"Don't waste time talking to anti-choice people." That is the straightforward instruction provided by NARAL Pro-Choice America in its "Campus Kit for Pro-Choice Organizers." The director of the Pro-Choice Action Network answered a question about why his group does not engage in conversation with pro-life advocates with this statement: "Along with most other pro-choice groups, we do not engage in debates with the anti-choice." In other words, they are scared to death of a genuine argument.

This point is made abundantly clear in a recent article by Jon A. Shields of the Center on Religion and Democracy at the University of Virginia. Shields' article, "Bioethical Politics," is published in the March/April 2006 issue of Society, one of the nation's most influential social science journals.

"If the conventional wisdom is correct, the religious right is once again corrupting American democracy by pushing religious dogma over and against science and reason," Shields asserts. Nevertheless, he goes on to prove that the "conventional wisdom" is anything but wise.

"These critics . . . have got it almost nearly backwards," he argues. "Ironically, it is actually the secular left that has undermined a national discussion on vital bioethical questions--such as when a human organism deserves state protection--by depicting them as fundamentally religious and therefore beyond legitimate public debate." Another of Shields' assertions is likely to catch considerable attention: "Even more surprising, the religious right increasingly embraces sophisticated philosophical arguments in its effort to convince Americans from across the political spectrum that embryonic stem cell research and abortion are not religious issues." Or, that they are not merely religious issues.

Shields is a keen observer of the contemporary scene, both in terms of the cultural debate and of the moral significance of the arguments offered by both sides in the abortion controversy. As pro-lifers attempt to assert arguments on behalf of the sanctity of human life in the public square, abortion rights advocates stalwartly refuse to debate or discuss the issue. One technique used by the pro-abortion movement is to label all opposition to abortion or stem cell research as "religious," and therefore beyond legitimate debate or state interest.

"Proponents of abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research correctly recognize that if the moral status of embryos and fetuses is solely a religious question, it is properly quarantined to the private realm of faith. It cannot be a matter of public political debate. Any effort to restrict abortion or stem cell research, therefore, is an unjustified assertion of sectarian metaphysics," he explains. Thus, the pro-abortion movement must, in order to maintain their public argument, assert that any concern about the moral status of an embryo or an unborn human child is simply "a religious question."

Shields demonstrates how this technique plays out in the realm of politics and national debate. The 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John Kerry argued that his own personal pro-life view would have no impact on public policy because it was merely an "article of faith." Of course, describing Kerry's personal position as "pro-life" stretches the term more than is useful, but the candidate did argue that he was personally opposed to abortion (at least in some vague sense) but believed that it should be fully legal as a matter of public policy. Why? Because his "personal" beliefs about abortion were merely matters of "faith."