(Image by tookapic from Pixabay)

In a previous post, I covered the technique of Trot out a Toddler, which is a tool pro-life people can use when making the basic case against abortion with pro-choice friends and family. In this post, I’d like to talk about two ways in which pro-lifers themselves can help themselves think more clearly about abortion, and understand the pro-choice viewpoint a little better.

There are two broad contexts where I think pro-life people could try trotting out a toddler for themselves. The first is when they think and talk about the reasons why someone might be pro-choice (which I’m going to define as, supportive of abortion in at least some circumstances). The second context is when pro-lifers try to make particular arguments to persuade pro-choice people of why they should adopt a pro-life stance.

Reasons for being pro-choice

Why do you think some people are pro-choice? Why do you think some people might support legal abortion in at least some circumstances? There are lots of reasons, but here are some candidate answers that I’ve heard proposed in various pro-life contexts:

  • They don’t have a proper understanding of the reality of abortion, including late-term abortions, abortion methods, sex- and disability-selective abortion
  • They don’t realise how widespread abortion really is
  • They don’t realise their own GP is providing abortions
  • They don’t believe a foetus has equal rights to people who are born
  • They have a non-religious worldview
  • They have no respect for human life
  • They think a woman’s right to choose whether to be pregnant overrides a foetus’s right to life
  • They have an underlying assumption that it’s our right to completely control our fertility
  • They don’t think society wants to truly support women and their children and instead wants to maximise labour force participation and minimise things like maternity leave and child benefit

I think some of these reasons are core reasons why someone might support abortion, whereas other reasons listed above don’t actually explain why someone might support abortion. A handy rule of thumb (it’s not foolproof, but it helps) to sort the various reasons into the two categories is to Trot out a Toddler: ask yourself, would this be a good reason to support killing a toddler?

Why is this helpful? Well, because almost all people, including the vast majority of pro-choice people, think it’s wrong to kill toddlers. This is why Trot out a Toddler works! So, if one of the reasons listed above justifies abortion but also justifies killing toddlers, then that’s a good indication that it’s probably not the actual, underlying reason the person is supportive of abortion.

For example, consider “They have no respect for human life”. Someone who had no respect for human life would very likely be supportive of abortion – but they would also very likely be supportive of killing toddlers. If a particular person is in favour of abortion but not infanticide, they probably do have a respect for human life – but just don’t extend that to the unborn. So, we’re still looking for the actual, underlying reason behind their support of abortion but not infanticide. Similarly, if someone is non-religious and supports abortion but not infanticide, it’s hard to say that the reason they are pro-choice is because they are not religious – because clearly not being religious doesn’t open the door to infanticide for them. So again, there is a different, underlying reason that lies behind their support for abortion.

Sometimes, of course, a pro-choice person will cite one of the reasons above to explain why they support legal abortion – such as “Well I’m not religious” or “I think abortion is really rare, and we need it in those rare cases”. Often, however, the pro-choice person you’re talking to doesn’t actually realise themselves that they’re being inconsistent here. You can Trot out a Toddler to show them the inconsistency, but then you have to get to the real, underlying reason for their support for abortion, if you want to make progress.

What pro-life arguments should I make?

Pro-life people tend to employ a wide range of arguments to persuade someone that abortion is wrong. This can range from informing people about abortion regret, to sharing positive stories about a baby who received a diagnosis of a Life Limiting Condition who defied all expectations and is now alive and bringing joy to their families, to sharing statistics about the extent and reality of abortion. However, it’s worth Trotting out a Toddler here, by asking whether these are the arguments we would employ when talking to someone who was in favour of allowing parents to opt to euthanise their children under the age of two. 

If you really, truly met such a person, do you think you’d try arguments that focus on how lots of people might subsequently regret euthanising their toddlers? Do you think you’d point out how Hypothetical Country legalised toddler euthanasia, and now the rates are really high? Do you think you’d argue that what we really need is a societal shift to recognising that motherhood is just awesome? Or do you think you’d try to make the basic case that it’s wrong to kill toddlers, even if no one ever regretted it, even if it was guaranteed to happen under humane conditions and be super rare, and even if motherhood just always sucked?

Pro-choice people don’t always think carefully through the reasons they are pro-choice, and instead present a smorgasbord of different arguments. The pro-life movement has tended to react to this to date, by presenting our own smorgasbord of responses. Here at the Minimise Project, we have found it is far more effective to start, first and foremost, with the Basic Case: abortion is wrong because there is no consistent way to grant equal rights to all humans that doesn’t include the unborn, and because the foetus’s right to life does override the right to bodily autonomy in the particular case of pregnancy. Anything else is ultimately a distraction. If the pro-life movement can’t see that, we can’t help pro-choice people to see that. Trotting out a Toddler is a great way to clarify this, for both sides.

Muireann