That’s something pro-lifers been putting up with for a very long time. So now I think finally pro-choice people do want to talk about abortion and they want to frame it in a way so that it’s very effective for their side to make headway.
Trent Horn:
And the way they frame it is, if you outlaw abortion, it will hurt born women and hurt children through things like unwanted children who will end up in foster care, women who will be denied healthcare, women who will be in poverty. That’s how they have always framed it. And here’s the thing, here is how we will lose. I am not kidding you. We will lose if we take the bait. If we take the bait and we when they ask you, “What are you going to do about poverty? What are you going to do about these unwanted children?” And we say, “Oh well there’s adoption. There are these resources and pro-lifers we’re going to work. We’re going to work to pass this tax relief bill. We’re going to work to pass these pro family policies,” because what’s the other side going to say? “No, you’re not. You’ve never voted for these things,” even if pro-life advocates have helped, the poor have helped people in difficult situations through a variety of means, what ends up happening when the debate goes down this route is, we lose.
Trent Horn:
We lose because the solid pro-life argument must always stay focused on the one question that matters most. What are the unborn? If the unborn are not human beings, abortion is not a big deal. If the unborn are human beings, then we have no right to kill the unborn because they are suffering or in poverty any more than we would kill a born child. Okay. That’s a standard argument. Something I’ve been pushing for a long time and some people might get sick of me doing this. You’re doing the same, pro-life apologetics. Yeah. Well, I need to do that because I see so many people when they hear these reasons for abortion, that don’t answer the question, “What are the unborn?” They immediately talk about poverty. They talk about proposals to help, which is all good. But if we go down that route, we lose the main argument we’re making about the moral horror, not to mention just the medical horror, but the moral horror of what abortion is.
Trent Horn:
That’s what we need to get people to focus on. So I want to show you some clips and an article at cnn.com to really underscore this point. When these things come up, you must always get back to the question, what are the unborn? And sometimes you need to do it in a very blunt way. So here’s a first clip. This is a CNN commenter is speaking with Anna Navarro, who is another CNN commenter. And they’re talking about Roe versus Wade. And then let me play it. And I’m going to add my thoughts and where people end up in here. So here we go.
Anna Navarro:
Just yesterday, you can’t be but struck by the contrast that just yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled down the gun, the concealed weapon issue in New York and said it was not a state’s right. So apparently states are allowed to regulate my uterus, but not guns that-
Trent Horn:
Right, because there the constitution says nothing about a right to abortion. So states are allowed to regulate it because abortion is not a constitutional right, but you know what the constitution does mention? Guns, arms. It says citizens have the right to bear arms. So it makes sense that the court would say that states are restricted in how they regulate guns. Also, this whole thing is it’s not restricting people’s uteri or wombs. It’s restricting a particular medical act, which is that you cannot take certain medications or instruments, like a suction aspiration tube and use it to dismember a child. That is what’s being regulated, not the place where these heinous acts occur.
Anna Navarro:
Kill people. So I have a very hard time.
Trent Horn:
No, right? Yeah. She says, “Well, they don’t regulate guns that kill people.” Well, guns can also be used for self-defense, they can be used for hunting. I mean, it’s interesting here. When this is brought up, I would say that it’s not even in overturning Roe and allowing states to regulate abortion, it’s not like states are outlawing suction aspiration machines or dilation instruments to perform dilation and curettage because those instruments can be used for illicit purpose. If a baby dies in the womb and they’ve died, you can use these instruments to remove the child’s dead body. Because if you don’t, there could be necrotic tissue, the mother could get sick. What’s being regulated is using these lawful instruments, lawful instruments, whether it’s a gun or a suction aspiration tube should be regulated so that they’re not used to kill innocent people, whether it’s a gun or a medical device.
Trent Horn:
And the problem is in our country, you can use the medical devices to kill children for almost any reason through nine months of pregnancy. So once again, that’s the focus here. So notice if we were debating guns or abortion, I would just want to keep the focus very clear. Abortion is an act that is designed to end the life of an unborn child. A gun is a tool. Just as we would make it illegal to use guns to kill children, we should make it illegal to use abortion to kill children.
Anna Navarro:
With the inconsistency in cherry picking of what makes states rights.
Alice Stewart:
Look, no one has spoken up for the last 50 years for the unborn child, the sanctity of life. And now people have had-
Trent Horn:
No, I’m sorry. I thought it was another commentator. This is Alice Stewart, who is a Republican strategist. She’s asking Navarro, she’s talking about, “Hey, we’re protecting the unborn.” And she tries to call out Navarro, who says that she’s religious. I think she’s Catholic. I don’t know. If you’re religious, why don’t you follow what the church teaches on this?
Alice Stewart:
Had the opportunity to speak up for the unborn child. And that’s important. Look, I know Anna is a woman of faith. She has a huge heart. She’s very passionate, but also I know that the Catholic faith believes in life and supports the sanctity of life. And I find it’s just, I don’t understand how you can say on one hand you support life yet you’re fine with a woman’s decision to choose abortion. And look, there are [inaudible 00:08:20] in place to protect-
Trent Horn:
Okay. So first off I would say, I understand the point Stewart is making. She’s trying to call out Navarro being hypocritical. You can say the same thing in Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden. You’ll say, “Well, you’re Catholic. Then why aren’t you against abortion?” This is not a good strategy because the person will just say, “Yeah, it’s wrong for me. It’s my religious faith. But I’m saying other people should live their lives. I’m not going to impose my faith on other people.” So that’s why it’s not a great strategy per se. Although I will say, the Catholic church teaches that abortion is wrong not just for Catholics. It’s wrong for everyone and that the state has an obligation to protect the unborn under the law. So you could say, “Hey Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, if you’re Catholic, why don’t you follow the church’s teaching which is that unborn children should be protected from being killed under the law. Why don’t you follow that teaching,” would be a way that you could phrase it.
Trent Horn:
But if you do it generically, “Catholics are for life, why aren’t you for life,” then… And Navarro will double down on this later saying, “I don’t have the right to impose my faith on other people.” It’s not a route you necessarily want to go down, but I want you to pay attention to the emotional red herring she will throw out there immediately to justify abortion. She doesn’t say the unborn aren’t human beings. That’s the main issue. It’s an emotional red herring listen.
Alice Stewart:
The mother before, during and after the child.
Anna Navarro:
And I am not anybody to tell you what you need to do with your life or with your uterus. And because I have a family with a lot of special needs kids. I have a brother who’s 57 and has the mental and motor skills of a one year old. And I know what that means financially, emotionally, physically for a family. And I know not all families can do it. And I have a step-granddaughter who was born with down syndrome and you know what? It is very difficult in Florida to get services. It is not as easy as it sounds on paper. And I’ve got another. Another step-grandson who is basically autistic, who has autism and it is [inaudible 00:10:26] life and their mothers and people who are in that society who are in that community will tell you that they’ve considered suicide because that’s how difficult it is to get help, because that’s how lonely they could do because-
Trent Horn:
And I would say here immediately, why not kill them? And in these news soundbite situations, you have to be very blunt sometimes because… When you talk to someone in a regular conversation, you should empathize, say, “Yeah, that’s a really…” That’s what I teach. Check out my course, Arguing Against Abortion, Persuasive Pro-life, agree. These are really difficult situations that is really hard. Spend time genuinely empathizing, and then apply that to a two year old. Now in a sound bite situation on media, I would probably have to go to apply very quickly. And so I would try to jump in where I could here with Navarro and say, “Well, why not kill them? If you have a relative who has autism or a relative who is severely disabled, why not just kill them so that they don’t have to suffer and other people don’t have to suffer.”
Trent Horn:
If you say that we shouldn’t kill born people who have disabilities, well then why should we kill unborn people if they’re equally human? What if you didn’t discover that a child was disabled until after they were born? Do you think it should be legal to kill them after they were born? Yes or no? And so I would put the question out there in that way, but I would always, you don’t want to fault… What you’ll hear is, “Well pro-lifers care about services. We want to promote services for autism, and we really are caring.” If you go down that road, then she can say, “No, you’re not. You didn’t do this. You didn’t vote for this. You didn’t vote for that.” Do not go down that route. You can later at the end, once you have made the moral point, that when she says, “Well, I have a relative with down syndrome and it’s really, really hard.
Trent Horn:
Well, why not kill him? Would the world be better if he were dead? Why not? Not even jumping to, would it have been better for him to be aborted? Don’t say that. Don’t say, “Well, would it be better if he had been aborted?” It’s just hypothetical. That’s not what we want to do. To ask the relative with autism, the relative with down syndrome who exists right now, should it be legal to kill them? If a mother has a severely disabled child with let’s say autism, should she be allowed to kill him because she doesn’t want him to suffer in foster care. She doesn’t want him to suffer. And the answer most sane people will give is, “No, they shouldn’t.” Okay. So if we don’t kill a born child for this reason, why would we kill an unborn child for the same reason?
Trent Horn:
Okay. So remember, and then you can talk about the services, you can talk about practical means, because frankly, this happens with poverty as well. What about women who are poor? Well, guess what? Planned Parenthood doesn’t offer them prenatal care. Doesn’t offer them things. Pregnancy resource centers do. They only offer abortion? These kind of arguments are like saying, “Oh, you want to free the slaves in the south? What are you going to do for all the slaves that come north and can’t find work? Are you going to take care of them?” The answer is, “I just think people should not be enslaved. I don’t think we should own other human beings.” Who could disagree with that? Likewise, I would say, “I don’t think we should kill people because they’re unwanted.” Full stop. After that, we can debate the best nonviolent solution to help people who are poor, but we don’t enslave people and we don’t kill people because they’re unwanted or slavery or abortion helps us. We don’t do that. So let me continue.
Anna Navarro:
Because they can’t get other jobs, because they have financial issues, because the care that they’re able to give their other children, suckers. And so why can I be Catholic and still think this is a wrong decision?Because I’m American. I’m Catholic inside the church. I’m Catholic when it comes to me. But there’s a lot of Americans who are not Catholic and are not Christian and are not Baptist. And you have no damn right to tell them what they should do with their body. Nobody does.
Trent Horn:
Okay. So as I said, if you say, “Well, you’re Catholic, why aren’t you against abortion?” She can turn it around and say, “I can’t impose my Catholic views on other people.” And so then that goes away from the conversation. So a few weeks ago I was interviewed on cnn.com. Let me see if I can look at this guy right here. Let me pull this up. They cite the same Bible, evoke the same Jesus but these two Christians are on opposite sides of the abortion debate. John Blake at CNN interviewed me. Opposite me was Laura Ellis. She was a Baptist who is pro-choice. Let me bring her up here a little bit so you can see her. All right. Let me scroll down in the article here and let me get to this. How does your faith shape your position on abortion?
Trent Horn:
Alrighty, and so you’ll see what I said here. They said they asked the question. They wanted to ask me a bunch of religious questions, but I was determined to not let this interview become, I’m pro-life just because I’m religious. I was determined to take this question, “Here’s two religious people. What do they think about abortion?” And I wanted to show, Hey, as a pro-life person, I’m pro-life for human reasons, for rational reasons. The fact that I am a religious pro-life advocate doesn’t mean my position is merely religious any more than the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., The fact that he was a Christian preacher, that doesn’t mean his opposition to racial segregation was merely a religious opposition. So when they asked, “How does your faith shape your position on abortion?” I didn’t cite the Bible. I didn’t cite the catechism.
Trent Horn:
I just said, “God created human beings in his image. He loves human beings. He wants us to share that same love and promote justice towards every other human being.” By the way, when you read these answers, I’ll link to the article below, this isn’t a phone interview. So this is just me talking to the interviewer. Since my faith teaches me that every single human being, every single member of our species is equal in value and dignity, then my faith informs me that I should never directly kill an innocent member of our species because they’re unwanted. So my faith just says, “Hey, human beings are valuable,” but guess what? Lots of non-religious people think human life is valuable. And so I apply that principle, human life is valuable that religious and non-religious people agree about to a scientific truth that every single member, our species, the scientific truth at the unborn are human beings and so we ought to protect them.
Trent Horn:
I think I talk about that a little bit more down here. Yeah. So I ended up saying, “If the Bible says that it’s wrong to kill innocent human beings and since science and sound reasoning tell us that human embryos and human fetus’ are human beings then the Bible informs me that it’s wrong to kill them.” The Bible doesn’t say that it’s wrong to lynch Black people, but clearly it is wrong, even if the Bible doesn’t say so, because the Bible says it’s wrong to kill innocent human beings, that would apply to all born and unborn human beings. So my argument, when they said, “Well, you’re Catholic, what’s your religious view on abortion?” My religious view is that human beings matter. Science tells us the unborn are human beings, so it’s wrong to kill innocent human beings.
Trent Horn:
That’s a religious truth and a non-religious truth. Science tells us the unborn are human beings, therefore abortion is wrong because it kills them. So very clear. I’ll link to that below to read through, but you’ll see here, how I try over and over again… In fact, I go down a little more. What’s the biggest myth people have about people who share your position? And for me, it’s the biggest myth that people have about my position on abortion is that it is merely a religious position, so. Alrighty, let me go to an example of somebody handling this really well and that would be Kristen Hawkins from Students For Life of America.
Trent Horn:
So Kristen is an awesome pro-life advocate. I think she has a podcast and you should definitely go and check it out. I want to play a clip here. Here you can see someone handling the questions very well that she’s talking with a commenter at CNN and the commenter is challenging her saying, “Well, you want to make abortion illegal. What about all these unwanted children?” And instead of taking the bait, instead of saying, “Kids in foster care.” Instead of saying, “Pro-life advocates have this plan to help kids in foster care, and this is what we’re going to do.” And this particular answer she gives, she absolutely nails the very first argument that we need to make. So take a listen.
Kristen:
Well, first of all, I hear what you’re saying, but the reality is, I think it’s nearly half a million kids end up in foster care. I don’t know how many of those were kids that the mother wanted to abort or came from a disadvantaged home. But the reality is you say that you’re working on this, but so many kids still end up abused, neglect in the broken foster care system. And the reality is the government in these states do not have the resources on the books, such as paid family leave, such as the extended Medicaid to help with these situations. We can definitely talk-
Trent Horn:
How does paid family leave help foster care? They just throw these things out there. You guys don’t do the liberal grab bag of policies we like, therefore abortion should be legal. That’s the argument. Watch how Kristen dismantles it.
Kristen:
Well, those policies. But the question is is the solution to children in foster care to kill them? No one would argue in our society that because a child’s in foster care, therefore their life is unworthy of living. And that’s the point that we’re making in the pro-life movement every single day when we argue for protection at conception. That just because someone may suffer in their life, it doesn’t mean we should snuff them out of existence, that we should violently end their life when they’ve done nothing wrong.
Trent Horn:
And that’s what you have to lead with. We can talk about policy. We can talk about non-violent ways to help people, but we should all agree the violent ways should be illegal. And so I love that she focuses in on that to say, “Well, what should we do about children in foster care?” Should we kill them? No, of course not. But then by that logic, if the unborn are human beings, we should not kill them either. Always, always, always go back to the question. What are the unborn? So that’s the big mistake. Pro-lifers, if you don’t stay focused on that question, what are the unborn, and always get the other person to admit that their view is that it should be legal to kill children to solve social problems.
Trent Horn:
If you don’t get them to admit that, you’re going to lose, because if you get them to say, “Pro-lifer, what’s your solution to social problems?” We lose because they always have solutions that might sound better even if they don’t work better in practice. Because people will disagree about what political solutions work best. What you have to focus on is, should we be allowed to kill children to solve our social problems?
Trent Horn:
Always go back to the question. What are the unborn? The other thing I think that pro-lifers are going to need to do, frankly, in the coming months and years, when we argue about abortion and we talk about it, we need to humanize the unborn. We need visual medium. We need to show people pictures of the unborn at the very least pictures of living unborn children so that they can wrap their heads around, this is a human being. Now not every picture of an unborn child. A child is only three or four weeks old won’t look like the Gerber baby, but you can even show children in the first trimester who are 7, 8, 9 weeks old. You can clearly see arms, legs, eyes. You can see these elements for people to at least… That’s not the main argument for their humanity, but it’s helpful in a visual culture we live in.
Trent Horn:
So we need more of those pictures. And frankly, I think we need more graphic images of abortion. So this is a website. I would recommend that you share people, especially if you’re talking to someone who’s very hardened about abortion to say, “Would you be willing to look at the effects of abortion? Would you be willing to watch a video of an abortion and you tell me that’s not killing a human being.” I used to use these images when I would go and speak at university campuses. I found them to be incredibly helpful. Some people responded, they got really mad. Some people would say to me, “How dare you show these pictures?”
Trent Horn:
And I would say to them, “It’s kind of weird. You’re more mad at me for showing these pictures than you are that about the fact that children were killed. Why are you mad at…” Some people are mad? And I say, “Why are you mad at me? I didn’t do this to these children.” But I think that that’s so crucial. These graphic images are what got me involved in the pro-life movement in the first place. So I definitely would recommend them. The website I’m showing you here is abortionno.org and be careful, not all pictures are authenticated. These pictures here, the website is abortion no, so abortion, N-O abortionno.org. They’re from the Center for Bioethical Reform. They have affidavits that show they basically just abortionists love money. They paid an abortionist a lot of money to let them take pictures.
Trent Horn:
And they got affidavits. They have doctors that will certify these are accurate photographs. You want to use the accurate ones. And they have a lot of pictures from the first trimester of pregnancy, which is when the majority of abortions take place. You really want to focus on showing those images. “Well, you’re emotionally manipulating people.” No, I’m not. People were outraged when they saw video of George Floyd being killed. They didn’t say that was emotional manipulation. They said that was photographic evidence of injustice. This is the same thing. Same with Emmett Till, the civil rights [inaudible 00:23:37] He was the 14 year old boy who was lynched for whistling, allegedly at a white woman. His open casket funeral, he was beaten so badly you couldn’t recognize him. His lying there in the casket, that was one of the catalysts for the Civil Rights Movement. And in fact, on their website, they actually have a video that shows children who have been aborted and it shows an abortion in progress.
Trent Horn:
So keep that in mind if you go here. If you go to the website, there’s a video. They give you a seven second countdown before it automatically plays. But I think that it’s absolutely justified. If we are justified in showing pictures of the Holocaust so that the Holocaust will not happen again, we are justified in showing pictures of aborted children in order to make sure abortion stops happening. Now you have to be judicious where you show them. People are going to disagree about the best places to show them. I would go to college campuses because there’s lots of adults there who are thinking about having abortions and very few children. I do think it’s good to try to protect children’s innocence as long as you can. But if my children see this, this is an injustice and I want them to grow up to fight it.
Trent Horn:
If they happen to see it, that happens. But overall, I wouldn’t necessarily show these to a class of elementary school students, for example. What age do I think a child can see pictures of abortion? I’ll give you an easy answer. A child is ready to see a picture of an aborted baby when they are old enough to have an abortion. If they’re 11 or 12 years old, they could impregnate someone or they could become pregnant. If they go to Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood will not turn them away. So if a child is old enough to get pregnant or impregnate someone and thus be involved in abortion, they are old enough to see what abortion looks like. I have no doubt about that.
Trent Horn:
So this is another resource we have to include and the reason you show pictures of either living or aborted unborn children is because we always want to get the discussion back to the one question don’t stray away from this, don’t argue poverty. Don’t argue politics. Don’t argue religion. Always get back to what are the unborn? What are the unborn? If you need help doing that check out my book, Persuasive Pro-life or my course arguing about abortion at schoolofapologetics.com, catholicanswers schoolofapologetics.com. All right, well, I hope that was helpful and the fight will continue. So let’s pray and carry one another’s burdens and help one another to grow the pro-life movement to continue to defend the unborn. But thank you guys so much, and I hope you have a very pleasant day.
Speaker 7:
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