The Year’s Top Stories

2013 has been an eventful year. Perhaps you’ve seen National Right to Life Committee’s round-up of the top pro-life victories of the year, and Operation Rescue’s review of sleazy abortionists brought down this year. It’s been a great year for Secular Pro-Life, too!

Without further ado, here are the top ten most-read stories from the SPL blog this year.

10. A Future of Value: A summary of philosopher Don Marquis’ famous secular argument against abortion.

9. Abortion: A Woman’s Right to Control Her Body?: Paradoxically, while the right to bodily autonomy is often used to justify killing unborn children, no one believes that bodily autonomy gives women the freedom to cause non-fatal injuries to their unborn children. How can that be?

8. Check your born privilege: This checklist of privileges enjoyed by people outside of the womb would rank even higher if not for the fact that it was just published last week!

7. What about the choice to have a large family?: Abortion is not the only “reproductive choice” that comes with stigma.

6. Politically Incorrect Medicine: A supposed “women’s health” conference threw women under the bus by censoring a presentation on the risks of induced abortion.

5. A Critique of Judith Jarvis Thompson’s A Defense of Abortion, Part I: The first in a five-part series on the famous “violinist argument.” (See also parts II, III, IV, and V.)

4. “Back-Alley” Argument Disrespects Women’s Intelligence: No woman is ever “forced” to harm herself. To say otherwise insinuates that women are stupid or lack meaningful agency.

3. Dear Jezebel: Real Friends Don’t Count Chromosomes: We lay the smack-down on a disgusting “feminist” piece against saving the lives of babies with Down Syndrome.

2. Don’t Impose Your Science on Me!: When life begins is not a grand religious question shrouded in mystery, and protecting human beings from violence is everyone’s responsibility.

1. Every Child is a Wanted Child: Our most-read post by far! This story about an abandoned young child with disabilities, and the family that stepped up to rescue her, quickly went viral. Read it and have hope for humanity.

You might think that the most-read stories would tend to be from earlier in the year, since there’s been more time for people to read them. You’d be wrong. Most of our top ten are from the latter half of the year. That’s a testament to the incredible growth of our membership and our readership in recent months! Thank you for helping Secular Pro-Life reach more people by sharing these stories with your friends.

Also noteworthy: six of the top ten stories are by guest bloggers. Secular Pro-Life belongs to you, and I’m incredibly privileged to be your administrator.

Finally, a few honorable mentions. Secular Pro-Life kicked off several stories this year that subsequently spread like wildfire through the pro-life media. First, we brought attention to the fact that Scott Richard Swirling, a man charged with soliciting a child for sex, was a long-time abortion advocate with ties to organizations opposing parental consent. As another example, we highlighted a horrific hospital accident that killed a pregnant woman—an accident that easily could have been prevented if the unborn child were treated as an individual patient rather than as an appendage of the mother. (That story came on a tip from a reader in the medical profession.) Another honorable mention goes to abortion survivor Melissa Ohden, who shot down denialists of live-birth abortion with her fantastic piece “I am not a myth.”

Thank you for your support in 2013! Stay tuned: tomorrow, we’ll feature the top most-shared Secular Pro-Life graphics of the year.