Why Focusing On the Unborn Child is So Crucial

Scott Klusendorf, president of Life Training Institute, developed a tool to help us keep the conversation focused on what the unborn is. That tool is called Trot Out the Toddler. Essentially, if someone is talking about circumstances, such as poverty, while these circumstances are important to discuss, they are not the issues that affect the morality or the immorality of abortion. As an example, if a woman is in poverty, we would not allow her to kill her toddler to ease the poverty of herself or her other kids, so if the unborn is a human being like the toddler is, then we can’t allow a pregnant woman to kill her unborn child for that reason.

I have been perusing some pro-choice blogs this morning, and a lot of them are themed “why I am pro-choice”. I haven’t seen every single one, but they all tend to have one thing in common: they focus on circumstances. Not a one made a rigorous case for why abortion is morally permissible. Instead, they focus on women’s circumstances and insist that women “need” abortions, irrespective of what the unborn is. They don’t even seem bothered by the possibility that this could be an actual human child in the womb that they are callously destroying because they feel, for whatever reason, that the time is not right to “bring a child into the world.”

It may make the abortion decision easier, and they can avoid making themselves look like monsters by convincing themselves it’s not a child (all while making pro-life people look like monsters because we’re trying to “take essential healthcare decisions away from women”), but it’s an illegitimate move because this question must be answered before we can talk about whether or not abortion is a moral decision or whether or not it should be legal.

There are several arguments for the pro-life position, but the basic one is simple: It is immoral and should be illegal to intentionally kill an innocent human being. Abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being. Therefore, abortion is immoral and should be illegal. If your argument for abortion doesn’t address this simple pro-life syllogism, then you are assuming your position is correct. You are not arguing for it.