A young woman sat with her arms crossed
and lips pursed while shooting me a look that must have been intended
to vaporize me on the spot. I was talking to her and some of her
fellow students about abortion and the pro-life position, and it
clearly made her unhappy. She finally raised her hand and the whole
room seemed to gird their loins for what was about to come. I asked
her, “Did you have a question or comment?”
She rather forcefully said, “I am
offended that you would come here and say these things.”
My response was as follows:
Ok, let's talk about that for minute. I
have presented an argument in support of the position that abortion
is objectively wrong because it unjustly takes the life of an
innocent human being. The lines of evidences that I appealed to were
scientific (the identity of the unborn as a human life from
fertilization) and philosophical (human beings have value by virtue
of what they are not what they can do or how I feel about them).
I also understand that hearing people
argue for views you disagree with can be unpleasant. It bothers you
to hear someone say you are wrong, just like it bothers anyone
including me. I can get really irritated over people disagreeing with
me about trivial things. It is natural to have emotional responses to
discussions about all sorts of things, but especially about something
as objectively important as abortion.
Anytime someone disagrees with us and
offers arguments for their position there are only a few options open
to us in response. (1) We can quietly listen, consider their views,
weigh the counter arguments, and decide they were wrong. (2) We can
listen, consider, weigh, then decide we are wrong and adjust our
beliefs appropriately. (3) We can listen, consider, weigh, and then
decide that we simply lack sufficient information to come down on one
side or the other. (4) We can offer counter arguments on the spot
addressing the specific lines of evidence offered.
All of those are perfectly appropriate.
There are certainly counter arguments to everything that I have said
today offered by genuinely brilliant people at an academic and
sophisticated level. I've read them and learned from them, though I
obviously found them less than persuasive in the end. I encourage you
to find and read them and would be happy to point you in the right
direction.
But when you say that you are offended,
all that you are doing is telling us how you are emotionally
responding to what I am saying. I already conceded that we all
struggle with our emotions in this kind of conversation, both in my
original talk and just a moment ago, so you aren't adding anything to
the discussion that addresses the substance of what was argued.
Finally, and I'm not saying you are
doing this, but when some people say they are offended what they are
really saying is that I'm upsetting them so I ought to stop talking
about abortion. I reject that all together. No one has a right not to
be offended. Sometimes there are questions of such importance that we
are compelled to engage in public discussion knowing that it will be
upsetting to do so. Imagine how you would feel if someone suggested that
you shouldn't be allowed to argue for positions with which they disagree simply because they are incapable of controlling their emotions.
