(Image by 192635 from Pixabay)

We have returned, rather later than originally planned, to our Pro-life 101 series. In the first instalment, Ben covered Equal Rights Arguments, which show that consistency demands that people who believe in equal rights for all born humans should extend this to unborn humans. The post covered an argument: a logical chain of reasoning that led from a set of premises to a conclusion. In this second post, we cover a common pro-life technique rather than an argument: Trot out a Toddler. 

The basics: what do we mean by Trot out a Toddler?

In a nutshell, the “Trot out a Toddler” technique is where a pro-life person uses an analogy about a toddler to show why abortion is wrong. If a pro-choice person argues that abortion is justifiable in a particular situation, the pro-life person asks whether it would be acceptable to kill a toddler in the same situation. For the most part (there are always exceptions!), people generally agree that it would not be OK to kill the toddler, and the idea is that they are therefore forced to conclude that one of two things is true: either (a) there is a relevant difference between the unborn baby and the toddler, or (b) it would not be OK to kill an unborn baby in the same situation.

A response to a Trot out a Toddler argument that is done well (more on that below) generally takes one of two forms:

  1. The person you are talking to presents you with a different scenario or reason for why someone might want to have an abortion.
  2. The person you are talking to either directly or indirectly questions whether the unborn baby and the toddler are a fair comparison.

If the person goes for 1), then you can try trotting out a toddler in the new situation they have presented you with. It’s OK to keep doing this until you eventually arrive at 2), or until the conversation gets fraught, at which point it’s nearly always a good idea to move on. If, on the other hand, you do arrive at 2), then you are in the territory of considering whether there is a relevant difference between unborn babies and toddlers which makes toddlers’ lives worth protecting but unborn babies’ lives not worth protecting. If this is where you wind up, it’s a good time to try out the Equal Rights Argument or the Conjoined Twins argument, depending on whether the relevant difference raised by the person you’re talking to is based on whether the unborn baby has the same rights as people who are born, or whether the relevant difference is that a woman is currently providing bodily support to the unborn baby but not the toddler.

Unfortunately, the magical option 3): the person admits abortion is wrong, is quite rare! We tend to need to do a bit more work to get all the way to the person deciding that you’re right about abortion in general. But that’s OK – people generally change their minds about stuff like abortion slowly over time. Don’t be discouraged if you keep going through many cycles of 1) and 2) (perhaps jumping between them) before you ever arrive at 3).

In order to make Trot out a Toddler work, however, it’s important to know when and, crucially, how to use it effectively. Trotting out a Toddler requires practice and skill – but if you are sensitive and follow a few basic steps, it can be a really useful tool!

What does and doesn’t TOAT achieve?

TOAT shows that the reason the person has presented for abortion is not a sufficient reason to justify killing a born human being, and so it reveals a potential inconsistency. This means the person has to admit they want to treat the situations differently, even though they can’t identify a relevant difference between the situations, or they have to show why there’s a relevant difference between born and unborn babies. TOAT therefore allows us to steer the conversation away from specific circumstances that people tend to consider when thinking about abortion, and back to the two main questions that need to be considered: bodily rights and personhood.

This can be a really good thing! Trying to convince someone of the pro-life position in very specific, often incredibly difficult, situations, is almost impossible if the person you are talking to is not convinced of the basic pro-life case. However, if they are convinced of the basic pro-life case, then all the “hard cases” become easier – or at least possible – to deal with.

TOAT, on the other hand, does not end the abortion debate – not even close. The most you can hope to achieve from TOAT is to show someone that certain types of reasons for justifying abortion don’t hold water, but there are other – and often better – reasons for justifying abortion that TOAT does not seriously undermine or refute. We need other tools. If the only tool in your toolbox is TOAT, you will not convince anyone of the pro-life position.

When should I use this technique?

TOAT can be used when someone has raised an argument or a reason for abortion that does not rest on either (1) the idea that the unborn baby does not or should not have equal rights to born people, or (2) the idea that a woman’s right to not be pregnant overrides the foetus’s right to life. Instead, your interlocutor might appeal to specific real or hypothetical examples that make the conclusion that abortion should be accessible especially compelling. Some examples include:

“What if a woman is living in a domestic violence situation and her partner will physically attack her if he finds out she is pregnant?”

“What if a woman is a drug addict and the baby will be damaged by her drug use in utero, or will have no chance at a decent life once they’re born?”

“What if a woman already has two children with severe disabilities and will be simply unable to care for them and their younger sibling?”

In each case above, the reasoning does not explicitly mention personhood or bodily rights arguments, and so trotting out a toddler might be a good idea.

Importantly though, trotting out a toddler is not a good response to someone who already thinks that their pro-choice arguments do rely on claims about on personhood (something like “The baby has no conscious awareness; you can’t compare the baby to a full grown woman with all her life and dreams ahead of her”) or bodily rights (something like “You can’t force someone to be pregnant against her will”). If you’re not absolutely sure that, for your interlocutor, the reason being given for abortion is nothing to do personhood or bodily rights, don’t TOAT – instead, ask clarificatory questions until you know for sure what type of objection is being raised.

How should I use this technique?

It’s important to lay a lot of groundwork before you TOAT. The groundwork requires three main steps: affirming the person in their concern for all the relevant people in the case they have raised, acknowledging that you have a very strange and unusual perspective that you are about to share, and anticipating a potential strawman.

Pro-life people, in general, do not do a good job of acknowledging the role the woman plays in the abortion debate. This does not mean pro-life people do not do a good job of caring for women in crisis pregnancies in general – quite the opposite. However, when it comes to debates and discussions about abortion, women’s perspectives and interests are almost always raised by the pro-choice side. It is incredibly important, therefore, that the first thing we do is acknowledge the genuine difficulties, great and small, that pregnancy and parenting can pose. In fact, very often the person you’re talking to is not just raising a hypothetical – they are raising a case that a friend or family member, or perhaps they themselves, has personally experienced. Take as much time as you need to honestly assure the person of how objectively upsetting the picture they are painting is. 

The second piece of groundwork involves using similar wording to this:

“I’m going to respond in a very strange way. I have a very unusual belief, and I know how unusual this belief is, and I don’t expect you to share it. I’m just trying to explain where I’m coming from, but I don’t expect you to “get” it, so it’s totally fine if this seems super weird to you. My really strange belief is that unborn babies actually have equal rights to us. I know it’s crazy, but I do really believe we have equal rights now to unborn babies. So if you think about it, this means that I don’t just think abortion is bad – I think it’s as bad as, for example, killing a toddler would be. I know it’s weird! But if you can bear with me, I’ll show you how it’s relevant”.

The third step is to anticipate a potential strawman. People often have a particular response to analogies that work against them: they over-apply them. In other words, they assume that because you’re comparing two scenarios in one respect, you’re comparing them in every respect. This is a natural consequence of our psychology, specifically motivated reasoning: we don’t like the argument, so we find a reason, any reason, to disagree with it – even a bad reason. In this case, they often strawman the pro-life person – they claim that we are saying there are no differences at all between procuring an abortion and committing infanticide.

Failing to anticipate this strawman has landed me in really bad situations. I’ve had people get truly disgusted with me, telling me I am calling women who get abortions murderers, and they have claimed I am saying a woman who made an incredibly painful decision to have an abortion in order to ensure she can provide for her existing toddler would actually quite happily murder that same toddler. Needless to say, those conversations went no further. Don’t make the same mistakes I did! You can anticipate the strawman and diffuse it in advance:

“I want to just let you know first what I am not saying: I am not saying there are no differences at all between abortion and killing a toddler. I actually think there are lots of differences! What’s more, I think you and I probably agree on most if not all of those differences. And I’m certainly not saying that I think anyone who disagrees with me on abortion, or anyone who has had or would have an abortion, agrees with me on my very strange position that abortion is as bad as killing a toddler. In fact, I’m quite sure they all disagree”.

After laying the groundwork, you can finally – Trot out a Toddler!

“Because of my strange belief that the unborn baby has the same right to life as a toddler, I tend to ask myself something like this: let’s imagine the woman has a toddler from a previous relationship who lives with the woman’s mother. Let’s say the woman’s mother can no longer care for the toddler, but if the woman’s partner finds out she has a toddler, he is likely to violently attack her. In that situation, I don’t think it would be OK to kill the toddler in order to protect the woman from violence. Based on this, can you see how, if I’m right about unborn babies being equal to us, the really dreadful situation you outlined would not be a reason to justify abortion?”.

Those are the steps! Make sure you follow them all, and remember the goal – you are not looking to convince the person that abortion is always wrong (though if that happens, great!). You’re looking to move the conversation to relevant territory – what are the other potential reasons for abortion, and do they hold water?

One final word

This post has focused on using TOAT in discussions with a pro-choice person. However, I think pro-life people often make certain mistakes when thinking about abortion, and Trotting out a Toddler can help us identify and fix those mistakes. We’ll cover that in an upcoming post!

Muireann