Changing Hearts and Minds on Abortion
A Course in Three Sessions with Steve Wagner, Executive Director, Justice For All
DATE
April 13, 2025 (Sunday)
Time
Choose Track A or Track B.
Both Tracks include three sessions. Attend just one session, any two sessions, or all three sessions.
Track A begins at 9:00 AM, and Track B begins at 1:00 PM. Both Tracks end in a joint session which concludes at 8:30 PM.
See Track Schedules Below.
Content
Session 1: Essential Skills for Every Conversation
Session 2: Reasons and Evidence that Persuade Christians and Atheists
Session 3: Responding to “Get Your Laws Off My Body” and Other Tough Pro-Choice Statements
See more details about content below!
LOCATION
On campus at Franciscan. Location TBA.
About the Presenter
Steve (center) discusses the value of the unborn child with students at the University of Arizona in February 2024.
Steve Wagner has served as the Executive Director of Justice For All (JFA) since 2014. JFA trains pro-life advocates to change hearts and minds on abortion. In full-time pro-life work for more than 20 years, Steve has regularly engaged abortion-choice advocates in dialogue, logging thousands of conversations and presentations on 70 university campuses. Steve’s passion is training pro-life advocates to be both relationally sensitive and intellectually sophisticated in every conversation. Steve is the author of Common Ground Without Compromise: 25 Questions to Create Dialogue on Abortion, and he has also contributed articles to other books. (See www.jfaweb.org/common-ground to download his book for free.). A native Californian, Steve now resides with his wife, Rebeccah, and their five children in the Washington, D.C. area. If he had any spare time, Steve would enjoy writing songs and thinking of ways to surprise people.
Content
Session 1: Essential Skills for Every Conversation
In Session 1, you will engage in interactive exercises helping you to…
Learn three skills that will help you talk to anyone about anything.
Learn a framework for any abortion conversation, but that is especially important in discussions of rape and incest.
Learn to turn pro-choice statements about circumstances and suffering (“the woman is too poor to have a child” “the world is overpopulated” “a woman who has too many children already shouldn’t have to continue the pregnancy”) into productive conversations that clarify the central question with the morality and legality of abortion: “What is the unborn?”
Session 2: Reasons and Evidence that Persuade Christians and Atheists
In Session 2, you will engage in interactive exercises helping you to…
Give evidence from biology and philosophical arguments to show the unborn is a human being who is the same as you and me in all of the relevant ways.
Learn to make a case in just ten seconds that the unborn is biologically human.
Demonstrate that the unborn is a living human organism and respond to common pro-choice statements that dehumanize the unborn, including “it’s just a mass a tissue.”
Use the “Equal Rights Mystery” to make the case for the equal rights of unborn children.
Respond to common pro-choice statements claiming that “the unborn might be human but it is not a person.”
Learn to organize the case you’re making using a simple pro-life argument.
Session 3: Responding to “Get Your Laws Off My Body” and Other Tough Pro-Choice Statements
In Session 3, you will engage in interactive exercises helping you to…
Give a relationally sensitive but also intellectually sophisticated response to bodily rights arguments, including “it’s my body so it’s my choice” and the Violinist.
Make a case for why it’s reasonable to make laws against abortion and respond to “you can’t legislate your religious views.”
Respond to “I just don’t care” and “it doesn’t really affect me” (both within the Church and with atheists and skeptics) using stories and pictures.
Schedule:
Two Tracks Available! Register for Track A or Track B and Attend One or Two or All Three Sessions in the Track!
Track A:
Attend just one, any two, or all three sessions.
9:00 AM - Session 1
11:00 AM - Lunch
Attend Mass between 11:30 AM and 2:00 PM
4:00 PM - Session 2
6:00 PM - Dinner
6:30 PM - Session 3
8:30 PM - End of Event
Track B:
Attend just one, any two, or all three sessions.
Attend Mass between 8:00 AM and 12:00 PM
12:30 PM - Lunch
1:00 PM - Session 1 (Ends at 3:00 PM)
4:00 PM - Session 2
6:00 PM - Dinner
6:30 PM - Session 3
8:30 PM - End of Event
COST: Free!
Register Today
To Register, choose Track A or Track B. Come to just one, any two, or all three sessions in your track. (You do not need to register for each session. Just register for Track A or Track B.)