Good, Secular Organizations: SecularProLife.org

As I had mentioned after this year's March for Life, I'm uncomfortable with how strong the religious message of the pro-life movement is - even though I agree with it 100%. Soon after the March, I contacted SecularProLife.org to see how they felt about the issue. Was the religious language alienating? Did it make them reluctant to participate? Less willing to identify as pro-life?

I mentioned the 4 points on which I am uncomfortable with the religious assertions in the pro-life movement:

1) In this country, they cannot and should not be the basis of policy or law.
2) I'd imagine that non-religious pro-lifers might feel alienated by them and/or not be comfortable attending events like March for Life without feeling like they're endorsing something they don't believe.
3) They lack authority in the eyes of a lot of the people we're trying to talk to.
4) You often see someone make an entirely secular argument against abortion only to receive a response along the lines of "Keep your rosaries off my ovaries!" Pro-choicers discount all pro-life arguments as religious and therefore irrelevant based on the fact that the most prevalent pro-life arguments are religious.

Here, with her permission, I'm quoting in its entirety the eloquent response I got from Kelsey Hazzard, President of SecularProLife.org.

SecularProLife.org did participate in the March for Life. We stuck out. Quite a few people asked to take pictures of our banner; I caught others trying to take a shot without being noticed. We also had a table at the Students for Life of America conference, where we talked to campus leaders about encouraging religious diversity in their organizations.

I'm actually a Christian too, but like you, I am uncomfortable with the religious overtones at the march. The Catholic language and symbolism used (I'm Protestant) has a more isolating impact than many pro-lifers realize. The atheists and agnostics who make up the backbone of SecularProLife.org would say that yes, the pro-life movement is alienating the non-religious. I've gotten many emails from non-theists thanking me for creating a pro-life group where they can belong. Without SecularProLife.org, many of them would either be lone wolf pro-life bloggers, or doing no activism at all. A group effort has a much stronger impact than the individual efforts of its members; unfortunately, the non-religious pro-life movement has historically not been well organized.

I agree wholeheartedly with point #4. One of our principal missions, aside from making the pro-life movement more inclusive, is to fight the religious stereotyping by abortion advocacy groups. The truth is that most pro-lifers, even the most religiously devout, rely on secular justifications for their position. If I became an atheist tomorrow, I would still oppose abortion because I am well-acquainted with the facts of prenatal development, the principles of human rights, and the effect of abortion on women.

On the question of whether it's better, based purely on the numbers, to focus on the religious: absolutely not! Since you were at the march, you undoubtedly noticed the strong presence of young people. Millenials have been called the "pro-life generation" because this age group opposes abortion more than any other. Another interesting fact about this generation is that a quarter of people between the ages of 18 and 29 practice no religion. The older, more religious pro-life leadership is going to be in for a shock. We're here to help the pro-life movement adapt to these new dynamics.

Feel free to quote me in your blog. You can talk to people in our facebook group, too. Everyone is friendly.

Have a great day,

Kelsey Hazzard

President of SecularProLife.org

I encourage you to visit SecularProLife.org at their website or their Facebook page and support their efforts!

Good, Secular Arguments: Why I Don't "Trust Women"

Much like pro-lifers, pro-choicers spent January 22 blogging. The theme of this year's "Blog for Choice Day" was "Trust Women," which was the mantra of the late Dr. Tiller.

I do, of course, trust women, as much as I trust men (and probably more than I trust boys and girls!). But the issue is irrelevant to the abortion debate. As a rule, we trust people to make the best choices for their lives and their futures. Within certain parameters.

We trust people to make the decision about the best way to support their families. But we don't make theft legal! Because theft is wrong, it's bad for society, it has victims who need to be protected. Yes, we are marginally restricting the amount of decisions we trust providers to make. We don't trust them to decide whether or not to rob a bank, because to allow people to make that choice would hurt others.

We trust people to make decisions about who they want to have sex with. But we don't make rape legal! Rape is wrong, it's bad for society, it has victims who need to be protected. Outlawing rape marginally restricts the rights of men to choose who they have sex with, but it results in a better-protected right of women to make that decision. We don't trust men to make the choice whether or not to rape someone, because to allow people to choose to do so would leave victims in its wake.

Once you've established that the potential cost of misestimating the beginning of life is too great to assume that it's anywhere but at conception, it's clear that abortion hurts people. Yes, to outlaw abortion would restrict the "rights" of pregnant women. But we've established that we can marginally restrict what we trust certain people to do in order to protect the rights of potential victims. We can't trust women to decide whether or not to have an abortion, because to allow someone to choose to do so would hurt the primary victim of an abortion, the child.

We don't subjugate the rights of potential victims to a misplaced desire to trust someone in power to make the right decision for himself, without regard to whether that decision is right for others.

We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident: Good, Secular Pro-Life Arguments

I've hesitated to post this one, because it speaks of rights as God-given, but if it was good enough for the Founding Fathers, it's good enough for me.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

I'm not even sure I have to comment. The Declaration of Independence really says it all. Self-evident, unalienable right, Life. In fact, it goes on to talk about how men have the right to alter or abolish a government that is destructive of these rights, but I'm not going into that. Our country - our secular, democratic country - was founded on the ideal that Life is an unalienable right. How much simpler can it be? Laws contrary to our founding ideals should not exist in this country.

As an aside, the Declaration of Independence does not have the force of law. Of the Charters of Freedom - The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights - only the latter two have the force of law. I'm not much of a Constitutional scholar, but it makes sense to me that these founding ideals weren't explicitly protected in the Constitution because they were considered so self-evident. Either that, or they naively assumed that the right of all innocent people to Life would be protected by clauses prohibiting depriving people of Life without due process of law and ensuring that all people are entitled to equal protection under the law. They thought they had all their bases covered, didn't they?

Shouting "Fire!" in a Crowded Theater: Good, Secular Pro-Life Arguments

No one's arguing that a woman doesn't have the right to choose what to do with her own body. Of course she does. It's just that this right - like all the other rights enjoyed by all American citizens - is bounded by the rights of others. If what I, as a woman, choose to with my body is to wave my arms wildly in the air, I am free to do so. Right up to the point where my flailing arms hit the person standing next to me - at which point I am no longer exercising my rights but infringing on his.

In this country, no one's rights extend so far as to allow them to cause injury to another person.

You may be able to legally own a gun, but you are only legally able to use it against another human being in self-defense. Your right to bear arms does not extend so far as to allow you to inflict harm on an innocent individual.

If your religion participated in ritual human sacrifice, would you be allowed to practice this? No. Your right to freedom of religion does not extend so far as to allow you to inflict harm on another.

Shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater creates a dangerous situation for others. Your right to free speech does not extend so far as to allow you to even potentially put others in danger.

Printing lies in a newspaper is libel, and it's against the law. Your right to freedom of the press does not extend so far as to allow you to injure even the reputation of another.

Likewise, your right to choose what to do with your own body does not extend so far as to allow you to injure another person. It does not extend so far as to allow you to choose to use your hand to pick up a knife and stab somebody, nor does it extend so far as to allow you to choose to wave your arms wildly until they hit someone, intentionally or not, nor should it extend so far as to allow you to choose to destroy an innocent life, born or unborn.

"If you don't know whether a body's dead, you don't bury it": Good, Secular Pro-Life Arguments

"If you don't know whether a body is alive or dead, you would never bury it."

So said Ronald Reagan in a 1983 article for The Human Life Review. The abortion debate often revolves around the question of when life begins. Conception? Implantation? Quickening? First trimester? Second? Third? Birth? Partial-birth? Is a "clump of cells" alive? An embryo? Is an embryo a clump of cells? What about a fetus? Is a fetus more alive at 7 months than at 2? Is a newborn 10 minutes after birth more alive than a fetus 10 minutes before birth?

All of these questions are essentially irrelevant.

I would argue that this is because life begins at conception, plain and simple, but I can't prove that to you. Neither, however, can you prove to me that it does not.

One of us is very wrong. If I'm wrong, my mistake would deprive women of a reproductive health service with no moral implications, having potentially damaging effects on women's rights and health. If you're wrong, your mistake would destroy an innocent life.

Would you rather imprison or execute a wrongfully-convicted "criminal"? If you might be wrong, if you can't know for sure, you opt for imprisonment, right? If you have to take a chance, either with someone's freedom or with someone's life, you err on the side of not accidentally killing the innocent.

I will not argue that carrying a pregnancy to term reduces the freedom of a woman, but if it did, that is certainly the lesser of two evils when compared to killing an innocent child.

If you were driving down the street, and saw a life-like baby doll lying in the middle of the road, would you run it over? You don't think it's a real baby, but you can't be 100% sure. Do you run it over? You do not. You swerve, you get out to make sure. You double check. You don't risk the life of what's even possibly a child.

Killing a baby is a terrible thing, and I don't think anyone disputes that. Killing a baby is such a terrible thing that it should be avoided at all costs. So terrible that even the potential, even the slightest possibility of it should be avoided at all costs. The possibility of killing a baby based on a misconception is such a terrible thing that the abortion debate simply must operate under the assumption, from all sides, that life begins at conception. The consequences are much more dire if the pro-choicers are mistaken about the beginning of life than if the pro-lifers are.

My Rosaries are Nowhere Near Your Ovaries: Good, Secular Pro-Life Arguments

I've begun to realize that most people who are pro-choice view any religious language - from the most concrete "Abortion is wrong because the Church says so" to the vaguest, most unassailable, "Life is sacred" - as justification of their view that anyone who is pro-life is trying to force his religion on the rest of the world. This, of course, is not true. While the idea of people joining the Church pleases me greatly - and I was never so honored as when a friend asked me to be his RCIA sponsor - my pro-life views have almost nothing to do with that. They just make sense. They just feel right. I understand the perspective of pro-choice people, which tends to be well-intentioned, but I really can't fathom how most of them come to their views, because, to me, the right to life is. . . self-evident.

While secular arguments for the pro-life position resonate with me precisely because life is sacred, they work just as well, I think, if that premise is left unspoken.

Imagine: "You shouldn't kill babies because all life is sacred." Works for me.

But try this: "You shouldn't kill babies." That works for me, too, and I think it works for everyone.

I'd imagine most people inherently believe life is sacred, but many will not explicitly acknowledge that, and trying to make them do so turns them off entirely. They know there's something special there, so they won't fight it, as long as you don't make them admit that "sacredness" is real, or that life's inherent worth is God-given. Just leave it at "life has inherent worth," and you'll get a whole lot further with some segments of the population.

With that in mind, consider this the introduction to a series of posts on the completely secular pro-life arguments that I find most compelling. I'll do my best to leave God out entirely.