Emily: You’re right. I don’t understand her feelings. How could I? How could anyone? I’m just asking if hardship justifies homicide. Can we, for instance, kill toddlers who remind us of painful events? Again my claim here is really quite modest. If the unborn are members of the human family, like toddlers, we should not kill them to make someone else feel better. It’s better to suffer evil rather than to inflict it.⁴ Personally, I wish I could give a different answer, but I can’t without trashing the principle that my right to life shouldn’t depend on how others feel about me. In the end, sometimes the right thing to do is not the easy thing to do. And what’s right depends on the question, what is the unborn? We can’t get around it.

In this revised dialogue, Emily stays focused like a laser beam on the status of the unborn. She graciously yet incisively exposes the hidden assumptions in Pam’s rhetoric, forcing each objection back to the question, what is the unborn? She doesn’t let Pam distract her with appeals to privacy, economic hardship, or rape, all of which assume that the unborn are not human beings. She sticks to just one issue.

Until you clarify what’s really at stake—namely, that we can’t answer the question, can we kill the unborn? until we answer the question, what is the unborn?—there’s no point advancing your case. Gregg Cunningham is correct. For too long the pro-life movement has been shouting conclusions rather than establishing facts.⁵ Staying focused on the status of the unborn brings moral clarity to the abortion debate. It allows you to engage friends and critics in conversation so that you do not talk past each other.

Admittedly, trotting out a toddler won’t persuade everyone there’s only one issue to resolve. Some abortion-choice advocates bite the bullet and concede the humanity of the unborn but justify elective abortion with an appeal to bodily autonomy. Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famous violinist argument is a prime example of those who argue this way. I’ll take up that particular objection later in chapter 15, but you won’t hear it often outside academic circles. Most people on the street simply assume that the unborn are not human beings.

STEP #2: MAKE A CASE FOR LIFE

Once you’ve framed the discussion around the status of the unborn, you can present a basic case for the pro-life position. We’ll explore that case in more detail in the next two chapters, but for now here’s a summary of what that case looks like.

Pro-life advocates contend that elective abortion unjustly takes the life of a defenseless human being. This simplifies the abortion controversy by focusing public attention on just one question: Is the unborn a member of the human family? If so, killing him or her to benefit others is a serious moral wrong. It treats the distinct human being, with his or her own inherent moral worth, as nothing more than a disposable instrument. Conversely, if the unborn are not human, elective abortion requires no more justification than having a tooth pulled.