Book Review: We Choose Life: Authentic Stories (ed. Dave Sterrett) [Clinton Wilcox]

Special thanks to Dave Sterrett and Hendrickson Publishers for the free copy of the book to review.

In a person's lifetime, there are only so many books that he/she can read. That's why it's important to be as honest as possible in a book review, so someone can honestly gauge which book is a good use of their time. Unfortunately, while there were several really good essays in this compilation, I can't really give it my full endorsement, as there were too many bad essays to weigh against the good ones.

You would probably be better served by picking up David Reardon's book Aborted Women: Silent No More for compelling stories and Scott Klusendorf's book The Case for Life for the defense of the pro-life position.

I'll start with the pros of the collection before moving on to the cons.

Pros:

As I mentioned, there are several good essays in this collection. Scott Klusendorf's essay on making the pro-life case is excellent, of course. And I was surprised to see an essay written by Mike Adams in this collection. I am a regular reader of Mike's Townhall column, and it was great to read about how he became a pro-life Christian. I also thought Jewels Green's essay "How I Finally Chose Life" was one that stood out from the others. I enjoyed the philosophical reflections in Bernard and Amber Mauser's essay regarding usage of contraception and fertility treatments. It filled my little Thomist heart with joy. And the late Kortney Blythe Gordon's father, Larry Blythe, shared an essay chronicling the life and ministry of this young pro-life advocate who was taken from us too soon.

Another pro for the collection is that there is a wide range of perspectives from many different people in the movement, some well-known and some not so well-known. You'll get to learn what runs through the head of a staunch pro-choice advocate who eventually becomes pro-life, what it's like to have a child with spina bifida, etc.

Another pro is that the book is easy to read. You can probably finish it in just a couple of days, depending on how much time you have.

Now on to the cons:

I really felt that the editing could have been tightened up. There were spelling and grammatical errors, as well as sentence fragments. There were also too many instances of sentences going on and on, and several things being repeated over and over again unnecessarily. Several of the essays were just not well-written at all, and some only needed to be half as long as they were. Plus, many of the claims made in some of the essays were not sourced.

Additionally, the term "preborn" was overbearing throughout the collection, which seems more like a rhetorical move. It was even in Scott's essay on how to make the case for life, when Scott used the term "unborn" in the original (which you can find on the LTI website, www.prolifetraining.com) without indicating that the editor made those changes (usually indicated by brackets: [preborn]). I'm guessing what happened is that they used the "search and replace" feature to replace all instances of "unborn" with "preborn". What tipped me off to this is the fact that in endnote 2 on page 170, they changed the title of Greg Koukl's book, Precious Unborn Human Persons, to Precious Preborn Human Persons (emphasis mine).

Another minor complaint is that I had no idea who several of these people were. The collection would have been helped by including a short paragraph or two about who each of the contributors were.

One major issue with many of these essays is that they were less about abortion and more about trying to evangelize. Now, I'm a Christian. There's nothing wrong with evangelization, but in the proper contexts. For example, if I want to evangelize a friend, I'd give them a copy of Cold-Case Christianity by J. Warner Wallace, Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, or The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. I wouldn't give them Time and Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time by William Lane Craig or An Essay on Free Will by Peter van Inwagen. That's not the purpose of those books. The purpose of this book should focus on abortion, not on evangelization.

Now, some of the essays used Biblical quotations and ideas without it seeming out of place. That's fine, because in the life of Christians I should expect Biblical influence. But in several of the essays, it felt like they weren't trying to tell their story so much as trying to make converts out of whoever would read the book. There were many Biblical quotations out of place, and "Christianese" scattered throughout these essays. Frank Gray's essay is representative of the essays that I'm talking about. His essay is fully of Bible verses thrown in and Christianese used. I really didn't get the sense that he struggled because he didn't really expound on what he said he was going through in the essay because he felt evangelizing was more important in the moment. It really detracted from his story and didn't give me the sense he was really struggling or suffering during these times.

Again, I don't want to give off the wrong idea. I'm a Christian, and I believe evangelizing is the Church's mission. But there's a time and place for everything, and a book on abortion experiences isn't the place for writing a Gospel tract. As I said, there were several essays that used Scripture references to good effect. But there were several, like the aforementioned, that were overbearing with it and it detracted from their story.

Some of the essays in this compilation are definitely worth reading. Unfortunately, there were more that I felt were poorly written than good, so that unbalances this collection. So I can't wholeheartedly endorse this book, although it's only $7 on Amazon, so that might be a price you can justify for the number of good essays.

Urbana Conference Shame [SK]

Imagine if the following were said at an evangelical conference in 1962...

“We could end inner city poverty tomorrow. But we’re too busy trying to ban lynchings. We’re too busy trying to defund segregationist schools. We are too busy trying to abolish Jim Crow laws. We are too busy withholding mercy from poor kids so that we might display a big spectacle of how much we want mercy to be shown the Negro. Where is your mercy? Where? What is your goal in only doing activism that is comfortable?”

Thankfully, the above quote is fiction. The one below is not...

"We could wipe out the adoption crisis tomorrow. We could wipe it out this week. But we’re too busy arguing to have abortion banned. We’re too busy arguing to defund Planned Parenthood. We are too busy withholding mercy from the living so that we might display a big spectacle of how much we want mercy to be shown to the unborn. Where is your mercy? Where? What is your goal in only doing activism that is comfortable?"

(Black Lives Matter activist Michelle Higgins at Urbana 2015-16)

Pro-Life and Pro-Capital Punishment [Aaron Brake]

There is an alleged inconsistency that is sometimes raised between being pro-life and also pro-capital punishment. Here’s the question: “Is it inconsistent to be pro-life when it comes to the issue of abortion and yet also support capital punishment in certain situations?”

Here are some important points to remember (see Francis Beckwith and his book Defending Life, pages 126-127, on this topic):

First, the alleged inconsistency of pro-life apologists who support capital punishment is often introduced as a red herring to distract from the main issue that must be addressed. Even IF pro-lifers were inconsistent on this point, that’s all it would prove: an inconsistency. And what follows from that? Not much. It has nothing to do with the one question that must be answered in the abortion debate: “What is the unborn?” As Beckwith notes, “inconsistent people can draw good conclusions” (Defending Life, 126).

Second, remember the pro-life syllogism:

P1: It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being.

P2: Elective abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being.

C:  Therefore, elective abortion is wrong.

Applying Lincoln's Logic to the Abortion Debate [Aaron Brake]

On December 6, 1865, the 13^th amendment to the U.S. constitution was ratified and with it came the formal abolishment of slavery in this country. It states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude…shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” This amendment was especially significant considering that just eight years prior in 1857 the Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford that blacks were property and non-persons.

Even earlier than this, on July 1, 1854, Lincoln wrote this small fragment to address some of the popular arguments but forward by pro-slavery choice advocates who argued that whites should have the right to enslave blacks based on color, intellect, or interest:

“You say A is white and B is black.  It is color, then: the lighter having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be a slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color exactly?—You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and therefore, have the right to enslave them?  Take care again. By this rule, you are to be a slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own. But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.”

Read that again. The importance of Lincoln’s logic should not be overlooked. Lincoln realized that if you try to establish human rights or personhood by appealing to a set of arbitrary degreed properties which carry no moral weight or significance, properties such as color and intellect which none of us share equally, then you end up undermining human rights for everyone.

Pro-Life Apologetics Training from London [SK]

You can watch my recent presentations at the Clarkson Academy, London October 2-3. Links to the lecture notes included below.

Videos:

Session #1

Session #2

Session #3

Session #4


Lecture Notes:

The abridged (summary) notes for session #1 are below. The exhaustive notes for each session are here:

Session #1

Session #2

Session #3

Session #4


Summary Notes for Session #1:


I. Review of the Basic Pro-Life Argument:

A. Definition and syllogism:

1. Abortion defined (Kaczor): The intentional killing of a human fetus. This definition begs no questions.  Moreover, there is no such thing as a “woman’s perspective” on abortion that trumps all rational inquiries into the subject. Indeed, feminists, let alone women in general, have no single perspective on the issue. Gender is irrelevant. It is arguments that must be advanced and defended.

2. Pro-life syllogism:

(a) P1: It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being.
(b) P2: Abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being.
(c) P3: Therefore, abortion is morally wrong.

B. Scientific support for the pro-life argument:

1. The science of embryology establishes that from the earliest stages of development, the unborn are distinct, living, and whole human beings. True, they have yet to grow and mature, but they are whole human beings nonetheless. Leading embryology textbooks affirm this.  For example, in “The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology” (Saunders/Elsevier, 2008), Keith L. Moore & T.V.N. Persaud write: “A zygote is the beginning of a new human being. Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm...unites with a female gamete or oocyte...to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” T.W. Sadler’s “Langman’s Embryology” (Saunders, 1993) states: “The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.” Embryologists Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Müller write, “Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed” (Human Embryology & Teratology. 2nd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996).

2. That elective abortion kills a living human fetus is conceded by many who perform and defend the practice:

(a) Dr. Warren Hern, author of Abortion Practice—to a Planned Parenthood conference: “We have reached a point in this particular technology [D&E abortion] where there is no possibility of denying an act of destruction. It is before one’s eyes. The sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current.”

(b) Editorial in California Medicine, 9/70—“Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra-or extra-uterine until death. The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life would be ludicrous if they were not often put forth under socially impeccable auspices. It is suggested that this schizophrenic sort of subterfuge is necessary because while a new ethic is being accepted the old one has not yet been rejected.”

(c) Ronald Dworkin, in Life’s Dominion—Abortion deliberately kills a developing embryo and is a choice for death.

(d) Faye Wattleton, former President of Planned Parenthood—“I think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don't know that abortion is killing. So any pretense that abortion is not killing is a signal of our ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say yes, it kills a fetus.”

(e) Naomi Wolf, a prominent feminist author and abortion supporter, in The New Republic—“Clinging to a rhetoric about abortion in which there is no life and no death, we entangle our beliefs in a series of self-delusions, fibs and evasions. And we risk becoming precisely what our critics charge us with being: callous, selfish and casually destructive men and women who share a cheapened view of human life...we need to contextualize the fight to defend abortion rights within a moral framework that admits that the death of a fetus is a real death.”

(f) Camille Paglia: “Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue.”


II. Philosophical argument for the pro-Life view—Humans are equal by nature not function

A. Key philosophical question: Given the humanity of the unborn, does each and every human being have an equal right to life or do only some have it in virtue of some characteristic which may come and go within the course of their lifetimes?

B. Pro-life advocates contend there is no morally significant difference between the embryo you once were and the adult you are today that would justify killing you at that earlier stage of development. Differences of size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency are not good reasons for saying you had no right to life then but you do now. Stephen Schwarz suggests the acronym SLED as a helpful reminder of these non-essential differences:

Size: You were smaller as an embryo, but since when does your body size determine value?

Level of Development: True, you were less developed as an embryo, but six-month olds are less developed than teenagers physically and mentally, but we don’t think we can kill them.

Environment: Where you are has no bearing on what you are. How does a journey of eight inches down the birth canal change the essential nature of the unborn from a being we can kill to one we can’t?

Degree of Dependency: Sure, you depended on your mother for survival, but since when does dependence on another human mean we can kill you? (Consider conjoined twins, for example.)

C. In short, humans are equal by nature not function. Although they differ immensely in their respective degrees of development, they are nonetheless equal because they share a common human nature—and they had that human nature from the moment they began to exist. If I am wrong about that, human equality is a fiction. Think, for a moment, about your 10 closest friends. Would you agree that each of them has the same basic rights and that each should be treated equally? But if all of them should be treated equally, there must be some quality they all have equally that justifies that equal treatment. What is that characteristic? Only this: We all have the same human nature.

1-Minute Soundbite: “I am pro-life because the science of embryology establishes that from the earliest stages of development, you were a distinct, living, and whole human being. True, you were immature and had yet to visibly develop, but the kind of thing you were was not in question. And there is no essential difference between the embryo you once were and the adult you are today that justifies killing you at that earlier stage of development. Differences of size, development, environment, and dependency are not good reasons for killing you then but not now.”

Moral inconsistency: Slavery and Abortion [James Jenkins]

Slavery is back in the news but the moral logic that condemns it may not be.

Sure, if you own a Confederate flag, you better hide it. Indeed, since the June 17th shooting at Emanuel AME church in Charleston, we're told it’s evil to retain any historical rerfereant to slavery. As I write, the Atlanta chapter of the NAACP is demanding Stone Montain Park remove the ethced figures of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis. Even cars aren’t safe. The infamous 69 Dodge Charger featured in the Dukes of Hazzard television show is off limits at major retailers. Its crime? Its name was “General Lee.”

That black slaves suffered unspeakable evil is undeniable to anyone with a functioning conscience. Blacks were not only treated as property, the Supreme Court said they were property. And contrary to history revisionist, slavery was the decisive issue of the Civil War. If you doubt me, just check the founding documents of the Confederate states. Every single one lists slavery as the reason for leaving the Union. Every single one!

Given our history, it’s understandable that blacks feel cut out of the American Dream. Slavery left an ugly mark, and let’s be clear why: At the time, blacks were valued only for their utility, not their humanity. When their utility slipped, families would be ripped apart at auctions, with mothers and daughters sold to new owners with less-than pure motives. And why not? The infamous Dred Scott court decision deemed Blacks were not citizens and “had no rights which a white man was bound to respect.” Not once did pro-slavery apologists present a persuasive case why skin color was value-giving in the first place. They just assumed it was so.

Fast Forward to June 17 of this year and the carnage at Emanuel AME Church. Is it morally consistent to abhor slavery’s legacy while embracing or tolerating abortion? Sure, you can abhor the former and applaud the latter, but on what basis? In both cases, the fundamental question confronting us strikes at the very core of who we are as a people. That is, Who counts as one of us? Do we believe that each and every human being has an equal right to life or do only some have it because of some characteristic which none of us share equally? In the past, we disqualified you because of skin color. Right now, we’ll kill you if you are too small, lack development, or depend on another human being. We’ve traded one form of dehumanizing rhetoric for another.

Don’t tell me the unborn aren’t human like us. That debate ended long ago. The science of embryology tells us that, from the beginning, you were one of us. The real question is whether we’ll live consistent with what we know. As Lincoln pointed out, if having fair skin distinguishes slave from freeman, take care: By that rule, you are a slave to the first person you meet with skin fairer than your own.

By the same token, if self-awareness grounds human value rather than our common human nature, take care! By that rule, you are slave to the first person with more self-awareness than you! So, since slave and unborn fetus are both fully human, many of the same arguments that justify slavery justify abortion. The fundamental issue, Who counts as one of us? remains, sadly, in play.

Of course, many say they personally oppose slavery, but don’t want to impose their views on others. Here, again, Lincoln can help us see the error in that thinking. As he told the audience in his debate with Stephen Douglas, “When Judge Douglas says he “don’t care” whether slavery is voted up or down…he cannot thus argue logically if he sees anything wrong in it.” Suppose I said, “Don’t like slavery? Well, don’t own a slave.” You would immediately grasp that I did not understand slavery as a true moral evil, only a preference one.

In short, ones does not need to own a plantation to know slavery is wrong. And one need not be a woman to say, with equal conviction, abortion is wrong. To assert otherwise is to cheapen equality for all humans.

Warren Hern paper, "What About Us? Staff Reactions to D&E" Abortion

A pdf of the file is here.

Take away quote:

“We have reached a point in this particular technology [D&E abortion] where there is no possibility of denying an act of destruction. It is before one’s eyes. The sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current.”