Why We’re

Pro-Life

TR ENT H O R N
Why We’re Pro-Life
Trent Horn
© 2022 Catholic Answers

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 What’s wrong with abortion?
6

When does life begin?

9

Lessons from a Polaroid camera

13

What is a person?
15

What you don’t know can still harm you

16

My body, my choice?
18

What about in the case of rape?

20

But should it be illegal?

22

What if the mother’s life is in danger?

25

Hope for abortion-wounded people

27
O nce, while I was giving a pro-life presentation, one
of the audience members—a girl I’ll call Kelsey—
repeatedly gave me the “evil eye.” After my talk ended,
I invited the attendees to ask questions, and Kelsey’s
hand shot up. But instead of asking a question, Kelsey
made this triumphal statement:
“Look, I don’t see what the big deal is. I don’t like
abortion, but I don’t go around shoving my beliefs
down other people’s throats like you do.”
I appreciated that Kelsey at least thought it was im-
portant to stand up for what she believed. I also un-
derstood why she might have had a negative attitude
toward people who oppose abortion. Perhaps she knew
some people who called themselves “pro-life” but
didn’t seem to value all human life. Or people who har-
bored an uncaring, judgmental attitude toward women
who’ve had abortions.
Kelsey might also have known that most women
seek abortions because of social and economic reasons
that are often very complicated. What would she say to
a pregnant teenager fearful of telling her strict parents?
Or the woman who is worried her boyfriend will leave
her with no means of support?
It’s circumstances like these that make me stop and
ask myself, “Should abortion be legal?” And honestly, I
would say “yes” . . . if the unborn weren’t human beings.
If the unborn are not human beings, then abortion
really isn’t a big deal. We would never have to defend

5
getting an abortion, just as we never have to defend get-
ting dental fillings or any other harmless activity. But, if
the unborn are human beings, then no circumstances,
however difficult, could justify it.
That means in order to answer the question, “Should
abortion be legal?”—and to answer Kelsey’s objec-
tion—we need to answer a more fundamental question:
“What are the unborn?”

What’s wrong with abortion?

The first thing I said in reply to Kelsey was a simple

question: “Why don’t you like abortion?”
Everyone fell silent as Kelsey struggled to answer.
She finally said, “Well, isn’t it obvious?”
“Pretend I’m five years old and I’ve never heard of
abortion,” I said. “What is so bad about it?”
“It takes a life out of the world.”
“What kind of life?” I asked. “If I step on a spider, is
that an abortion?”
“A human life,” she quietly replied.
I then put everything together. “Kelsey, is this your
position? You don’t like abortion because it kills human
lives, but you think it should be legal for people to kill
those human lives? That doesn’t make a lot of sense to
me. Did I understand you correctly?”
Kelsey’s face grew red. “Well, it sounds terrible when
you put it that way.”

6
 Now, did I put it that way, or is that just the way abor-
tion is?
To see what I mean, imagine you’re at the kitchen
sink washing the dishes. Your five-year-old child runs
up behind you and says, “Mommy [or Daddy], can I
kill this?” What is the first question you will ask? It will
probably be, “What is it?”
After all, if it’s a cockroach, then it’s time to get out
a can of Raid. If it’s a cat, well, some people who resent
cats might waver on the answer, but most of us would say
“no.” But what if it’s his two-year-old sister? Along with
saying “no,” you’d probably want to call a counselor!
We would give different answers because the right an-
swer depends almost entirely on the identity of the thing
being killed. Every honest person involved in the abor-
tion debate admits that something is killed during an
abortion. Here’s how the U.S. Supreme Court described
abortions done in the second trimester of pregnancy:

The doctor, often guided by ultrasound, inserts

grasping forceps through the woman’s cervix and
into the uterus to grab the fetus. The doctor grips a
fetal part with the forceps and pulls it back through
the cervix and vagina, continuing to pull even af-
ter meeting resistance from the cervix. The friction
causes the fetus to tear apart. For example, a leg
might be ripped off the fetus as it is pulled through
the cervix and out of the woman. The process of

7
 evacuating the fetus piece by piece continues until it
has been completely removed.1

Even in the more common first-trimester abortions,

a living fetus is killed, even if its arms and legs are
smaller or not fully developed yet.
Are these things that get killed in abortion human
beings? If they are, then most of the reasons that are
given to justify abortion don’t work. We know this be-
cause we would never substitute another kind of human
being—a toddler, a teenager, an elderly person—for an
unborn child in those same arguments. Some women
feel they can’t afford to take care of their toddlers, but
we don’t argue that they should have the right to kill
them. Some teenagers are unwanted and end up in or-
phanages or foster care—does their being unwanted
mean they can be killed? And the elderly can be a physi-
cal, financial, and emotional burden on their caregiv-
ers; this doesn’t justify putting them to death.
Poverty, abuse, lack of love, unexpected roadblocks
to our life’s plans . . . these are all serious problems, but
killing a human being is never the solution.
So, if the reasons given for abortion would not justify
killing a born human, then they don’t justify killing an
unborn human—if embryos and fetuses are indeed ful-
ly as human as a toddler or teenager. But what if they’re
not? If they’re actually just “clumps of cells,” then may-
be abortion isn’t such a big deal after all?

8
 When does life begin?

Deep down, we know that the unborn aren’t just clumps

of cells because we don’t treat them like that when they
are wanted.
When people want a human fetus or embryo, they
call him or her an “unborn child” or a “baby.” We talk
to them in the womb, share their cute ultrasound im-
ages, and give them names.
If this unborn child dies naturally from a miscar-
riage, we mourn and express our condolences for the
parents who “lost a baby.” If the child dies because of
an act of negligence or violence—like when a drunk
driver kills a pregnant woman in an accident—we con-
sider that an additional evil. And in many places the
perpetrator is charged with two counts of homicide,
not one.
None of this makes sense if the unborn are mere tis-
sue or “clumps of cells” rather than human beings who
are just much smaller than you or me.
So, how can we know if the unborn are human be-
ings or not?
Scientifically, the answer isn’t hard to find. Even pro-
choice scholars agree that the unborn are simply very
young members of the human species. The terms em-
bryo and fetus refer to the stages of development that
occur before the post-birth stages of infant, toddler, ad-
olescent, and adult. An embryo is a human being from

9
An unborn child at eight weeks of age.

10
conception until the seventh week of life and a fetus is
a human being from the eighth week of life until birth.
In this, humans are no different from other mam-
mals. Go online and look at amazing photos of other
mammal embryos and fetuses photographed in the
womb. These aren’t “potential elephants” or “potential
dolphins.” They are instead very small dolphins and
very small elephants getting ready to be born.
This makes sense logically as well as biologically. Af-
ter all, if a living thing’s parents are dogs, then that liv-
ing thing will be a dog. If the parents are cats, the living
thing will be a cat. If the parents are human, that living
thing will be human—with his or her own body and
DNA, distinct from the mother.
But so what? a pro-choicer might say. Every cell in my
body is alive and human with human DNA. Is every cell
in my body—hair cells, skin cells, sperm and egg cells—a
human being?
All those things are “human” in the adjective sense
of the word, since they possess human DNA. But fetus-
es and toddlers are also human in the noun sense of the
word. They aren’t just human—they are a human. Spe-
cifically, they are human organisms, individual mem-
bers of the human species.
Body cells such as skin, sperm, and egg cells can nev-
er, on their own, develop into an adult human organism.
This is true no matter what environment they’re in, or
how much time and nutrition they get. But an embryo

11
or fetus, when given time, nutrition, and the proper en-
vironment (the uterus) will continue to develop into a
more mature human being until adulthood, because he
or she was a human organism from the very start.
Science confirms this. Embryologist E.L. Potter points
out, “Every time a sperm cell and ovum unite, a new being
is created which is alive and will continue to live unless its
death is brought about by some specific condition.”2

An unborn child isn’t something

that can develop into a human
being. It is a human being in the
process of developing into a more
mature human being.

The standard medical text Human Embryology and

Teratology states, “Although human life is a continuous
process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, un-
der ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct
human organism is formed.”3 Among embryologists,
the preferred term for the beginning of life is fertilization
rather than conception. Keith Moore and T.V.N. Persaud’s
textbook The Developing Human states, “Human life be-
gins at fertilization,” and Langman’s Medical Embryology
also states, “Development begins with fertilization.”4
In 2019, Ph.D. student Steve Jacobs wrote an article
called, “I Asked Thousands of Biologists When Life

12
Begins. The Answer Wasn’t Popular.” He relates, “As
the usable responses began to come in, I found that
5,337 biologists, or 96 percent of the survey, affirmed
that a human’s life begins at fertilization.”5 This was
the case even though 85 percent of the respondents
identified as “pro-choice.”

Lessons from a Polaroid camera

At this point maybe you’re thinking, I know what a hu-

man being looks like, and a little eight-celled embryo is
not a human being.
But we need to be careful.
Throughout human history, have not some groups of
human beings been oppressed and exploited simply be-
cause they looked different from other human beings? For
example, as recently as the early twentieth century, small
African pygmies were put on display in human zoos.6 This
was considered acceptable because pygmies did not “look
human,” in that they did not have white skin and Europe-
an stature and facial features. Of course, African pygmies
looked just like humans who live in a certain geographical
region of the world at a certain time are supposed to look.
Likewise, a one-celled zygote, or an embryo, or a fetus,
looks just like a human who lives in the womb at a certain
stage of development is supposed to look.
Speaking of development, some people have a hard
time understanding how a tiny embryo could be a

13
human being because they think human beings only
come into existence once they have “all their parts
assembled” (like how a car exists once it’s finished on
the assembly line). But humans aren’t objects like cars.
We are subjects who develop and maintain our identity
over time. In that respect, human beings are more like
Polaroid pictures than Porsches.
Polaroid cameras print images onto paper that slowly
reveals the image over the course of a few minutes. Now,
imagine you took a Polaroid picture of something rare,
like the Loch Ness monster, and you quickly showed
your friend the fresh print (which looks like a brown
smudge, but will soon make you very famous). What if
your friend proceeded to tear up the picture? I imagine
you would be furious. But what if he said, “Chill out.
That wasn’t a picture of the Loch Ness monster. It was
just a brown smudge that had the potential to become a
picture of the Loch Ness monster. Any Polaroid picture
has that same potential, so what’s the big deal?”
You would rightly respond, “No! That was an actual
picture of the Loch Ness monster; it just looked like a
brown smudge at that stage of its existence. Everything
that was the picture of the Loch Ness monster was fully
there; you just couldn’t see it yet. You destroyed it before
it developed into a picture you could recognize.”
Pro-lifers say the same when an unborn child is
killed, even when he or she is just a tiny embryo. They
say, “That wasn’t a ‘potential person’—it was a person

14
with great potential. Everything that was biologically
that human being was fully there; you just couldn’t rec-
ognize it yet. You destroyed him or her before he or she
could develop into a human being that looks like other
already-born humans.”

What is a person?

Notice that we have not once appealed to religious doc-

trine to show that abortion is wrong. Instead, we start-
ed with a belief almost every sane person shares: it is
wrong to directly kill innocent human beings. We then
used science to show that the unborn are innocent hu-
man beings, small members of our species. Therefore,
abortion is wrong because it directly kills those inno-
cent human beings.
At this point, some might reply that perhaps the un-
born are biologically human, but they aren’t “persons.”
They aren’t fully human like people outside the womb.
Okay, then, what is the definition of a “person”? Or,
what makes someone “fully human”?
Be careful with your answer, because it may lead to
strange or even grotesque consequences.
For example, if we were to say that a person is any-
thing that can feel pain, then pests like rats and pigeons
would be persons and killing them would be murder. If
a person were anything that can think at a certain com-
plex level, then fetuses definitely wouldn’t be persons.

15
But then, neither would newborn babies, since even rats
are smarter than infants (they can navigate laboratory
mazes, after all).
Maybe a person is just any human being who can
feel pain. Now, this is problematic in the first place be-
cause it would also exclude people in temporary comas
or people under anesthesia. But more importantly, it
seems like an arbitrary definition designed to exclude
the unborn (who can’t feel pain until they’re around
twenty weeks old). Putting such an additional, exclusive
condition on who gets basic human rights (you have to
be human and feel pain) is no different from past defi-
nitions of persons that said you had to be human and
male, or human and white.
Instead, why can’t we say that “all humans are per-
sons” or that “all humans should be treated equally un-
der the law?”

What you don’t know can still harm you

But maybe abortion isn’t bad for most fetuses because

they aren’t even aware they are being aborted? They
usually don’t feel pain, and they have no conscious
sense of being alive.
It’s true that most fetuses who are aborted don’t
experience mental or physical hurt from being
threatened and killed, like most born people would.
However, you can be harmed without feeling hurt.

16
Someone can violate my rights even if I don’t realize
what was done to me. And that’s wrong.
For example, if I steal an inheritance from someone
who didn’t know it existed, I haven’t hurt him in a way
he knows about (he doesn’t feel sad about the lost mon-
ey), but I have harmed him.7 Or, if a doctor sexually
fondles an unconscious patient, he hasn’t caused her to
experience hurt (because she didn’t feel it and will have
no memory of it), but he has harmed her by violating
her bodily dignity.
And even worse than being deprived of an inheri-
tance or being physically violated, the aborted fetus is
deprived of the greatest earthly good of all: life.

Rather than basing our definition

of “personhood” or “humanity” on
what something can currently do,
it makes more sense to base it on
what something is.

Even if we can’t function rationally yet (such as

when we were infants) or have temporarily lost that
ability (as we do when we are asleep), or even have
permanently lost it (through injury or disease), all hu-
man beings are still members of a rational kind. And
since we remain members of this rational, human kind
throughout our entire existence, it follows that at every

17
stage of our existence we are persons who deserve the
respect and protection due to us in virtue of what we
are, not what we can do.

My body, my choice?

Another objection goes like this: Even if the fetus is a

human being with the same basic rights you and I have,
shouldn’t women have the right to control their bodies?
I agree that people should be able to control their
bodies. But wouldn’t the unborn child also have a
right to control his or her body—which includes be-
ing protected from outside harm—if he or she is a hu-
man being?
Moreover, no one thinks that people should have
the right to do whatever they want with their bodies—
for example, yell “fire!” in a crowded building to start a
riot, or punch an innocent stranger on the street. And
we agree that this applies even to pregnant women and
their medical choices. For example, in the mid-twen-
tieth century a drug called Thalidomide was used to
ease nausea during pregnancy—until researchers dis-
covered that it caused some children to be born with-
out arms or legs. Today, governments all over the world
ban Thalidomide. But if a pregnant woman could do
whatever she wanted with her body, shouldn’t she have
the legal right to use Thalidomide, even if it harmed the
child in her womb?

18
 We can make this objection stronger and show why
it still doesn’t work. Maybe pregnant women can’t do
whatever they want with their bodies, someone might
say, but just as I can’t be forced to donate a kidney to save
someone else’s life, a pregnant woman can’t be forced to
“donate” her womb to an unborn child.
But abortion is not like refusing to donate an organ
to a dying person. It is more like violently removing an
already-donated organ from a healthy person. Imagine
that you wake up one day and discovered that your kid-
ney has been removed from your body and placed into
Fred’s body without your consent. Even if you wouldn’t
have chosen to donate a kidney to Fred, I doubt you’d
kill Fred to get your kidney back.
Plus, my kidneys are for keeping me alive, not
somebody else. That means I don’t have a special duty
to allow someone else to use them. But the uterus is for
keeping someone else alive. Even from a purely bio-
logical standpoint, it makes no sense to speak of the
unborn child as a stranger or hostile invader to whom
a woman could refuse accommodation. The baby is
living right where he or she belongs, and has a right
to be there.
Similarly, even if a pregnant woman didn’t consent
to the sexual act that brought about the new human be-
ing in her womb, it would still be wrong to kill the child
to redress the injustice. This brings us to another com-
mon pro-choice objection.

19
 What about in the case of rape?

Rape is a heinous and violent act that no civilized soci-

ety should ever tolerate. Rape violates a woman’s bodi-
ly integrity and takes away her ability to feel safe even
around people she has known for a long time. Even
worse, sometimes rape victims are partly blamed for
instigating or contributing to the act. This is a com-
pletely unacceptable way to treat an innocent victim
of violence.
Victims of rape deserve compassion and access to
healing resources as well as the resources needed to
bring their attackers to justice. But should abortion be
one of those resources?
Just as we should not punish or blame the woman
who is a victim of rape but work to provide her with
healing, we should not punish or harm the child who
is conceived in rape and is also victimized by being
brought into existence through an act of violence in-
stead of an act of love. Yet, ironically, in our country it is
illegal to execute a man who rapes a woman but a child
conceived in rape can be killed through abortion.
Here’s another way to understand the issue. Imag-
ine that a woman has sexual relations with her hus-
band, and the next day she is raped by a stranger. Sev-
eral weeks later she discovers she’s pregnant but doesn’t
know if the child was fathered by her husband or the
rapist. A prenatal DNA test says that the husband is

20
the child’s father. The woman gives birth to a son, and
three months later the doctor calls while she is home
alone with the baby. He informs her that he made a
mistake and that the rapist is actually the baby’s father.
Should the woman be allowed to kill this product of
rape in his crib?
If not, then shouldn’t we forbid killing the product of
rape in the womb for the same reason: because both are
human beings?
Even some pro-choice philosophers agree that it
is inconsistent to say abortion is wrong except in the
case of rape (which accounts for about 1.5 percent of
all abortions). For example, Nathan Nobis and Kristina
Grob write, “While people sometimes consider rape a
special excuse that justifies abortion, if abortions gen-
erally aren’t wrong, no special excuse is needed.”8 They
make this argument to justify any and all abortions, but
it can be used in reverse: if abortion generally is wrong,
no “special excuse” makes it right.
Rape is traumatic because it is an act of violence
against an innocent person. Most people have good
intentions when they suggest that abortion could ease
the trauma of rape, but . . . just how does violence heal?
How could injustice done to an innocent child repair
the injustice done to an innocent woman? Shouldn’t we
work to protect both the mother and child from harm
and punish the person who was truly responsible for
the rape?

21
 But should it be illegal?

Even if abortion is wrong, some ask, is it wrong enough

that the government should step in and make it illegal?
What if we just worked to reduce abortion without crim-
inalizing it?
But ask yourself: what acts are bad enough that we
should have laws against them? At the top of your list
are probably violent crimes like murder and rape. Yet
sometimes the law needs help getting even these things
right. Prior to 1970, for example, it was legal in every
U.S. state for a husband to rape his wife because it was
assumed that wives always consented to sex by con-
senting to being married in the first place. Instead of
just working to change hearts and minds to reduce the
number of marital rapes, activists worked to change the
law to reflect the grave injustice of marital rape, until it
was fully outlawed in 1993.
Yes, we should try to change hearts and minds, and
we should work to reduce poverty and other circum-
stances that can contribute to gravely evil acts, but we
can also legally prohibit the acts themselves. Justice it-
self demands that everyone, but especially the weakest
among us, be protected under the law. They shouldn’t
have to live in a world where they hope crimes like
abortion or rape will only be “reduced” through other
means. Plus, when something is illegal, the law teaches
people by example that it is seriously wrong and this,

22
in turn, affects public opinion and makes that thing
less common.
Other people say that abortions are going to happen
even if they are illegal, so why not at least make them
“safe”? But saying, “Abortion should be legal so that it’s
safe” is the same as saying, “It should be legal for big-
ger people to kill smaller people so that it’s safer for the
bigger people.”

A fundamental purpose of laws is to

protect the rights of the weak and
vulnerable.

This also assumes that large numbers of women will

still seek abortion even if it is illegal, but research shows
this isn’t true. One recent study estimated that 4,000
women are turned away from abortion facilities every
year because they are too far along in their pregnancies.
But the study showed that nearly all these women do
not break the law in order to obtain abortions. Instead,
they give birth to their child.9
Also, there’s good evidence that making abortion
illegal does not result in large numbers of dangerous
illegal abortions. This may be because illegal abortions
tend to be done in much the same way as legal ones:
by medical professionals in medical offices. Even in
1960, when abortion was illegal throughout most of

23
the United States and health care standards were lower
than they are today, Planned Parenthood president
Mary Calderone said,

Abortion is no longer a dangerous procedure.

This applies not just to therapeutic abortions as
performed in hospitals but also to so-called illegal
abortions as done by physicians. In 1957 there were
only 260 deaths in the whole country attributed
to abortions of any kind. . . . Second, and even
more important, the conference estimated that 90
percent of all illegal abortions are presently being
done by physicians.10

Jumping to the present: a 2021 article in the Inter-

national Journal of Environmental Research and Pub-
lic Health found that media reports of “thousands of
women dying from unsafe abortion in Malawi each
year have no empirical foundation.” Not even in the
developing world do claims of mass deaths from illegal
abortions seem to have any merit.
Neither do we see greater mortality rates from child-
birth in places where abortion is restricted. In Poland,
where (at the time of this writing) abortion is illegal
except in rare cases, the  maternal mortality rate  per
100,000 live births was only two deaths per 100,000 live
births.11 In European countries like Germany, Finland,
and Denmark where abortion is, practically speaking,

24
only allowed in the first trimester of pregnancy, ma-
ternal mortality rates range between three and seven
deaths per 100,000 live births. Whereas in 2019, the
United States had a rate of twenty maternal deaths per
100,000 live births, despite having some of the most
permissive abortion laws in the world.12

What if the mother’s life is in danger?

If a woman’s life is threatened by her pregnancy at a

point after the fetus is viable, then abortion should
never be necessary. In fact, it may be even more dan-
gerous for the mother, since it’s faster to deliver the
child through a Cesarean birth rather than taking the
time—more than a day—to stretch the cervix wide
enough to abort him or her. Wouldn’t it be better to
deliver the child whole and give him or her a chance to
live as opposed to delivering the child in pieces with
no chance?
When a mother’s life is in danger during early
pregnancy, when there is no chance a child could
live outside the womb, pro-lifers widely agree that
it’s permissible for doctors to perform a life-saving
operation on the mother even if it may indirectly re-
sult in the baby’s death.13 Harm to the child is not
intended or done directly. Rather, it’s an unwanted
(though often inevitable) side effect of the treatment
to save the mother.

25
 The most common example of this case is ectopic preg-
nancies. These occur when the newly conceived embryo
implants someplace other than the uterus—in nearly all
cases in one of the fallopian tubes—posing a danger to
the woman’s life and making it impossible to carry the
baby to viability. Unlike with complications that arise
later in pregnancy, the embryo cannot be removed and
safely placed somewhere else, such as a NICU unit. In
this case, it is morally acceptable to surgically remove
the damaged section of the fallopian tube.

Real health care protects mother

and child—and does no direct harm
to either.

Even back in 1960, Planned Parenthood’s Calderone

admitted that “it is hardly ever necessary today to consid-
er the life of a mother as threatened by a pregnancy.”14 Six
decades later, medical technology has given us even more
ways to protect the life and health of both mother and
child. For instance, today it is not uncommon for unborn
children who are just a few months old to have operations
performed on them in the womb to treat medical condi-
tions like spina bifida. In a grim irony, in some hospitals
we find wanted unborn children receiving miraculous
life-saving operations on one floor and unwanted unborn
children of the same age being aborted on another.

26
 As journalist John McCormack writes, “No abortion
law in any state in America prevents lifesaving treatment
for women with ectopic pregnancies and other life-
threatening conditions. That was true of abortion laws
in 1972, and it’s true of abortion laws in 2022.” He even
quotes Planned Parenthood saying on its own website
that “treating an ectopic pregnancy isn’t the same thing
as getting an abortion . . . The medical procedures for
abortions are not the same as the medical procedures
for an ectopic pregnancy.”15 This will not change even
as more states restrict or outlaw abortion following the
end of Roe v. Wade.

Hope for abortion-wounded people

Up to this point I haven’t discussed religion, because

protecting unborn children from violence isn’t a reli-
gious issue: it’s a human rights issue. I would like to close,
though, with a word about God’s love for those who have
been personally involved in an abortion procedure.
Some people who have obtained or paid for an
abortion may wonder what happened to their child
and whether God can ever forgive them for what
they’ve done.
The answer is that God is infinite in his power and
his love for us. That means there is no sin he can’t
forgive (since he’s all-powerful) and that there is no sin
he doesn’t want to forgive (since he’s all-loving). If you

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feel trapped by the grief of losing your child to abortion,
know that God allowed his son to die on a cross so that
you and your child could spend eternal life with him.
The only thing that could ever keep us from God’s
abundant mercy is ourselves, and that is the last thing
our loving God wants us to do.
If you have been wounded by an experience with
abortion, whether you are a woman or a man, I recom-
mend you contact a post-abortion healing ministry like
Rachel’s Vineyard (https://www.rachelsvineyard.org/).
Local pregnancy resource centers may also be able to
connect you with a pro-life counselor who can help you
through this process.
I’d like to leave you with these words from Pope St.
John Paul II, a brilliant author who often wrote on what
he called the “special dignity of women.” Regarding
women who have had an abortion, he had this to say:

The Church is aware of the many factors which

may have influenced your decision, and she does
not doubt that in many cases it was a painful and
even shattering decision. The wound in your heart
may not yet have healed. Certainly, what happened
was and remains terribly wrong. But do not give in
to discouragement and do not lose hope. Try rather
to understand what happened and face it honestly.
If you have not already done so, give yourselves over
with humility and trust to repentance.

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 The Father of mercies is ready to give you his
forgiveness and his peace in the sacrament of
reconciliation. To the same Father and his mercy
you can with sure hope entrust your child. With the
friendly and expert help and advice of other people,
and as a result of your own painful experience,
you can be among the most eloquent defenders of
everyone’s right to life.16

Just remember that “the most eloquent defenders of

everyone’s right to life” are not restricted to those who
have personally experienced abortion. All people who
care about human rights can join in being a voice for
the voiceless. It is my hope that everyone who recog-
nizes the inhumanity of abortion will have the courage
to defend the humanity of the unborn. Together we can
work to save precious lives and build a more peaceful
and just world.

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 Recommended Reading

n Persuasive Pro-Life: How to Talk About Our Culture’s

Toughest Issue by Trent Horn. The author of this
booklet also wrote a book-length defense of the pro-
life position that teaches people to graciously defend
unborn children.

n Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything

and Solves Nothing by Ryan T. Anderson and
Alexandra DeSanctis. This book shows that abortion
is not only bad for unborn children but also for
women and society as a whole.

n Unplanned: The Dramatic True Story of a Former

Planned Parenthood Leader’s Eye-Opening Journey
Across the Life Line by Abby Johnson. Once a Planned
Parenthood clinic director, Johnson describes her
conversion to becoming one of the leading defenders
of unborn children.

n The Ethics of Abortion: Women’s Rights, Human Life,

and the Question of Justice by Christopher Kaczor.
This is one of the most in-depth philosophical defens-
es of the pro-life position. Dr. Kaczor expertly refutes
even the toughest objections to the pro-life position.

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 Sources

1 Gonzales vs. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124 (2007) Section I-A.

2 E.L. Potter, and J.M. Craig, Pathology of the Fetus and the Infant, 3rd
edition (Year Book Medical Publishers, 1975), vii.
3 Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Müller, Human Embryology and Teratology,
3rd edition (Wiley-Liss, 2001), 8. The full quote reads, “Although human
life is a continuous process, fertilization (which, incidentally, is not a
‘moment’) is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances,
a new, genetically distinct human organism is formed when the
chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte.”
4 Keith L. Moore, T.V.N. Persaud and Mark G. Torchia, The Developing
Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 11th edition (New York:
Elsevier, 2020), 2. The full quote reads, “Human development begins
at fertilization, approximately fourteen days after the onset of the
last normal menstrual period.” T.W. Sadler, Langman’s Medical
Embryology, 14th edition, (Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer, 2019), 14. The
full quote reads, “Development begins with fertilization, the process
by which the male gamete, the sperm, and the female gamete, the
oocyte, unite to give rise to a zygote.”
5 Steve Jacobs, “I Asked Thousands of Biologists When Life Begins. The
Answer Wasn’t Popular.” Quillette, October 16, 2019. Available online
at: https://quillette.com/2019/10/16/i-asked-thousands-of-biologists-
when-life-begins-the-answer-wasnt-popular/. Jacobs’s survey was part
of his research for his dissertation submitted in 2019 to the University
of Chicago under the title “Balancing Abortion Rights and Fetal
Rights: A Mixed Methods Mediation Of The U.S. Abortion Debate.”
6 See Phillips Verner Bradford and Harvey Blume, Ota Benga: The
Pygmy in the Zoo (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993).
7 This example comes from philosopher Robert Wennberg, who writes,
“If I were cheated out of an inheritance that I didn’t know I had, I
would be harmed regardless of whether I knew about the chicanery.
Deprivation of a good (be it an inheritance or self-conscious existence)
constitutes harm even if one is ignorant of that deprivation.” Robert
Wennberg, Life in the Balance: Exploring the Abortion Controversy
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 98. Quoted in Francis Beckwith,
Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 145.

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8 Nathan Nobis & Kristina Grob, Thinking Critically About Abortion:
Why Most Abortions Aren’t Wrong & Why All Abortions Should Be
Legal, (Open Philosophy Press, 2019), 50–51.
9 Ushma D. Upadhyay, et al., “Denial of Abortion Because of Provider
Gestational Age Limits in the United States,” American Journal of
Public Health, vol. 104, no. 9 (2014) 1687–1694.
10 Mary Steichen Calderone, “Illegal Abortion as a Public Health
Problem,” American Journal of Public Health Nations Health, vol. 50
no. 7, July 1960, 949.
11 “Maternal mortality ratio,” The World Fact Book, Central Intelligence
Agency, 2017, https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/maternal-
mortality-ratio/country-comparison.
12 Donna Hoyert, “Maternal Mortality Rates in the United States, 2019.”
Available online at: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternal-
mortality-2021/E-Stat-Maternal-Mortality-Rates-H.pdf. See also
Michelle Ye Hee Lee, “Is the United States One of Seven Countries
That ‘Allow Elective Abortions After 20 Weeks of Pregnancy?’” The
Washington Post (October 9, 2017).
13 “Operations, treatments, and medications that have as their direct
purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition
of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely
postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in
the death of the unborn child.” United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops, “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care
Services,” 6th edition, (2018), paragraph 47.
14 Mary Steichen Calderone, “Illegal Abortion as a Public Health
Problem,” American Journal of Public Health Nations Health, vol. 50,
no. 7, July 1960, 948–949. Calderone was referencing a 1958 Planned
Parenthood conference that took place before Alaska and Hawaii were
states. She says in other places that a woman’s threat of suicide would
justify abortion, and she never mentions a state where abortion is
prohibited even if a woman’s life is in danger.
15 John McCormack, “Stop Lying about Abortion Laws and Ectopic
Pregnancies” National Review (June 30, 2022). Available online at:
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/stop-lying-about-abortion-
laws-and-ectopic-pregnancies/
16 Evangelium Vitae, 99.

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