http://www.truehorizon.org/index.cfm?i=9265&mid=25&blogid=3169 Making a reasoned and passionate defense of the Pro-Life position. This blog section will focus on the value of human life at all stages and comment on newsworthy pro-life issues like abortion, stem cell research and euthanasia ... Bob has been blogging at the True Horizon Blog since early 2006. You can find an extensive, searchable archive of posts on numerous topics there. Only selected posts or topical series relating to pro-life apologetics will appear here. AdvancedMinistry The following article appears on the Life Training Institute (LTI) website. I am cross-posting it here simply to make my position on abortion clear and to explain why I have committed to LTI's mission, both as a speaker and a financial supporter. I only hope I can deepen both of those commitments in the future and I encourage the readers of this blog to visit and support LTI in any way you can. The issue of abortion in this country is too big and too hideous to ignore. We at LTI, and you in your own little corner of the world, have an obligation to own for ourselves, and to "persuasively communicate the pro-life message" to others. Please consider educating yourself to participate in that endeavor in any way you can ... Thanks.-------------------- Cleverness Not RequiredIf there is a more relevant poster child for the self-confident, narcissistic, postmodern personality than the pilot of a single-seat modern fighter airplane, I am not sure who it would be. There are exceptions to this generalization of course, but I was not one of them. So, it was with the related air of invincibility that I strutted into a hangar in Cherry Point, North Carolina after a training sortie in 1987 and was met by my squadron Operations Officer. ?Bob,? he said sternly, ?you need to call your wife. No debrief, no shower. Just go call her. She?s pretty upset about something.?My pregnant wife had an appointment with her doctor earlier that morning but it never occurred to me that that might have anything to do with her call. When she answered the phone she was a blubbering mess. Through tears and sobs I got the message: ?There might be something wrong with the baby.?Over the next several days we learned all about the indications of the Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) test which triggered the alarm. We were warned that our baby?s high AFP level could point to any of several severe abnormalities including: abdominal wall defects or neural tube defects like spina-bifida, and anencephaly. Finally, we were sent to the only military facility in our area that could provide a Level II Ultrasound ? the Naval Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia. It was during that ultrasound that the technician maneuvered the equipment into position for a perfect, left-side profile view of our first baby. Neither of us will ever forget the moment. He was sucking his thumb, his right hand curled into a ball. But just as the picture came into focus, he began to open and close his fingers. Our view from the side made it look like he was waving ? like he was telling us that everything was going to be OK. At least that is how we took it.Afterward, the doctor leaned forward on her stool and looked us in the eyes. ?As best as we can tell, the ultrasound seems to be normal, but it is not definitive. All the risks we talked about are still there. So, you need to make a decision about whether or not you want to continue the pregnancy.?The image we saw on the screen that morning was obviously a baby. Neither of us could have justified ending that baby?s life, even if it meant that we were committing ourselves to the possible agony of dealing with the short, painful life of a severely deformed infant, or the challenge of lifelong care for a physically and/or mentally handicapped child. Though the decision we made was final, in the weeks and months that followed I was haunted by the weight of it. The same question kept replaying in my head, ?What if the baby hadn?t waved??For years I lived with the unresolved conundrum that I could never justify our decision based on such an obvious coincidence as the well-timed wave of a baby?s fingers, no matter how emotionally convincing it may have been. But neither could I muster a reasonable argument in defense of that decision. For the first time in my life I was confronted with the realization that I had never engaged my mind in even the most cursory reasoning about the reality of abortion. My wife and I were products of highly ethical Christian homes. It was for that reason, and that reason alone, that we never seriously considered the possibility of not ?continuing the pregnancy.? We had been immersed in an upbringing where the existence of objective truth and a normative understanding of right and wrong were simply assumed. Living in that kind of environment, we would never have contemplated doing otherwise. Moral people just didn?t kill innocent babies. When that is your outlook, an emotional response is all you need. Unfortunately, the probability that such an environment is a prevalent one is becoming more and more remote these days. We certainly cannot assume it.No matter what their upbringing, a great majority of those in our culture are floating adrift in a sea of every kind of relativistic thinking. ?That may be true for you, but it?s not for me.? ?Who are you to judge?? ?Don?t try to impose your moral standards on me!? We are surrounded by several generations of adults, young and old, who have unquestioningly accepted a relativistic mindset wherein moral reasoning is considered the quaint practice of a less tolerant time. It is within such an environment that the merchants of death thrive.It is only within a world like this that a renowned philosopher like David Boonin could consider a memorable moment just like the one my wife and I experienced that day in Norfolk, Virginia ? and come to such a gruesomely opposite conclusion. Gazing at still photos of his son Eli at various stages of his life, Boonin refers to a sonogram image of him that he keeps in the top drawer of his desk. The photo, taken 24 weeks before Eli?s birth, confirms for Boonin that?? there is no doubt in my mind that this picture shows the same little boy at a very early stage in his physical development. And there is no question that the position I defend in this book [A Defense of Abortion] entails that it would have been morally permissible to end his life at [that] point.?[i]People who think like Boonin influence our culture in insidious ways. They include folks who spend hundreds of pages in the books they write attempting to convince us that there is a difference between a human being and a human person. They include philosophers like Princeton University?s Chair of Bioethics at its Center for Human Values, Peter Singer, who believes that ?? it can be morally permissible to kill infants; that some animals have a greater claim to our protection than [infants] do; that sex between humans and animals is morally acceptable so long as it does not cause the animal pain or harm; [and] ? that the traditional view of the sanctity of human life is obsolete.?[ii]Philosophers like Boonin and Singer may not be household names but their worldview has seeped into the very foundations of our most elite institutions of higher learning and from there into the unquestioning ethos of our world. The lines of reasoning they come up with to uphold these kinds of views are intricately detailed, meticulously constructed arguments that are not for the faint of heart and there is only one reason they offer them. They mean to condone the ?right? to practice abortion or engage in embryo-destructive stem cell research by creating an ethical atmosphere in which limitless human autonomy is the paradigm and the high-sounding promises of what we can do through science become equivalent to what we should do. Their goal is to convince us that any ?thinking person? should see their nuanced points of view.And it works. After all, this is a culture that gives no quarter to any restriction on one?s personal autonomy. That being so, the arguments have been effective within a society bent on embracing any justification for pursuing its own self-absorbed ends ? a society eager to listen to whatever its itching ears wants to hear. But it occurs to me that the average person, looking at their offspring?s sonogram on a computer screen, has never even heard these arguments and will, in all probability, never have occasion to consider their finer points or realize that they have been swayed by them.Indeed, these kinds of justifications for abortion would never have occurred to the likes of my wife and me in the winter of 1987, and they wouldn?t occur to almost anyone else now. Even so, when human autonomy and moral justification intersect, the result is a passive acquiescence to the vision of the anointed that leads us toward the least painful solution to our problems. Ignorance of reality is bliss. If someone like me can be so easily swayed to reject abortion by the coincidental movement of an unborn baby?s fingers, they can be just as easily swayed by emotional appeals to the opposite view.My contention is that, minus the extremely rare exceptions of those with improperly functioning minds, every person on this earth carries with them a moral imagination that is an undeniable aspect of their humanity. That being true, it is a simple task to shock that imagination, with a jolt of logical thinking, into a confrontation with moral clarity. The goal of LTI is to deliver that shock in a winsome, attractive and convincing way that unveils the plain and obvious truth behind every issue we take on. We do it all the time and the response we get is always similar, ?I?ve never heard it put that way before.? But make no mistake ? our tactics are nothing clever.Our case does not require specialized education or deep reflection. It does not rely on some intricately woven line of reasoning meant to slither its way through multitude of nuanced philosophical or scientific trivialities. We don?t have to play those kinds of games, even though our case is strong enough to stand up to those kinds of objections. The case for life is elegant in its simplicity and direct in its appeal to what normal people already know but may never have been led to recognize or consider for themselves. It is everyman?s argument, so clear and concise it can even be delivered by someone like me ? or you. For the record, the baby that triggered the chain of events described above was born in April of 1988. He was the oldest of what became five sons but he was the only son for whom we ever received the results of an AFP test. My wife refused to submit to them after our experience. Far from being born without a brain, Robby grew up to be a highly intelligent, confident and successful young man. Next May he will graduate near the top of his class from one of the finest universities in America. My motivation to commit to the mission and vision of the Life Training Institute rests partially on the unacceptable notion that we have no idea how many babies just like Robby will never have the opportunity to accomplish what he has accomplished because their lives ended in a disposable bio-hazard bag at an abortion clinic. I cannot live with the idea that someone just like me would make the opposite choice simply because I never made the effort to educate them about the truth-soaked realities that undergird the pro-life position.I am no bioethical expert. I am not a trained philosopher. But that?s the point. My hope is that my unexceptional background can confront some folks with the realization that they too have been intellectually disengaged from the reality of abortion, and that they too can admit that they are ill-equipped to articulate it. I hope to stir people who are just like me to embrace and promote what is so clearly and unarguably the morally superior position that LTI defends.This is not a topic to be left to the high-sounding but vacuous arguments of the intellectual elite. It is a cause that every one of us can grasp, knowing that we stand on a solid foundation of truth that is not swayed by emotional appeals or the chicanery of those who go to such great lengths to undermine it. I cannot hope that someone?s baby will wave to them at just the right time. I cannot allow that others would be left to rely on the same shifting sand on which I stood when I was in their position. I cannot go on being a passive spectator or an insufferable complainer about an injustice I have no intention of confronting.Our case is easily made. We just need to go make it.-------------------[i] Robert P. George & Christopher Tollefsen, Embryo (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2008), p. 113-114.[ii] Ramesh Ponnuru, The Party of Death (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2006), p. 175. http://www.truehorizon.org/index.cfm?i=9265&mid=25&blogid=3169&comments=13518 13518 Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:51:40 +0000 One of the most promising scientific advancements of the last few years in any area of research has been the success of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (IPS). We have talked about it (here) before but, as a reminder, IPS harvests adult skin cells from the patient who requires therapy and induces those cells to return to pluripotency -- a state from which they can be coaxed into becoming almost any other kind of cell. The therapeutic value of pluripotent cells is enormously encouraging. The beauty of this kind of research is that it honors the concerns of everyone involved in the debate on stem cell research. Not only does IPS show therapeutic promise but, more importantly, it does so without causing the morally troubling destruction of human embryos. For that reason IPS truly is the kind of win-win solution that anyone concerned about bioethical issues should be seeking. And the future just got brighter. In August, Stanford University surgeon Michael Longaker and cardiologist Joseph Wu teamed up to induce pluripotent stem cells from a quart of fat they had extracted from a liposuction patient. That’s right, these two researchers found a way to turn fat into a stem-cell therapy. Not only so, but transforming the fat cells into IPS cells took just 20 days -- as compared to the 8 weeks it took to do the same from skin cells -- and the process yielded 20 times the number of IPS cells. Here’s what bothers me about this story: I read about it in the December issue of Popular Science magazine. With the exception of a one-paragraph blurb in U.S. News and a short news release from Reuters, I could not find any mention of this breakthrough in the mainstream news media. I certainly did not hear or see any politician from either party tout it as a new way to seek common ground on the bioethical battlefield. There have been no news conferences called to announce federal funding for a program that will seek to promote this kind of therapy. I haven't even heard funding of this research offered as an amendment to the health care bill. It is a mystery to me how anyone who is dedicated to promoting cures for disease, who cares at all about the destruction of human embryos, or who is truly seeking any kind of "common ground" where these issues are concerned, could fail to revel in a story like this one. Will anyone who matters become its champion? http://www.truehorizon.org/index.cfm?i=9265&mid=25&blogid=3169&comments=10012 10012 Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:52:54 +0000 If you are ever in a discussion with an pro-abortionist who attempts to make the case that the unborn are in some way different from other human beings and therefore fall under a category that does not require the protection we give to those who actually can defend themselves, there is an easy way to help them clarify the indefensibility of their position. It's simple to remember and it goes like this ... The differences between you and an unborn human being can be summarized as falling under one of the following four categories, none of which qualify as justification for taking its life: Size Yes, the unborn is smaller than you. But you are also smaller than Shaquille Oneal. Does that mean you are somehow less valuable than Shaq? Does the size of a thing define its worth? Let's hope not. Level of Development Yes, the unborn is less developed than you. But so is a 3 year-old little girl less developed than her 35 year-old mother. Does her level of development make the 3 year-old less worthy of life than her mother? Environment Location, location, location. It may define value in real estate, but it certainly does not do so in the measure of our humanity. Does where you are define what you are? If I move from the family room to the driveway, am I somehow less valuable as a human being? The answer is obvious -- just as obvious as the fact that moving several inches down the birth canal does not somehow increase the value of the human being who, moments before, resided in his mother's womb. Degree of Dependency Yes, the unborn is more dependent on its mother than a grown man. But how does one's level of dependency change one's value as a human being? Left alone in the woods behind your house, your 3 year-old child would most certainly die of exposure and starvation. He is fully dependent on you, his parent, to survive. How is it that you would charge someone who did such a thing with negligent homicide, yet you use the same logic to rationalize abortion? Obviously, these four criteria do not in any way serve to define a difference in value between those the pro-abortionist will not protect and those they will -- those, say, like themselves. The SLED test is a quick and powerful way to make that point. http://www.truehorizon.org/index.cfm?i=9265&mid=25&blogid=3169&comments=9116 9116 Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:34:35 +0000 If the scientific case is so airtight, how do pro-abortionists justify their position? They do so by a disguised appeal to a philosophical issue that they believe makes the scientific case irrelevant. They try to make a distinction between a human being and a human person. Though common sense would seem to make this a distinction without a difference (have you ever met a human being who was not a human person?), this is a distinction we must address. So, what is it that they claim makes someone a "person"? Most everyone I have heard/read about claims that self-awareness or consciousness is the instrumental property that constitutes personhood. That is, unless you are aware that you are alive and kicking in some fashion, you cannot be a human person. Consider the consequences that follow from such a claim ... If I am asleep, I am not a human person. If I get knocked out in a boxing match, I am not a human person. If I am under sedation for surgery, I am not a human person. You get the picture. One could think up an enormous number of situations in which our acceptance of this argument as justification for taking the life of an unborn human being can also logically lead to justification for taking your life in situations when it would clearly be wrong to do so. It sure sounds like there must be something inherently wrong with this kind of argument. What is wrong is that those who use this argument to justify abortion are misapplying the properties that make human being valuable at all. Notice above that I emphasized consciousness as an "instrumental" property -- that is an accidental property (like skin color, sex, age, reasoning ability, height etc.) that does not define our value us as human beings based on what we are but rather defines our worth based on what we can do or how we look. This is an important distinction. The pro-life claim (which, by the way, does not depend on the Bible to support it) is that human beings are valuable in virtue of the kind of thing they are -- their ontological status in philosopher-speak. So, in the case of the unborn, their status as a member of the human family prohibits the unjustified taking of their life, not the fact that that they may, or may not, be conscious. Very few abortion rights advocates are capable of living with the ramifications of their stated view. But one is. His name is Peter Singer. Dr. Singer, in his book Practical Ethics, argues that infants, based on the fact that they are not yet "conscious," can be killed by the attending physician (or anyone else) for any reason from the moment of birth for 30 days. One has to wonder how Mr. Singer draws the arbitrary line at 30 days? Why not 45 days? Or 90? Or 365? His view is horrific but at least he is consistent. If consciousness is the criteria for personhood there are a lot of people at risk as we speak who have probably never considered that those who would kill an unborn baby, if they were also consistent, could use the same justification for murdering them. Next time, a simple argument that shows the power of the pro-life position as it relates to any pro-abortion argument based on the instrumental value of human beings ... http://www.truehorizon.org/index.cfm?i=9265&mid=25&blogid=3169&comments=9115 9115 Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:32:44 +0000 Recently, over at the LTI-Blog, the team critiqued an RHReality Check video that, in part, claimed that "there is no actual scientific moment at which life begins." Really? Instead of listening to empty assertions about science, let's just look at ... oh, I don't know ... what the scientists trained in these areas actually have to say about it: "[The Zygote] results from the union of an oocyte and a sperm. A zygote is the beginning of a new human being. Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm ... unites with a female gamete or oocyte ... to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual." (The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 6th ed. Keith L. Moore, Ph.D. & T.V.N. Persaud, Md., (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1998), pp. 2-18) "It is the penetration of the ovum by a spermatozoan and resultant mingling of the nuclear material each brings to the union that constitutes the culmination of the process of fertilization and marks the initiation of the life of a new individual."(Human Embryology, 3rd ed. Bradley M. Patten, (New York: McGraw Hill, 1968), 43.) The zygote thus formed represents the beginning of a new life." (Biological Principles and Modern Practice of Obstetrics. J.P. Greenhill and E.A. Friedman, (Philadelphia: W.B. Sanders, 1974), p. 17) "Every time a sperm cell and ovum unite a new being is created which is alive and will continue to live unless its death is brought about by some specific condition." (Pathology of the Fetus and the Infant, 3d ed. E.L. Potter and J.M. Craig, (Chicago: Year Book Medical Publishers, 1975), p. vii) Prior to his acceptance of unrestricted abortion on demand, Planned Parenthood’s former president Dr. Alan Guttmacher was perplexed that anyone, much less a medical doctor, would not know this. “This all seems so simple and evident that it is difficult to picture a time when it wasn’t part of the common knowledge.” (Life in the Making, Viking Press, 1933.) Dr. Landrum Shettles, the first scientist to successfully achieve fertilization in a test-tube, writes that, "Fertilization confers and defines life." Prominent feminist Naomi Wolf, in an article for the New Republic, said to her fellow pro-choice advocates: "Clinging to rhetoric about abortion in which there is no life and no death, we entangle our beliefs in a series of self-delusions, fibs and evasions." ("Our Bodies, Our Souls,” New Republic, Oct. 16 1995) Psychologist and pro-choice advocate Magda Denes wrote, "I do think abortion is murder – of a very special and necessary sort. And no physician ever involved with the procedure ever kids himself about that." (“The Question of Abortion” Commentary 62, December 1976) There are more, but the point is this: Scientists know exactly when life begins. If you are ever challenged with the old canard, "No one really knows when life begins," please do not let it pass without a firm rebuttal. Your average person may not realize it but the abortion choice crowd certainly does (especially those like the young lady who appears in the RHReality video linked above): This is nothing but a smokescreen meant to avoid the issue. This is not the opinion of the pro-life advocate and it certainly is not a claim from the Bible. This what doctors are taught in their embryology text books. Scientifically, the embryo is a unique, distinct, whole human being from the moment of conception. Where the abortion choicers have learned to shade the issue is not in the scientific debate, it is in the philosophical debate about the difference between a human being and a human person. More on that issue next time ... http://www.truehorizon.org/index.cfm?i=9265&mid=25&blogid=3169&comments=9114 9114 Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:31:18 +0000 My friend Scott Klusendorf is among the best pro-life apologists on the planet. I say 'among the best' only because I haven't heard them all -- but he's the best I've ever heard speak. His new book, The Case For Life, will be out in just a few weeks and, after getting a sneak preview of it, all I can say is that anyone who wants to promote and advance the pro-life cause to save the unborn has got to read it. Scott makes the complex simple, and the pro-life case clear. What may be surprising to many is that Scott is unabashedly pro-choice. I share that view with him and you can see him defend it here: (Scott at Gordon College) I believe that women should be free to choose their doctor, their profession, their husband, their recreational activities, where they live ... They should be free to choose everything about their lives. Everything, that is, except choices that are morally wrong ... choices that deny others the same kinds of liberty women enjoy for themselves ... choices like having an abortion. So, to those who attempt to label the pro-life movement as being "anti-choice," your objection rings hollow. Abortion is not a question of freedom of choice. It is a question of moral right and wrong. Because there aren't enough Scott Klusendorfs in this world, I have taken it upon myself to try to articulate the pro-life position through my own little sphere of influence. This month I am teaching a 4-week course at my church about "Defending Life" and I am using a lot of Scott's material. In that class we started out discussing the fact that the Bible doesn't seem to help us out much on the issues of life. For instance, the Bible never specifically mentions: when life begins, abortion, stem cell research, or euthanasia. The question is: Does that mean that the Bible is silent on these issues? I think not. There is no doubt that the Bible unequivocally promotes the value of human life from beginning to end. We Christians believe that value to have its source in our being made in God's image. Through the words of David in the Psalms, the prophets in the Old Testament, and Jesus himself, there is no doubt about this fact. Being made in God's image is what sets us apart from the rest of the creation. It is what allows us to contemplate the divine and have a relationship of any kind with our Creator. It is what makes us unique -- and valuable. So, if you are a Christian, the Imago Deo is enough. But it is not enough for everyone. Those who rely on the Bible alone to make the case for life will be in deep trouble when they try to take that case outside the church. But take the case outside the church we must. To do so requires that we not rely so much on the Bible. Some folks cringe when I (or others) say that but I don't see any way of getting around it. Those who promote abortion on demand don't care what the Bible says. So our work is cut out for us. But that's OK -- we have science, philosophy and politics on our side too. http://www.truehorizon.org/index.cfm?i=9265&mid=25&blogid=3169&comments=9111 9111 Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:24:52 +0000