Words of the Unwise

We’re in a new atmosphere, post Dobbs, which reversed Roe and Casey. That didn’t, of course, abolish abortion; it returned the question to the individual states, where it could be argued and decided locally. And that means there are more arguments than ever. They’re getting wilder. But there’s a possibility that fallacious arguments will be fallen for. In my small effort to thwart that possibility, I’m going to declare that some of these relatively new pro-abortion arguments are wrong.

 

The Ultrasound Conspiracy Theory

Recently there was video of Stacey Abrams claiming that—well, here are her own words:

There is no such thing as a heartbeat at six weeks. It is a manufactured sound designed to convince people that men have the right to take control of a woman’s body away from her.

Stacey Abrams, center, claiming ultrasound technicians invented the
sound of a baby's heartbeat in order to control women's bodies.
Screenshot from here.

The young people around her on this discussion panel were nodding in agreement, as though, “Yes, this makes sense,” which of course it doesn’t. In a discussion on the ACLJ broadcast, Jordan Sekulow summed up her assertion:

One, you have to believe the science— That there’s no heartbeat. Then you have to believe that the companies have manufactured a sound, and the sound is to convince people that then men can have a role in deciding, to take control of a woman’s body. So that we’ve manufactured the idea that this is a human life. Because, even to Stacey Abrams, she doesn’t really want to talk about killing an actual child with a heartbeat.

His brother Logan Sekulow added:

That somehow there’s a conspiracy theory within the creators of the ultrasound machines. Those people are inherently pro-life—which I don’t necessarily think is the case one way or the other; they’re just making the ultrasound machines—then detect a human heartbeat earlier and create a fake sound for you to hear to create this emotional response, which anyone who’s been through that moment knows, it is a very emotional moment to hear your child’s first heartbeat.

As the Sekulows are doing, let’s apply some logic here. Whatever the ultrasound machine is showing—visually, without sound—is a growing fetus. The addition of sound verifies the image. In every case, the visual and aural evidence confirms a pregnancy. What is a pregnancy? The offspring growing inside the womb of the female. Whatever species; let’s limit this to mammals, but ultrasound technology works pretty similarly on them all. What the ultrasound would show, in the case of pregnancy, is the growing fetus of the species of the pregnant female. If the pregnant female is human, the ultrasound shows the growing human fetus.

An ultrasound can be used to see other organs, other inside parts. Technicians know how to identify what they’re looking at. And as technology improves, it becomes easier and clearer for the technician to show anyone looking at a screen what the ultrasound is showing. When it shows a human fetus, you can identify head, spine, arms, feet—and heart, beating. It’s not some other organ. It’s not some non-living tissue. It’s certainly not some other species. It is a growing human baby, which, because of technology, we can see and hear within the womb.

If the technician cannot find a heartbeat at around 6-8 weeks, that isn’t definitive proof there’s no life there, but it’s concern that there isn’t. If pregnancy had been affirmed before the ultrasound, lack of heartbeat and movement could mean the baby has died. But if there is movement and heartbeat—a rhythmic beating in the location where you would expect the heart to be in a growing human—then it means the growth of that living baby is likely to continue. There is never a case of an ultrasound showing a human fetus's heartbeat that grows into something that isn't a human baby.

This technology, used for many purposes, is about getting a view inside. The idea that it was invented for the purpose of empowering men is ludicrous.

I’m interested in the suggestion that Abrams is making this argument as a way to deny that what is growing inside the pregnant woman is a human baby. Because to Abrams, still, killing an actual human baby with a heartbeat seems wrong, so she must proclaim the lie that it isn’t one.

 

The “God Is Pro-Choice” Fallacy

On the September 7 episode of Church and State, on EpochTV, Pastor Lucas Miles deals with the question, “Is God Pro-Choice?” As he says:

Since Roe has been overturned, I’ve seen a new line of thinking evolve that involves reasoning in support of abortion. And it’s a surprising one. Instead of science, logic, or even political pressure, the left is now using religion to attempt to win the abortion debate. And not just any religion. They’re turning to Christianity of all things, and the Bible itself, in an attempt to show that God is pro-choice.

He introduces the question first with an assertion by a supposed pro-choice Christian pastor, Rev. Traci Blackmon, a Universalist who has served as a Planned Parenthood board member. He paraphrases her viewpoint as laid out in an article in online indoctrination magazine Mic.com:

Because God is a god of free will, that He would therefore also be a god who is in favor of being pro-choice on the issue of abortion. Because God gave us free will and allows us to sin, and allows us to, you know, make mistakes, that He also would be pro-choice on this issue. She says that it’s smoke and mirrors that this is about the life of a child. She says, “Jesus didn’t say anything about abortion. But Jesus had a lot to say about love.”

Again, here’s the left basically telling us that they have a better understanding of love than do traditionally minded Christians, or biblically minded Christians. She says that this is the compassionate thing, that we have to have “a compassionate ear,” “a loving spirit,” and that as a pastor it’s her responsibility to accompany people in places that they choose to go. “If they’ve chosen abortion and want me to go with them, I go. If they choose to have a child, I stand with them in that.”

And so, we see, kind of, throughout this whole argument that the pro-choice perspective is the perspective of love; it’s the perspective of, you know, good theology. It’s the perspective of godliness and compassion.

Real Christians know better. But Miles finds this argument showing up elsewhere, such as a video on TikTok. While he deals rationally with this TikTok-er’s arguments, I will mention that she is smug, condescending, and sneering. There is nothing loving or compassionate about her. Here’s what she says:

TikTok-er claims God is pro-choice,
discussed by Lucas Miles
screenshot from here

TikTok: idissent  June 30, 2022: I am going to make this as clear and concise as possible. God is pro-choice. Pro-choice means supporting the right to choose. It does not mean that you support the choices that are made. It does mean that you support the right to choose. Ergo, God is pro-choice. If you can prove to me that God does not want us to have a choice, then I will concede the point. And, yes, you may use your Bibles. Show me where in the Bible God has taken away our choice.

Let me give you an example, because I want to be very clear on this. We do not have a choice between breathing air or breathing water. God did not want us to have a choice in that matter, and therefore He did not give us a choice. You have to breathe air. There is no breathing water, breathing air only. He was not pro-choice in that matter. If you can prove that God is not pro-choice when it comes to me and my body [italics mine], then I will concede the point. Again, you can use your Bibles.

Do not come back with, “He wants you to choose this”; “He wants you to choose that”; because it doesn’t matter what He wants you to choose. The fact is He wants you to choose. Prove to me He doesn’t, and I will concede the argument. And do not come back with, “OK, but if you make that choice, there are going to be consequences.” I know. Everybody is aware that, no matter what you do, your choices have consequences. We’re adults here. We get that. That will not back up your argument. My argument is God is pro-choice. Your argument has to be that He is not pro-choice. And as a Christian you know that you are supposed to be following the example of God. So, but if you cannot prove to me that God is not pro-choice, that means He is pro-choice, which means you have to be pro-choice too. That’s the rule.

This is relatively easy to fend off, and Lucas Miles dispatches her fallacies pretty swiftly. Here’s his main refutation:

It doesn’t mean that every choice should automatically be legal. In this video, just replace the word abortion with murder. Should we therefore assume that God is pro-choice on the issue of murder? Because He doesn’t, you know, ever stand in the way of someone’s free will, so therefore we should legalize murder? Because God wouldn’t stop murder, because He gives somebody free will and choice? So therefore we shouldn’t stop somebody from committing murder?

I’ll just follow up on that. It is a sleight-of-hand to use the term pro-choice, which has been co-opted by the pro-abortionists. If she had used the term pro-abortion, she couldn’t have said God is pro-abortion, yet that is what pro-choice means in the abortion context.

Once she equates the pro-abortion term pro-choice with the pre-co-opted meaning of the term, which is in favor of free will, she thinks she has us pinned. But she doesn’t. She’s making an additional leap from favoring free will to requiring the law to allow all acts of free will. We don’t. The murder example Lucas Miles uses is the most obvious: we do not allow murder. Just because it is possible for you to do something does not mean the law should allow it. Generally we have laws to protect people from doing harm to one another, and the law steps in well before murder, with laws against assault and theft. As the saying goes, "Your right to swing your arm leaves off where my right not to have my nose struck begins."*

How Many Lives?

That gets us to the question of how many lives are involved in an abortion. There’s the mother’s life. And indeed she is a mother from the moment she is pregnant—because there is another human being, with its own DNA, its own blood type, its own heart, and its own full potential, separate from her but within her. She has autonomy over her own body; she does not have autonomy over the life of the child, whom she invited into her womb by her actions (except in the very small percentage of pregnancies resulting from rape).

ultrasound of baby at 15 weeks gestation.
image found on this blog

So is it “smoke and mirrors” that this is about the life of a child? What is their evidence that the child within is not a human child? On our side, we have the ultrasound technology, blood tests, and eventually the visible movements that ripple across the mother’s belly, or that get felt with a kick in the rib cage from within. We’re supposed to believe that’s just a clump of cells up until the moment that clump of cells passes through the birth canal, and then suddenly turns into a living baby? 

All the evidence is on our side. All they have left is sophistry.

The reason these people are so against pro-life pregnancy resource centers is that they show evidence of the child. They offer an ultrasound, along with options such as adoption, or open adoption, or financial and medical aid to keep the child—choices. The other side offers only death of the child, hidden behind a pretense of compassion.

What is underneath the desire to kill babies is the desire to have sex without commitment: outside the protections—for both mother and child—of marriage. They want to pretend that killing a human being makes the consequences of sex without commitment disappear.

A few honest but ugly souls admit that it’s a baby, but they don’t care. But for most, they want to hide the fact of the baby’s humanness to make it easier for them to “choose” the killing of another human being for the sake of their own self-indulgence. They do child sacrifice in the long and ugly pagan tradition.

The other side tries to control the language. We can fight that by using absolute truth more accurately. It is a service to the otherwise confused when we can be fully clear and truthful—as God is.

_______________________

* first attributed to John B. Finch, who was the Chairman of the Prohibition National Committee during the 1880s.