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Secular Pro-Life Resources

It’s common for pro-life and pro-choice advocates alike to assume the pro-life position is inherently religious.

For pro-life advocates, we encourage them to consider beginning conversations with secular arguments in order to not put unnecessary stumbling blocks in someone’s way. We also ask pro-life advocates to consider that even if they hold religious reasons for their position, they can also hold non-religious, publicly-accessible reasons for their position that can persuade the masses in a pluralistic society such as ours in 21st century US. See, for example, Rebecca Hotovy’s “#Mindblown” conversation with Brian. Brian began with the belief that he could not support a law against abortion because his reason for his pro-life view was religious. He believed it was wrong to put his religious view into law. Rebecca Hotovy deftly showed him that he also held his position for a reason that didn’t rely on explicitly religious support: it’s wrong and should be illegal to harm someone else.

For pro-choice advocates, we encourage them to consider the fact that there are many pro-life advocates who are agnostics or atheists. The gutsy new presidential candidate Terrisa Bukovinac is one high-profile example. The apologists at Secular Pro-Life are examples as well. Many of the folks at Libertarians for Life are also non-religious.

For pro-life and pro-choice advocates alike, we recommend the following resources from these atheistic and agnostic pro-life advocates. While we don’t agree with the atheism or agnosticism of the authors of these resources, they nonetheless contain many good arguments and truth claims, and they can help religious pro-life advocates frame their arguments in ways that are more persuasive to the average non-religious person. This is right in line with our emphasis on finding common ground when possible.

The Pain that Lies Beneath

In one sense, conversations about abortion are really simple. Abortion kills an innocent human being, and that shouldn’t be legal.

Psychologically and emotionally though, this issue is incredibly complicated. People’s stories and their experiences influence how they view and understand simple ideas. When deep pain and trauma are influencing their views, those simple ideas can become complicated.

I talked to “Emily” at Fullerton College in January. My colleague Jon Wagner shared with me afterward that she had signed our free speech board and had written something about abortion being an issue of women’s bodily rights. He said she was visibly agitated and shaking.

From the free speech board, she went to our poll table where I asked her if she wanted to share her thoughts. She quickly told me that our display was disturbing to her. She didn’t like it and said the pictures of embryology were “harmful.” She told me our outreach on campus was “part of the problem” and didn’t do justice to what is going on with this issue. While I did not agree that our display was “harmful,” the things she shared throughout our conversation helped me begin to understand why she felt the way she did.

When I started asking her questions, she told me that she had a friend who was raped and became pregnant. Her friend decided to keep the baby, but she committed suicide shortly after giving birth. She was only thirteen. (Her baby is now five years old.)

She also shared with me that she has a friend who was addicted to meth when he was born due to the choices of the mother. She told me that this friend doesn’t like her life and that she doesn’t want to live anymore. In addition to this, Emily told me that she has a condition where if she got pregnant, she could either keep taking her medication and her baby would be severely deformed or she could stop taking her medicine, the baby would be fine, but she would die after giving birth.

At some point in our conversation, she also shared with me that she was a Christian and thought that abortion was murder in the third trimester. Earlier in pregnancy though, she said that we cannot have laws against abortion, because there are too many circumstances that the law can’t take into account.

Pain and tragedy deeply affect people. The suffering in their pasts can warp their perspectives on issues that are morally clear. Those clear issues become unclear to them when they look at them through the lens of the shattered lives of themselves or their friends. Knowing this can help us understand why good and clear arguments appear to make no headway with some people. I know it can be frustrating when we lay out a clear case for something we believe to be true and are only met with statements that seem to show the other person is “not getting it.”

In a conversation at Fullerton in January 2023.

I think taking a step back and really engaging with the pain people experience can help us be empathetic and compassionate while we speak up for the rights of unborn human beings in this country.

Towards the end of our conversation, Emily told me that while she loves the five-year-old child her friend chose to have after she was raped, she wishes she could have her friend back instead. In Emily’s mind, if her friend had chosen abortion, she would still be here. The abortion would have “saved” her life. As odd as that may sound to us, I think that kind of statement points us to something important.

Sometimes it can feel like we just need the right argument or the right response to refute wrong beliefs. I think knowing good arguments is incredibly important because they do impact people’s views and their behavior. But sometimes, arguments aren’t going to do what we want them to do with someone who is still grieving the loss of her friend. It’s a matter of triage. When someone is bleeding out, has a sprained ankle, a broken arm, and some minor cuts, we have to assess which injury is most urgent and focus on it first. All of them are important, but we can’t focus on all of them at once.

Given the length of my conversation with Emily, I did end up making the case for why abortion is not a good solution to the tragic circumstances she talked about. No matter how great our pain is, it doesn’t give us the right to kill another human being. In these kinds of conversations, I don’t always present arguments. It’s not because I don’t care about making good arguments for why unborn children should be protected legally. It’s because sometimes given the time I have, I decide that making an argument is not the best thing to do at that moment. I trust that God will bring someone else in her life later when she is more willing and ready to hear arguments that challenge her beliefs.

I think it’s a judgment call we all need to make at times. Do I make an argument and address her incorrect beliefs now? Do I just listen and empathize with her? Do I do both? I believe we can trust that God will guide us as we make these decisions in our conversations.

Even in the midst of darkness, great evil, and tragedy, life is worth living and protecting because we serve Jesus, God in human flesh, who rose out of his own tomb victorious over death and evil. Even though this is true, there are so many people who do not feel like life is worth living, and that chasm is something we have the privilege of helping close. In this valley of tears, may we be willing to enter into uncomfortable and difficult conversations with others so that we can bridge this gap together.

You’re Invited! Oct. 17 Workshop at Christopher Newport University

Event

“Creating Dialogue on Abortion to Reach Hearts and Minds - An Interactive Workshop led by Steve Wagner”

Click here to download printable flier. // Click here to register.

Date

October 17, 2023

Place

Washington Conference Room, David Student Union Building, Christopher Newport Univ., Newport News, VA

Time

Part I: 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM (Check in at 5:15 PM; Includes Pizza Dinner)

Part II: 7:00 PM - 8:30 PM (Check in at 6:50 PM; Includes Dessert)

Note: Each part includes different content. You may attend one or the other, or attend both for the best experience. More notes on Content below.

Cost

There is no charge for this event, but you may make a donation to defray event costs.

Content

Part I will cover the following topics (some interactively, some briefly):

  • Three Essential Skills: You can start a conversation and keep it productive using just three skills: listening to understand, asking questions with an open heart, and finding common ground when possible.

  • Are Images Helpful? Learn to use images appropriately and sensitively in order to help people face the reality of abortion. Learn to use JFA’s “Invitation to Dialogue” Brochure (digital version and paper version) to guide a conversation.

  • One Central Question: Focus on the question, “What is the unborn?” and defend the idea that the unborn is a living human organism biologically.

Part II will cover the following topics (some interactively, some briefly):

  • The Equal Rights Mystery: Many people are unsure if the unborn are persons or have equal rights to the rest of us. We train you in this session to navigate that conversation beginning with the common ground of the Equal Rights Mystery.

  • The Question of Rape: Learn to meet both the relational and intellectual challenges inherent in the questions: “Is abortion right or wrong in the case of rape? Should it be legal in the case of rape?”

  • Do Bodily Rights Mean Abortion Is Okay? When someone says a woman should have a right to do what she wants with her body, we always begin with a response that surprises many pro-life advocates. Then we also offer a sophisticated intellectual response.

  • Q&A including Threats to the Pregnant Mother's Life and “Personally Opposed but It Should Stay Legal”

Be Relational...then Be Intellectual

In my May letter, I shared the story of my conversation with Stacey at Palomar College. It began with her saying abortion should be legal through all nine months of pregnancy because of bodily rights, and it ended with her saying, “I’ve never thought about whether the fetus is a person before. I’ll have to think about that.” This conversation illustrates a simple approach: Be relational, then be intellectual. What began as a principle we applied to the question of rape is now a principle we apply to every question related to pregnancy and abortion. You can see another great model of the basics of this approach in last month’s Impact Report by Kristina Massa entitled, “Answering the Hard Cases.”

I want to share a bit of the history of how this concept became so central to our teaching at JFA. A good starting point is a scene seven minutes into the documentary Unborn in the USA (2007), which was filmed about 19 years ago at Focus on the Family Institute (photo below). After watching that scene, a writer from Nerve Magazine (an edgy online magazine that is not recommended reading) said,

The guy is making perfect sense…He's an articulate, intelligent, calm presence. Suddenly, a chill creeps up your spine: I hope there are people on the pro-choice side who are equally perceptive and balanced.

I was the featured speaker in that scene, and here’s essentially what I was teaching: When talking about the topic of rape, we need to show sympathy for the rape victim and show emotional sensitivity to the heaviness of the topic of rape and the horror of that evil act. We need to do these things first, before making intellectual arguments. I regularly tell audiences that part of my job is to help them recover their common sense as a guide for how to respond to difficult questions like the question of abortion in the case of rape. We should be the strongest advocates for women whose basic rights have been trampled. In fact, the same concern for human rights that animates us to stand up for unborn children also animates us to stand up for all women everywhere and for their very real bodily right to be free from rape.

Focus on the Family Institute (Sept. 2004): During interactive role-play activities, Steve sometimes stood on a chair to make a point.

Being relational first and then giving intellectually credible answers to hard questions is practically wise: it works. It’s the best way to help people be open to our perspective. There’s a more fundamental reason to use this approach, though: it’s the right thing to do. Because all human beings have intrinsic value, we should stand up for them and show concern for them.

At first, we emphasized “being relational and then being intellectual” mostly on the topic of rape. Some of our trainers, notably Tammy Cook, have argued for years, though, that this approach is valuable on a much broader spectrum of questions related to pregnancy and abortion. In 2018 I put some of this approach into words in a series called “It’s Her Body.” I made the case that the relational concerns that are on the minds of people discussing the question of rape are just as present when a woman’s body is mentioned. I pointed out that many pro-choice advocates perceive or feel our advocacy against abortion to be a violation of a woman's body. If they hear our advocacy this way, the fear and horror they feel for other violations of a woman’s body will obstruct hearing our case for the unborn’s value.

To meet this challenge, I claimed that for any bodily rights argument, we should also use the approach of “be relational and then be intellectual.” First, point out that women have real bodily rights, generally speaking, and those rights have been trampled throughout history up to the present day in horrific acts including rape, domestic violence, and slavery. Then clarify how far those bodily rights extend and how it changes things when we consider that since those bodily rights are fundamental, they must have begun when the human being began, at fertilization. If the unborn also has bodily rights, their bodily rights should be respected as well. Be relational, then be intellectual.

The more we as a community have reflected on these things, we’ve realized that this is a good practice to follow with every pro-choice argument. Show sensitivity to the emotional heaviness caused by the suffering in these circumstances, then continue in that relational sensitivity as you offer intellectual clarifications.

Here’s an example: If someone says, “some women are too poor,” I begin with relational and emotional sensitivity: “That’s a good point. Some women are very poor, and I can’t fully understand what it’s like to be poor and pregnant. I’m glad you’ve brought this up, and I don’t have a simple answer.” When it seems helpful, I can then clarify that because poverty isn’t a good justification for killing a toddler whose mom is poor, this justification for abortion only works if something else is also true, that the unborn is not a human being. This clarifies that we all need to focus on this central question. We agree poverty is incredibly difficult, and we agree we need to care for poor women. What constitutes good “care” will depend on our answer to the question, “How many people are in the room?” If there’s only one person present when a woman is pregnant, and abortion kills no one, then abortion should be legal. But if abortion kills a real human being, it would be odd to offer abortion as a solution to poverty. Our approach is the same for most other justifications for abortion, including “the child will suffer,” “a woman’s life will be overturned by caring for a child,” and “the world is overpopulated such that people can’t get enough to eat.” We show concern for the suffering involved (“be relational”) and then clarify the truth that these situations don’t justify killing human beings, including the unborn (be intellectual).

Oct. 2024 Update: Note that this letter expands on the second of a series of three letters Steve wrote from February 2023 until March 2024 - letters focused on conversations skills we teach volunteers that help them get started having conversations and encourage them to stay active. Here are links to the series, including this letter, so you can see how it fits in the flow of thought:

  1. “Be a Playmaker” (Feb. 2023): on the importance of setting the right expectations for results and seeing your advocacy as one piece of a bigger puzzle

  2. “Thinking about the Unborn Child for the First Time” (May 2023): on being relational then intellectual

  3. “Only Two Questions?” (March 2024): on the two clarification questions that can help you make an impact in any conversation