Ever have one of those days when everything feels off and your person feels like a passive bystander to all of the events that are slowly transpiring in your immediate position? That’s how I felt on Thursday when an impromptu walkout for legalized murder of the most undeserving people among us, also known as abortion, suddenly began at my public school.
I was at the lunch table at around 11:00 when I first heard that there would be a walkout over the greatest display of hope the Pro-Life Movement has seen since this new slew of state bills close to banning abortion, which I suppose is more of a testament to the success of it than the failures of its evil opposer. I heard this from a friend of a friend, who happened to be sitting with that friend with myself. As soon as the former brought it up in a plain way, the latter exclaimed that the women who allow the murder of their children to take place are murderers. I did not necessarily disagree with him, but I had to get him to be quiet as his comments were intentionally inflammatory and arrogant, as he meant for the attention to be brought towards him and his intellect and his beliefs and his valor, and I am not implying that we have not ever done that before: humility is one of the hardest virtues to obtain and is often something to inspire to more so than an actuality. So then, I got him to hush, and I asked the friend in a nice way why he believed that, not implying whatsoever that he was a terrible person that could not be reasoned with, because I sincerely believed that. This is something along the lines of our brief conversation:
“Hey pal, why do you believe that?”
“Well, a woman does not exactly choose to be pregnant.”
And the friend happened to interject his loudness and disruption again saying that when you engage in the activity that is the substitute for delivery-by-stork, you automatically take responsibility for being impregnated, which is true, albeit he put it far too harshly. The supporter I think agreed with him.
I responded, “He’s right. The question that this entire debate comes to is whether a baby is a human or not. A baby isn’t a vegetable or a dog or anything like that. It's a person and deserves to be treated like one. And I get where you are coming from. In the situations when a woman does not give consent, and that’s really unfair. But two wrongs do not make a right.”
And then the bell rang. While I do not think there was an ah-ha moment, I do think he was exposed to some ideas worthy of contemplation and it was clear that he at least was more unsure than he had been before.
On my way returning to my I had before my lunch, because that is how my lunch period operates, I encountered my fellow Catholic and Boy-Scout friend, told him about the walkout and brought the idea up for a sort of counter-protest. He did not protest and he told me that we needed to start getting people in on the mission as well. So, I texted or talked to four others, because surprise-surprise, there are not that many conservatives, heck, logical people at my school. Anyhow, it did not happen because they either did not respond, which I was expecting, or they thought it was a useless idea considering that they would ridicule and demean us and scream in our faces, which I was expecting from the crowd. I am glad it did not happen, to be honest, because while it might have been a brave idea, and while I will not go so far as to call it stupid, it was a bad idea.
There was more surrounding abortion, but that is more personal involvement with friends, so I will table that for another discussion about that day; this story involves dignity of life in general.
In theater class, I and the boys were working on our monologues, which would serve as our final exam. This girl that is a part of the untrustworthy people in the class behind us asks our theater teacher whether she could leave the classroom to tell a friend of hers that their mutual friend died. The air was not even sucked out the room and that was at least partially due to the complete lack of sadness and sentimentality in her voice. In fact, it sounded so unbelievable fake of an excuse to ditch class, that I had to restrain laughter while looking at my friend by my side who had his eyes more open than Joe Biden’s head. I thought it was a joke. But then I found out that she was not kidding. I felt sorry, although I knew it was not exactly my fault that I thought it was a joke because of the complete callousness on her part. I could not believe that this was heard by, no doubt, a majority of the class and no one stopped for one second to think about our imminent, unpredictable, and shared demise or even to pray for the person.
What has this world come to? What is this world when babies can be killed and very few care about death, their death? What is this world when right and wrong are so intentionally disregarded? Now, I am by no means saying this is a perfect world or that after The Fall it could become one, but it is self-harmful and possibly damning to not be in the truth, and for sure not to be in the Way, the Truth, and the Light.
I mentioned that I was performing monologues for theater, and one of them is from Arthur Miller’s The Death of a Salesman, which is widely considered to be the greatest American play of all time, which I cannot attest to as I have not read it, but I see why it is so popular, as the current state of humanity is summed up by this one monologue from Biff Loman:
I tell ya, Hap, I don’t know what the future is. I dom’t know– what I’m supposed to want…I’ve spent six or seven years after high school trying to work myself up. Shipping clerk, salesman, business of one kind or another. And it’s a measly manner of existence. To get on that subway on the hot mornings in summer. To devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying. To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And always to have to get ahead of the next fella. And still– that’s how you build a future…Hap, I’ve have twenty or thirty different kinds of jobs since I left home before the war, and it always turns out the same. I just realized it lately.. And whenever spring comes to where I am, I suddenly get the feeling, my God, I’m not gettin’ anywhere! What the hell am I doing, playing around with horses, twenty-eight dollars a week! I’m thirty-four years old, I oughta be makin’ my future. That’s when I come running home. And now, I get here, and I don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve always made a point of not wasting my life, and every time I come back here I know that all I’ve done is waste my life.
That monologue, in less than a half of a page, sums up basically the human condition, in that we do not know what to do with ourselves and we are in search of some higher purpose, and indeed power, that can guide us to nature’s end. It is for this reason, among many, that abortion is such an occurrence, and yes, a presence, in America and the rest of the world: we, as a society, do not bother to activate our common sense and answer philosophical questions and delve into an organized, reasonable religion. And while this one explanation might oversimplify the problem just a tad, as it is not exactly a complicated question as to whether we should kill babies (yes, babies), do you not think this has something to do with the fact that 29% of Americans, fewer than half pray daily, and 40% of U.S. adults consider religion “very important” in their lives?
The fact is that while abortion can be made known to be wrong through common sense, which is to say the senses and natural intuition, it is a religious question because it is an objective question. Atheism is a sort of anti-religion, in that religion is meant to be a belief system that attempts to answer basic questions about the universe, and its answer is essentially “I dunno.” Let me take that back, the complete atheist has values that include ignorance and the elevation of lies. Again, the complete atheist; many just choose to lay off on certain precepts, opting to rather be uneducated than be proven wrong.
So, because we here want to change hearts and minds, the logical question to then ask ourselves is how? How do we do this? Well first off, education in this sort of thing really pays off because core values transfer over to all different kinds of subjects, and knowing the chain of suppositions key to this conversation can give you confidence and make you grounded in your work. I would recommend reading such well-known works as The Bible, and commentaries by Aristotle, Socrates, and the greatest, The Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas. Sure, I have not completed any of those works, but I am making an effort. The point of that would be to learn how to think clearly, concisely, and thoroughly. If you want to be a more personable and agreeable chap, read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, and for this topic especially, read Trent Horn’s Persuasive Pro-Life (both of which I have read in full and have helped me in both of their objectives).
Now, the big list. Not everything can be summed up in a one-liner, but I will try to give some pointers from what I have learned over my experience, although I dare not call myself an expert in this. For each one of these groups, that, granted are not set in stone, the key goal is to always divert back to the questions of whether the unborn are human. I am leaving some of the material to be filled in by you and your style of question and speaking. Many believe in more than one of these pro-abortion talking points, so you will have to cross over the lines almost all of the time.
The Sympathizers
I gave this name to those who believe that abortion should be in place because of cases such as rape, incest, father abandonment, and for the “health of the mother.”
First off, you need to completely agree from the heart that all of those are unfortunate situations, and you will do that if you are a decent person. If you will not, you do not respect life and need to get out of the conversation.
Then, you need to affirm that two wrongs do not make a right, which most will recognize as a common phrase, and say that adoption is always an option (thirty-six families for every one child who is placed for adoption).
In the health of the mother case, you need to emphasize the fact that any direct killing of a human being is wrong, and if the baby dies as a result of a medical operation that adheres to the Hippocratic Oath, then that might be saddening but is a morally neutral happening.
The Libertarians
These are those that just do not care about the situation at all and think that everyone has the right to an abortion.
Ask why we have murder laws and bring up the unborn’s humanity. Say that there is obviously no such thing as a clear Constitutional or human right to privacy and even if there was, there are at least two people involved with abortion: the mother and the baby.
My body, my choice
It is not your body, it is the baby’s. You owe an obligation to the baby as it was your choice to potentially have it, and even if it was non-consensual, you still have a natural role to perform, it is wrong to kill, and you can give it up for adoption.
Give the example of the “takers” and the “earners” in this form of a question: let’s say there are two groups of society, the takers and the earners. The earners are people who work and earn income, and the takers are the homeless and those on welfare. They are using the earner’s money and resources. Do we have the right to kill these people because they offer nothing in return?
Abortion on demand and without apology
They are usually not reasonable in the slightest, but you can still try. Show them pictures and explain to them the horrific procedure (shock value for a purpose). Ask them whether you have the right to kill them and why or why not that is the case. If they answer yes, they are a psychopath and you should start running.
Well folks, I hoped this helped. I know it might not be an all-encompassing guide, but what the pro-life movement needs to be doing now is share ideas and strategies and all coming together for the cause.
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