Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. Today we are continuing our discussion on abortion. So far we have seen that in abortion when you are killing a fetus or an embryo, that you are killing a unique living human being. And we also discussed how humanity is not based, human value is not based on degreed properties, on these things that you can gain or lose or that are held in greater or lesser degrees. We also took a look at what most people consider to be good reasons to kill somebody, which is generally self defense or defense of someone else, defense of the innocent against somebody who is guilty, an attacker.

And we looked at bad reasons to kill people, which there were quite a few bad reasons that just about everybody recognizes as bad, yet I hear frequently as excuses for why abortion should be morally okay. The conclusion then seems inevitable that abortion is not a good thing. It's not something that is morally justifiable, at least in most circumstances. You know, there would be those rare exceptions where maybe a mother's life genuinely is in danger and you're pretty sure that the mother's going to die. There might be those rare exceptions, but that people could argue are justified in forms of self defense or double effect.

Nevertheless, we're going say that by and large abortion just doesn't make sense from a philosophical, moral, logical standpoint. Before I get into rebuttals from the left or the secular side who is going to push back against what I've argued so far and try to offer some other justifications or who are going to argue that Christians are hypocritical. I want to take a look at bad Christian arguments. I want to kind of set the stage to show you that I think a lot of Christians are blind to why abortion is wrong and a lot of the arguments that they use actually undermine the case against abortion and I think it's important that Christians know what they're talking about when they're going to hold to their position. Not only because that makes them better able to defend the position and to intelligently discuss it, but also because it's going to prevent them from being as hypocritical in their lives.

So let's take a look at bad Christian arguments. The first bad Christian argument in abortion that I see very frequently is the use of images. Now, I don't want to undermine images can certainly be good if used in tandem with good arguments if an image is not the central aspect of what you're trying to say. But on Facebook especially, a lot of times you'll see an image and the image is the central piece and it says, Look how bad abortion is. And that's just not a good thing for a number of reasons.

First of all, it invokes degreed properties that these things that are the core of what the pro abortion side is going to try to use, these degreed properties. When we use images, we're invoking degreed properties, we're saying, Look how human this thing looks that we killed. See, it's bad because it looks human and it's been killed. Now, that only works on older fetuses, so at best you're going to be able to, let's say, show that abortion from twelve weeks on is less intuitively justifiable because it looks like we're killing a human being. But that still doesn't get you this intrinsic human value which is what Christians are arguing, that just gets you this one point the fetus becomes a human when it looks like it's human.

Look how bad you should feel because it looks like you're killing a human. So I think the emotional side of things and invoking this intuition in people can be a good thing to kind of jumpstart a discussion or to, you know, after you go through the logical steps to say, Now look at what it is. Tandem with other things, it can provide an emotional spark, but as an argument it just ends up undermining the Christian case because you invoke degreed properties. And that goes into the second bad Christian argument too, which is this idea that a fetus can feel pain. You've probably seen in a movie which I really like, Unplanned, I thought it was very well done and I thought that it was compassionate towards those who are on the pro abortion side and it critiqued Christians who use bad methodology in calling people baby killers and just all that kind of stuff.

So great movie, but one of the scenes in there is you see fetus moving away from the abortive instrument that's going after it and trying to kill it. And that was very influential in getting the main character to realize that there's a problem with abortion. So just like with the images, this idea recognizing that a fetus can feel pain can be very important. It can kind of jump start the discussion where it can kind of help to bolster this intuition that's within people in the discussion. But you're going to end up having the same problem that you have with images because there's only a certain point at which a fetus can feel pain.

And so if you're going to try to make somebody think abortion is bad because a fetus can feel pain, if they end up agreeing with you, don't know at what stage, let's just say twelve weeks again, I don't know at what stage a fetus can feel pain, but know, you're going to basically just get somebody to agree that a human becomes valuable at a certain point in time because they take on some characteristic and that's again going to undermine this intrinsic value and that's also going to even worse than what the image is, this idea of pain, I mean you can lose the feeling of pain at different points in your life. Some people who are paraplegic or quadriplegic lose pain in certain limbs. If you're asleep and somebody shoots you in the head, right, you don't feel pain, you just die instantaneously, but we recognize that the feeling of pain in a situation or as a result of a particular act isn't what makes an act bad or good and we just have a lot of problems if pain is something that we're hanging our hat on. Again, can be a good jump start, it can be something to bolster a case, but it's not going to get you the intrinsic human value that we want to get.

So, third bad argument: Bible proof texting. I see this all the time with all sorts of different topics, but it's especially bad with abortion because especially conservatives and with our conservative view of the Bible as this kind of manual, we think that we have to find explicit instructions or ideas present to be able to prove something wrong or right. And if we can do that, then, you know, that's that's the trump card. Unfortunately, that causes us to lose credibility because it makes us come up with bad arguments that skew what the Bible is intended to do. So for example, the one that I hear the most is from the Psalms and it says that, I think it's David or one of the Psalmists, who says that, You knit me together in my mother's womb.

And that sounds beautiful. And we're like, See? That shows that that he was a human, a valuable human inside the mother's womb. And there are lot of things you could say to that, you know, well, he's saying he pieced them together, but maybe he's not saying that he was valuable until he all came together. There are lots of things that argue back on that.

But nevertheless, I don't think we even need to go there because if you read the verses around that, he says some really weird things like about being in the depths of the earth and all this other stuff. And you just have to recognize that that in the ancient Near East, they had some weird ideas about about people and the formation of the earth and how God did things. And it it seems really weird to take this, I was knit in my mother's womb, but then when he talks about being in the depths of the earth and all that stuff, well that's all of a sudden metaphor, but we can take this one phrase and make it a scientific statement. And that just doesn't make sense. And we see this all the time with the Psalmists especially, we'll talk about the pillars which hold up the sky and the firmament and all that stuff.

They had these weird conceptions about the way that the world was. And, you know, you see you see this also and sometimes the biblical authors will talk about, like, you knew me before I was born and all this stuff. Well, most Christians today don't adhere to the preexistence of of our souls. Like, there's not this soul pool that God draws from and then, places inside of of humans. Most people are creationists, not traditionists.

So that that's an area that we recognize, well, they were they were kind of using their knowledge or what they thought they knew back then in the way that they talked, but we can't take those things as scientific statements. Yet we try to force the text where we like it and we count it as metaphor where we don't, even though the phrases are like right next to each other. So I think the knit in my mother's womb, we can take the big idea that God in His sovereignty has known about me before I even came into existence because I don't think that there was this pre existent soul. Maybe there was, but I don't think so. So God in His sovereignty knew about me even before I am where I am today, even before I was born, even before my mother was born.

And God has a plan for me, and God's hand is in my life, and that is comforting and beautiful. But I'm not going to take the scientific statement there because it's not a scientific statement that I was valuable inside my mother's womb. We also get other weird ideas like take, I believe it's in Hebrews. The author of Hebrews talks about how Melchizedek was paid a tithe by Abraham. And because Abraham paid Melchizedek a tithe, Melchizedek is therefore better than the priesthood, the Levitical priesthood because Levi through Abraham paid a tithe to Melchizedek.

You ask, well, how did how did Levi pay Melchizedek a tithe when it was really Abraham who did it? Well, author of Hebrews says because Levi was in the loins of Melchizedek. And some people argue that what the author is saying is representing this ancient view that the sperm really was the identity, the being of the offspring. And so Levi was literally who Levi was, was in the loins of Abraham. And you can see the importance placed on sperm in other places, you know, you can see some of the unclean laws about nocturnal emissions and such.

And you can also see Onan who spilled his sperm on the ground, which there were other injustice sorts of things going on there. But sperm was pretty important to the ancient Hebrews, and part of the reason may have been because they thought that was life, right? The sperm was life and therefore Levi literally was in the loins of Abraham. Well, Christians going to take on this idea that sperm needs to be protected? If we're going to protect embryos, do we now protect sperm?

No, of course not. We would say that's a misconception of the ancient Hebrews and that's just not right. So we don't take on that scientific idea, that scientific statement, because we recognize that we don't have to take on all of the misunderstandings of the ancient world. They're writing from their context and we can use that to get these overarching big ideas, but we're not going to get them use them to make every little scientific minutiae here. And then we even see some supposed counter texts to the value of fetal life.

Exodus 21 gives an example where it sure seems like babies are valued less because of the consequence that individuals have for making a mother miscarry. And there are arguments, you know, while the mother is not really losing the baby, child doesn't die, she's just delivering early. Okay, we can have that sort of discussion. But at least on the one interpretation, it sure seems like babies are valued less than because the cost of life until the child reaches a certain age is different than, let's say, killing an adult or an older child. And then in Numbers five, we actually see that they induce abortions.

If a wife is presumed to be unfaithful, they can give her some concoction and if she was unfaithful, the child will supposedly die. And, you you ask yourself a question, you know, if a father and your wife may have cheated and you go take the paternity test and find out that you're not the father, do you then go are are we able to go and abort children? Right? A child who is not mine and my wife's if she's been unfaithful. And nobody would say that.

I mean, conservative Christians even say in rape, which I agree with. I think we should empathize and we should work hard in in situations of rape to walk alongside the mother and support the child. But to to kill a child for the sin of somebody else just seems seems anti Christian. Yet here in Numbers five, that's exactly what they're doing. The the you are basically saying, Wife, if you are unfaithful, then I'm killing the child.

So we have to really consider why we take certain things from the Bible that are very ambiguous and metaphorical, like being knit in our mother's womb, but then things like Numbers five, where we induce abortions for unfaithfulness, we don't latch onto that and say that in situations of rape or infidelity that we can abort. Alright, let's move on to the last area of Christian problem, and that is perhaps the worst area, and that is the methodology of our lives. I'm going say things here that I know are going to be contentious, so I would be happy to hash that out with anybody, but these are my convictions and I think to be conservative, pro life individual who's going to be consistent, you have to think long and hard about these things and question whether you're just trying to justify your actions or not because, and I don't say that critically because that's exactly what I have had to do and continue to have to do. The first area is the use of birth control. Now, we could talk about the use of birth control in general, just like any birth control and the biblical view of children and all that kind of stuff, but I'm not even going to go there because that's a lot more grey and contentious.

But very clearly, there are birth controls that are extremely problematic for Christians. I remember when we found out that this birth control that is marketed as, I can't even remember what it was right now, I don't know if it was just estrogen or progesterone or something, but it's marketed as this thing that prevents conception, right? Prevents the egg and the sperm from fusing. Well, the thing is Catalina and my wife found out that actually it has a backup method too, and the backup method is that if there is conception, it prevents implantation. And then we start researching birth controls and realize that just about every hormonal birth control pill that you can take as a woman is going to have as a backup method the prevention of implantation.

You have to ask yourself, okay, if ninety nine percent effective, then that means one percent of the time or sorry, if it's ninety nine percent effective, right, how many percentages, what amount of that percentage is going to be the prevention of implantation and what percent is going to be the prevention of conception. Even if it's one time out of that ninety nine percent, so you have sex a hundred times, one time you have a kid, one time it prevents implantation and the other ninety eight times it prevents conception. I mean, every hundred times you have sex, statistically, you are aborting a kid and that's assuming that the percentages are that low. That's throughout the course of your fertile life, that's going to be a number of abortions that you are responsible for because you choose a birth control that maybe isn't the primary intent to prevent implantation, but it's a known probability or I guess even an inevitability because out of the amount of times that you can have sex, surely at least one of those times that backup method is gonna come into play. That was that was shocking to us because we had only ever really known about the the primary method and we had to do a lot of soul searching and of course we tried to justify for for a while, but eventually we were just like, No, this is very blatantly a problem.

If I am a pro life Christian, if I'm a pro anti abortion Christian, I can't use these these methods. And so we actually, you know, condoms, we don't like condoms of course, they don't don't feel good to either of us, they feel less intimate. And so Catalina actually went in and got a a diaphragm and they're like, you really? That's what you want? And they had to they had to specially call somebody in to have her fitted for it because, like, nobody uses them.

Everybody just goes with the pill. And, yeah, that was that was just very telling that nobody knew how to how to fit for a diaphragm except this like one midwife because all Christians are using the pill. That's what we use. And I think most Christians are like us where they don't recognize that there is this secondary method, but and I'm sorry if you're listening to this and now you know, but that's a big problem. That is very inconsistent.

We've actually had this come up sometimes with we talked to one lady who's a nurse who's, I think, pro abortion, and she's like, Well, you know, most Christians I don't know any Christians who refuse to use pill birth control. We're like, We do. And it's a testimony, it's an opportunity to not be hypocritical. I think this also plays into the inconsistency we have in our willingness to abort an ectopic pregnancies. And I understand that that is a difficult situation, but there are a lot of mothers in difficult situations that we critique and say abortion isn't legitimate regardless of what this child's life is going to look like, whether they have Down syndrome or you're poor or whatever, you can't take it out on the kid.

Even if even if the kid's gonna have major problems and probably die within the first six months of life, you don't you can't take on the sin of killing somebody because of outcomes. And you can listen to last season, you can listen to, I forget which episode it is, but the one on ectopic pregnancies, I think 12, I'm sorry, nine, eight or nine. You can listen to that and hear more of the rationale, anti consequentialism, but from anti abortion logic, from pro life logic, just have to recognize that it's inconsistent to jump on that bandwagon. And when you have a discussion with atheists or people who are pro abortion and they bring up ectopic pregnancy, it sure does help when you say, No, I'm consistent. If we had an ectopic pregnancy, I pray we would do the right thing and not abort.

We also other bad Christian arguments from from our lifestyle. Right? Being pro life before birth, not after birth, and I just, like, I probably got ordained for this podcast, but I literally had a a conversation with a neighbor here and he was talking about how one of the Democrats talked about how she was gonna eat babies. And of course, I looked that up and and it's not true. It's just ridiculous.

But, you know, we had a a long conversation about how how terrible abortion is and, like, how these people are gonna be judged and all that stuff. He's saying all that stuff. And then, you know, I I brought up, well, I have I have a problem with how the Republicans, the conservatives I was like, everybody devalues somebody and the conservatives are devaluing immigrants. And then all of a sudden, there is defense of, well, you know, we can't support everybody in this country. You know, we can't even provide for our own people and all without even getting into to the excess and riches and and stuff that we have and and what God calls us to and generosity and such, without even getting into that, you can tell that there there wasn't empathy for immigrants.

It was all self preservation and nationalism, and it's very true what liberals often say, and that most Christians, pro life Christians, are pro life before birth and not after birth. We justify the mistreatment of a lot of different people, of our ancestors and what they did to different groups of people, Native Americans, and even hear people down here in the South try to justify or minimize how bad slaves had it, to kind of justify what their forebears did. We use it to justify the criminal justice system and all the inequality that's there. Conservative Christians especially are just so pro life before birth, but so very not pro life after birth often. And that's something that needs to change.

Why why can't we be both? Why can't we just be pro life forever? It's unfortunate that that things being marked as political issues make so many Christians feel like in order to be politically relevant, they have to cater to one side and hedge their bets and self preserve and that's a huge problem. You know, conservative Christians tend to be the party of war, the party of the death penalty, the party of wealth disparity, exaggeration, the party against healthcare for all, the party against better mental health, the party against gun control, the party for armed guards in schools and other places, the party sending immigrants back to harsh environments, the party for separating families, that's quite a party. Not really a party that I want to crash.

It's sad, and that's probably the worst methodology we employ and the one that we employ most often. Hopefully that can change, hopefully our discussion here has eliminated some of the bad arguments that you may have, and I'm sure I've missed some. And hopefully that spurs us on to change. Well, that's all for now. So peace, because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.