A few months ago, the Human Life Review invited SPL to submit an essay responding to this prompt (emphasis added): In the decades between Roe v. Wade and Dobbs, most prolifers believed that Americans were more or less opposed to legalized abortion on demand because a) this was the case in 1973; b) it was […]
Post-publication edit: SPL’s Herb Geraghty and Monica Snyder streamed an in-depth conversation about the complexities of defining “abortion.” Get the replay link here: Replay: “Abortion Across the Aisle” In March 2025 the journal Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics published “Defining ‘Abortion’: a call for clarity“. In this article philosopher Nicholas Colgrove suggests six questions to help […]
Today’s guest post is written by Nick Colgrove, who has a PhD in philosophy and has published about ectogenesis (artificial wombs) and personhood. SPL has summarized his work previously. Imagine that one day, we develop artificial-gestation technologies (AGTs) that allows human beings to develop from conception until nine months in age. Rather than being gestated […]
Can You Step Into the Same River Twice? The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus was famous for saying that it is not possible to step twice into the same river or to come into contact twice with a mortal being in the same state. His belief reflects the fact that things are always changing. The river […]
Photo Credit: Austin Distel on Unsplash This debate was a three-ring circus in terms of complexity. The viewer needs to keep his or her eye on at least three discussions at once. The discussions that I will number 2 and 3 here tend to fade out and get revived periodically over the course of the […]
Photo Credit Viviana Rishe on Unsplash Psychological approaches to personal identity are normally used to argue that since an embryo doesn’t have a psychology (doesn’t have a mind), it doesn’t have a continuous identity with more highly-developed, “smarter”, stages of the organism that will follow the embryo stage; and that therefore if you kill an […]
Secular Pro-Life is run by atheists. We bring it up not because we care if people agree with our (lack of) religious views, but because we want people to understand you don’t have to be religious to be pro-life. In fact, we like to emphasize that we do not care what your religious beliefs are; […]
We asked our followers on social media: “Question from a commenter specifically for atheists & agnostics (whether pro-life or pro-choice, doesn’t matter). IF you believe humans warrant more consideration/protection/resources/defense than other species, why?” Mind that IF; we know that the secular, pro-life, and animal rights movements sometimes overlap! But the attitude toward human exceptionalism among […]
Once a month or so, the Secular Pro-Life blog features a short interview with a pro-life atheist. (See the full series of interviews here.) Although Secular Pro-Life is not exclusively for atheists, historically atheists have played a key role in the organization. As atheists become more prominent in the pro-life movement generally, we’re excited for the opportunity […]
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter established a schema to define which people may be classified as wizards. We can use an analogous schema to deduce which humans qualify as people. Harry Potter is a wizard by his essential kind. That means, because he inherited the nature of his two wizard parents, Harry belongs to the kind […]
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