G.K. Chesterton said, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” The same might be said of post-Roe America.
In a recent interview with Shane Morris on the Colson Center’s Upstream podcast, pro-life apologist Scott Klusendorf said something difficult out loud:
Every time this has been put to the public for a vote since the casting down of Roe, we have lost. And we’ve lost not only in blue states like Michigan. We have lost in red states like Ohio, Montana, Kentucky. And these are indicators that there’s something not right in the worldview structures that we had assumed all along were in our favor, and they’re not. And that changes what our job description looks like post-Roe.
According to Klusendorf, the problem isn’t that most Americans have heard the case for life and rejected it. Rather, they’ve simply never heard the case clearly articulated and been forced to reckon with it. Now that the Supreme Court has put this issue of abortion back to the states, it is more urgent than ever that we are able to argue persuasively for the rights of the unborn at the street level, or as Chuck Colson used to say, “Over the backyard fence around the barbeque grill.”
Apparently, Americans are either unconvinced about or distracted from the most important question in the abortion debate: Who are the preborn? Fifteen years ago, Klusendorf wrote The Case for Life, a book that answered that question and has been invaluable to pro-lifers in simplifying the argument for all of us. Now that the depth of pro-abortion assumptions in our culture has become obvious, he’s updated and massively expanded The Case for Life. It’s a must-read for anyone who wants to defend preborn lives.
Included are eight new chapters on what it means to be pro-life, which “big questions” about religion, rights, and law are relevant to abortion; which worldviews inform the abortion debate; and whether moral right and wrong are knowable things we can legislate. This second edition confronts the worldviews of philosophical naturalism, Critical Theory, and postmodernism, all of which prop up and motivate legal abortion and stand in stark contrast to Christian theism. It’s important to note that these are the worldviews on the street level and in legislative debate.
Klusendorf also wrestles with the most sophisticated arguments from pro-abortion philosophers like Naomi Wolf in the brand-new part three of the book. For instance, he deals with body-self dualism (the notion that unborn children aren’t yet “persons”), the argument that fetuses lack a right to life, and he even tackles the reasoning that it’s okay to kill human beings if they threaten our bodily autonomy.
Of course, most of us will never debate a pro-abortion academic publicly. For all of us, Klusendorf has straightforward and powerful advice: Don’t get distracted! As he told Shane:
The pro-life argument is very clear and very simple. Premise 1: It’s wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings. Premise 2: Abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being. Conclusion: Therefore, abortion is wrong.
As someone with decades of experience in hostile public settings like college campuses, Klusendorf is adamant that the most important three words in pro-life apologetics are: “syllogism, syllogism, syllogism.” That’s because most of the arguments for abortion at the street level sidestep the real issue:
All of the arguments you hear in favor of choice, privacy, trusting women, economic hardship, back-alley abortions—all of those street-level things we all hear all assume the unborn are not human.
Pro-lifers also frequently find themselves flustered by personal attacks. Abortion activists will call us religious bigots, misogynists, theocrats, or say that we can only have an opinion on abortion if we have a womb. Don’t fall for it, says Klusendorf. These ad hominem arguments, too, are distractions from the real issue.
The validity of the pro-life syllogism does not depend on the identity or character of the person arguing it. Either the preborn are innocent human beings whom it is always wrong to kill, or they are not. Part of our job post-Roe is refusing to let our fellow Americans comfortably distract themselves from this crucial question.
The new edition of Klusendorf’s The Case for Life is a one-stop shop for everything you need to know to become a street-level pro-life apologist. It is the most complete and authoritative guide to pro-life apologetics ever written. And it could not have come at a more important moment.
That’s why for a gift of any amount to the Colson Center before Monday, we’ll send you a copy of Scott Klusendorf’s new edition of The Case for Life. I’m confident it will prepare you to speak and defend the truth in a time of deadly lies—for the sake of our divided nation and the millions of young lives that still hang in the balance. To get your copy of the second edition of The Case for Life, go to colsoncenter.org/February.
This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.
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The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.
John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
