But then something happened that I never saw coming: pro-choice people started telling ME that I shouldn’t be allowed to have an opinion about abortion. Um, I’m a woman! I have a uterus!! It took me a little time and a lot of clarification questions to figure out what was going on. 

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes

White Privilege

The idea of “white privilege” was popularized by women’s-studies scholar Peggy McIntosh in her 1988 paper “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences Through Work in Women’s Studies.” While most people have never read the whole paper, the excerpt “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” makes the rounds in college courses and anti-racism training sessions all the time. I probably learned about the “invisible knapsack” at least 10 times during my college years!

I am not here to debate whether white privilege exists or to what extent it affects my life. For the purposes of this article, I am just going to grant that it exists because the pro-choice people I’m talking to almost certainly think so. Whether or not you believe in white privilege or in how it’s currently being taught in academia, there is common ground you can find with that viewpoint. The situation in which I was born was certainly different from that of other people in our country, whether that be because of my socioeconomic status, where I lived, my race, my religion, my ability level, my gender, or anything else. I’m not saying that my situation was necessarily better or worse, just that it was unique. Certain doors were probably more easily opened for me because of my circumstances while other doors were not. That should be something we can all agree on! As the idea of white privilege has become more prevalent in light of Black Lives Matter activism, however, I’ve noticed the concept widening in scope and creeping into conversations about other topics too. 

So…How is This Relevant?

It’s pretty easy to understand where the “you’re a man” charge comes from. Men can’t get pregnant, and they therefore cannot fully understand what pregnancy is really like or what women who have an unplanned pregnancy are going through. Essentially, pro-choice people are arguing that those who can’t fully understand someone else’s experiences can’t judge them. And that is precisely where the idea of white privilege has recently entered the abortion debate. Since I am—in their view at least—a privileged white woman, I can’t fully understand the experiences of someone with less privilege. I can’t know what it’s like to be another race, for example. Sometimes, these pro-choice people would concede that I can have an opinion about someone exactly like me who is pregnant, but I certainly shouldn’t be judging the reproductive decisions of other privilege levels or, even worse, using my “privilege” to control their bodies.

In other words, the “you’re a man” charge goes something like this: 

P1: People who can’t fully understand someone else’s experiences shouldn’t be allowed to make moral judgements about their actions. 

P2: People without a uterus clearly can’t get pregnant or experience pregnancy, and therefore can’t fully understand pregnancy.

C: Therefore, people without a uterus shouldn’t be allowed to make moral judgements about abortion.

The “you’re a privileged white woman” charge is basically just an adaptation, saying:

P1: People who can’t fully understand someone else’s experiences shouldn’t be allowed to make moral judgements about their actions. 

P2: Privileged people can’t fully understand the experiences of those with less privilege.

C: Therefore, privileged people shouldn’t be allowed to make moral judgements about those with less privilege having an abortion.

Notice how P1 is the same in both charges! The difference really lies in how “someone else’s experiences” is being interpreted. For the “you’re a man” charge, the experience is pregnancy; men clearly can’t get pregnant, so they don’t get an opinion about pregnancy-related things. But for the latter charge, “experiences” is much broader; it’s something like the entire life experiences of what it’s like to be another race, religion, sexual orientation, or class. Every single person’s life experiences are going to be different from mine in some way, so the latter charge basically says that I can’t make a moral judgement about anyone doing anything at all. That is incredibly restrictive! For all practical purposes, it says that we can’t have laws against anything! It’s the classic “Who are YOU to judge?”

My Response

The problem with this line of thinking is pretty obvious. Clearly there are some things that we should have laws against, so saying that I can’t make moral judgements about anyone else’s actions doesn’t make any sense if I can rightfully declare that rape is wrong regardless of your privilege level. It’s not a logical argument! But the way that I point out this problem is key to the pro-choice person actually taking me seriously. Blatantly ignoring the fact that you can’t understand the unique and difficult circumstances that women face in pregnancy is the fastest way to sabotage your own pro-life argument. 

Let’s go back to the “you’re a man” charge for a moment. It is certainly true that people without a uterus can’t fully understand pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood, or the whole host of hormonal and physical changes that come along with those things. Thus, the very first thing that I teach pro-life men to do is affirm that fact! Demonstrating that you know that you can’t really understand how difficult an unplanned pregnancy is shows respect to the pro-choice person making this argument and to the real challenges that women face. If you skip this crucial step, the pro-choice person might infer that you think pregnancy is just a walk in the park! If you want the pro-choice person to hear your argument, take the time to acknowledge your limitations and how serious pregnancy really is. Then, we teach our students to Trot Out a Toddler, which demonstrates why we think that men should talk about abortion even though they can’t understand pregnancy. The whole interaction might sound something like this:

Yes, I am a man, and I know that means that I’ll never get pregnant. I can do my best to sympathize with women and their experiences, but I can never really fully understand what they’re going through. I can’t really understand the physical changes, the hormonal changes, childbirth, motherhood, postpartum depression—any of it!

Can I ask you kind of a weird question though? Bear with me.

Suppose that I’m sitting at the lake by myself, and I see a woman a bit further down the shore pushing her car into the lake. This is obviously a pretty odd scene, so I walk a bit closer until I spot a newborn in the backseat of the car. Now, I don’t know this woman’s situation at all. In fact, she has the kind of postpartum depression some women experience after childbirth, something that I’m incapable of experiencing myself. Regardless of her circumstances or my biological sex, it still seems incredibly obvious that I have a responsibility to try and save that child in the backseat. Of course, I should also try to get the woman the help she needs to recover from her depression in a way that doesn’t kill anybody. I’m not going to judge the woman; I can’t possibly understand what she’s going through! But I am going to try to help her and the newborn in the backseat.

I have this view; it might sound strange to you, but I think I have good arguments for it. My view is that a human embryo is just as valuable as that newborn in the backseat. I believe that they have the same moral status. IF I’m right about that view, then it seems like I have an obligation to try to help the unborn just like I have an obligation to try to save the newborn from drowning. I can’t truly understand what the woman has gone through in either scenario, but I still think I have an obligation to speak up against abortion just as I should try to save the newborn from certain death in the lake. What do you think?

A Simple Adaptation

While responding to the assertion that I, as a privileged white woman, shouldn’t have an opinion about abortion seemed frustrating at first, I realized that it’s really just a variation on the idea that men shouldn’t have an opinion on abortion either. So, I now go about responding to the charge in roughly the same format.

Step 1: Take time to affirm their concern about your privilege. You may not agree with the “white privilege” label they put on you, but you can agree with the idea that other people’s situations are different from yours. Demonstrate respect and empathy for women whose life experiences have been challenging in ways different from your own. Acknowledge your limitations; you can only truly understand your own experiences, so that does affect how you should or shouldn’t judge others. 

Step 2: Brace her for the weird question. Anytime the question of “white privilege” has entered the conversation, you can bet that the person you’re talking to has their passions running really high! You’re about to make an analogy, and you want her to actually hear you. Taking a moment to brace her for that analogy by saying something like “can I ask you kind of a weird question?” can make the difference between her storming off and the start of a productive dialogue.

Step 3: Create a parallel situation. Just like the “sitting at the lake story” for pro-life men, my simple adaptation focuses on the unique life experiences of a woman who would be considered by the “woke left” to be of less privilege than myself. It goes something like this:

Suppose that I’m sitting at the lake by myself, and I see a woman of color a bit further down the shore pushing her car into the lake. This is obviously a pretty odd scene, so I walk a bit closer until I spot a newborn in the backseat of the car. Now, I don’t know this woman’s situation at all. 

She’s a woman of color, and the car is in really bad shape. In fact, she’s a single mother whose boyfriend is wrongfully incarcerated, and she is struggling to make ends meet in a system that has made it very difficult for them to get ahead. Regardless of her circumstances or my privilege, it still seems incredibly obvious that I have a responsibility to try and save that child in the backseat. Of course, I should also try to get the woman and her boyfriend the help they need in a way that doesn’t kill anybody. As a matter of fact, it seems like I have an even greater responsibility to do that because of my privilege! Staying silent would be furthering the injustice that’s happened to that woman and her family. I’m certainly not going to judge the woman; I can’t possibly understand what she’s going through. But I am going to try to help her and the newborn in the backseat.

Notice the ideas and buzz-words that I deliberately included in this story: woman of color, poverty, incarceration, “the system,” “silence is violence,” etc. Maybe you agree with all these things and maybe you don’t, but including them in the story is a powerful way to connect with average pro-choice people. Regardless of our disagreements about anything or everything else, stopping violence against innocent people should be something we can all agree on. Through the images that these buzz-words evoke, I am working to connect what the pro-choice person already strongly believes about injustice to the injustice of abortion.

Step 4: Pull back the curtain for them and describe your logic. The logic here and in the “you’re a man” case are exactly the same! If I’m right that the human embryo is just as valuable as that newborn in the backseat, then it seems like I have an obligation to speak up against abortion. Regardless of my “white privilege,” and I would even argue especially because of my “white privilege,” I need to speak up about egregious human rights violations! Of course, all of this hinges on whether or not I’m right that the human embryo and the newborn are equally valuable, which I argue for using the Equal Rights Argument.

So, Don’t Be Afraid to Talk About It

The first time someone asserted that I can’t have an opinion about abortion because of my white privilege, I was stunned, confused, and a little bit upset. If “no uterus, no opinion” was a slogan designed to stop half the world’s population from talking about abortion, it seemed like this new charge was just trying to make another huge dent in the allowed-to-talk-about-it group. It felt like a cheap and discriminatory trick! Maybe it is for some people, but every pro-choice person I’ve ever talked to brought up that charge from a place of genuine compassion and concern for the injustice they see all around us. Simply becoming aware that they see the world that way changed everything about how I respond to accusations about my white privilege.

While I disagree with their idea that people who can’t fully understand someone else’s experiences shouldn’t be allowed to make moral judgements about their actions, I can find genuine common ground and express compassion for people whose lives, for a variety of reasons, have been very different from my own. If someone tries to stop you from discussing abortion because of your “white privilege,” acknowledge your experiences and limitations while also demonstrating that it is still your responsibility to speak up about abortion. If abortion is truly what pro-lifers believe it to be, then it is my responsibility, your responsibility, and every person on the face of this earth’s responsibility to stand up against it.

Please tweet this article!

• Tweet: But You’re a Privileged White Woman!
• Tweet: Blatantly ignoring the fact that you can’t understand the unique and difficult circumstances that women face in pregnancy is the fastest way to sabotage your own pro-life argument.
• Tweet: Demonstrating that you know that you can’t really understand how difficult an unplanned pregnancy is shows respect to the pro-choice person
• Tweet: If abortion is truly what pro-lifers believe it to be, then it is my responsibility, your responsibility, and every person on the face of this earth’s responsibility to stand up against it.

The post But You’re a Privileged White Woman! originally appeared at the Equal Rights Institute blog. Subscribe to our email list with the form below and get a FREE gift. Click here to learn more about our pro-life apologetics course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations About Abortion.”

The preceding post is the property of Emily Albrecht (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public,) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of Equal Rights Institute unless the post was written by a co-blogger or guest, and the content is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (Emily Albrecht) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show only the first three paragraphs on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

The post But You’re a Privileged White Woman! appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.

Are you a college club? Church group? Youth group? High School group? Right to Life club? Sidewalk Counseling group? Community group? 

Are you just starting out? Already have over 100 members? 

All are welcome here. We’ll meet you where you’re at and be here for every step of your journey. You’ll receive:

• One-on one, personalized mentoring from one of ERI’s Club Coaches to help your pro-life group reach its full potential.
• Free lifetime access for an unlimited number of group members to the Equipped for Life Course and Sidewalk Counseling Masterclass.
• Preferential access and discounts to ERI speakers for events.
• A set of 50 complimentary ERI Outreach Brochures to use at your club’s outreaches and/or sidewalk counseling after completion of the Equipped for Life Course.
• Private access to our library of ERI Digital Kits with tips and how-to-guides for running an active and effective pro-life group. Kit topics include:
  • Creating a Professional Club Brand
  • Recruitment & Retainment
  • Running Meetings that Keep Your Members Coming Back
  • Fundraising 101
  • Starting a Pro-Life Outreach
  • Designing Your Own Pro-Life Display
  • Your Club on Social Media 
  • Hosting a Pro-Life Speaker
  • Taking a Trip to the Abortion Facility
  • Building Relationships With Your Local Pregnancy Resource Center

For more information and to apply, visit equalrightsinstitute.com/groups 

Together, we can change minds and save lives.

The post Announcing: The ERI Affiliate Group Program appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.

This book review of After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre is part of our series of reviews of books touching on the abortion debate. For more information about this series, read our introductory article, “Why Is ERI Doing Book Reviews?”

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes

Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue is one of the seminal books of 20th century philosophy. MacIntyre documents the history of modern (read here: Renaissance and later) philosophy as it relates to a pressing question: can we use dialogue to rationally convince others and reach moral agreement?

I think it should be obvious why we think it’s valuable to review this book, given that ERI’s whole point of existing is to dialogue about a contentious moral issue and train others to do the same. However, because After Virtue is so wide-ranging, covering large swaths of philosophical and literary history to sketch out the argument that a major break occurred at the point of the Enlightenment, I’m not going to review the entire book in depth. I will instead restrain myself to those parts most relevant to dialogue.

Moral Incommensurability: Are We Just Talking Past Each Other?

MacIntyre begins his argument from a recognition of the difficulty, even the seeming futility, of modern political-moral debates. “[T]he most striking feature of the debates in which these disagreements are expressed is their interminable character…[t]here seems to be no rational way of securing moral agreement in our culture” (6). He singles out abortion as an illustrative debate, one in which people can reason validly from conflicting premises without any way to judge the premises themselves (7).

Why can’t we reach an agreement on what should be a relatively basic matter of ethics, namely the inclusion of a certain class of human persons within the bounds of the protected community? MacIntyre’s assessment is sweeping: “the language and the appearances of morality persist even though the integral substance of morality has to a large degree been fragmented and then in part destroyed” (5). This fact, that we use the language of “rights” and “morality” when such language has been deprived of content, that we argue emotively using moral terms to express disapprobation and cajole conformity, he refers to as “moral incommensurability” (70).

MacIntyre makes the case that, since the Enlightenment (and, before that, the Protestant Reformation), humanity abandoned divine law as the basis of morality, but tried to keep the basic Christian moral scheme intact (62). He views the three main attempts—by Kant, Hume, and Kierkegaard—as failing for different reasons; in fact, he holds the prime virtue of each school of thought to be pointing out the failures of the other two (49–50). Their attempts to justify Christian ethics without appealing to divine law resulted in our current emotivist discourse, in which people use terms they can’t justify (like “ought”) to bully people into accepting their views.

The modern philosopher who takes on the most importance for MacIntyre, then, is Nietzsche. Nietzsche understands the above philosophers as trying to preserve divine law without God, a scheme doomed to fail. Accordingly, he constructs a philosophy that self-consciously rejects God and the heritage of Christian ethics (113–4).

The end result of the rejection of both divine and classical moral frameworks during the Enlightenment, then, is Nietzschean philosophy. Fortunately, MacIntyre argues that we need not become Nietzscheans. Instead, he questions a fundamental premise of the Enlightenment: were we really justified in abandoning the classical philosophical framework (118–20)?

Aristotle to the Rescue: Virtue in Classical Ethics

MacIntyre holds that the modern rejection of classical morality was groundless (256). He spends multiple chapters tracing the virtues as developed in classical thought, particularly in Greek epic poetry (of which Nietzsche claims to be the modern heir) and Aristotle’s writing. For MacIntyre, Aristotle is the classical thinker par excellence, so he uses Aristotle and classical ethics interchangeably.

One issue for MacIntyre, though, is that he can’t use Aristotle’s thought exactly as Aristotle presented it; he wants to avoid commitments to what he considers faulty aspects of Aristotle’s metaphysics and anthropology (such as his defense of slavery, his metaphysical biology, the degree to which his account presumes the Greek city-state as normative, etc.) (162). Much of the remaining book is spent giving a new account of what, exactly, is a virtue. Ultimately, he defines a virtue as “an acquired human quality the possession and exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving any such goods” (191).

Virtues, then, are those things necessary in order to obtain the goods internal to an activity, the goods internal to man as man, and the goods internal to the community (182). These virtues are to be understood in the Aristotelian sense, and indeed map largely onto the Christian-appended Aristotelian virtues (prudence, magnanimity, charity, etc.) (177).

Issues in MacIntyre’s Account

MacIntyre would be the first to admit that, to cover so much ground in a single work, he had to merely sketch out some things and only gesture towards others, such that not everything is answered completely (264). Naturally, there are a few issues in a book as ambitious as After Virtue.

First, as you may notice, the account of the virtues doesn’t necessarily solve the question of moral incommensurability; just because we can give an account of the virtues within one political context doesn’t necessarily mean we can make those virtues intelligible to others in a different context. Why is this? Two political communities may have two opposed ideas of what constitutes the good of man and the good of the community, and they therefore disagree on what the virtues are and how they should be exercised. MacIntyre doesn’t provide any sort of referee in such cases, and he admits the possibility of this conflict and that it hews perilously close to moral relativism (277).

Second, MacIntyre diagnoses a problem at the outset—total moral incommensurability—but he doesn’t offer a positive solution. Instead, he offers up a somewhat dark comparison: perhaps we ought to be cultivating virtue apart from modern society so that the virtues can survive the collapse of society, much as Benedict of Nursia did in the waning days of the Roman Empire through the creation of secluded monasteries (263). This passage, at the end of the book, serves as the touchstone for Rod Dreher’s attempt to propose a distinctly Christian version of the idea (the “Benedict Option”), but, as someone trying to convince pro-choice people to change their minds about abortion, it doesn’t give me much hope. We can’t afford to abandon the pro-life struggle, but After Virtue gives little hope for success in dialogue beyond one person imposing their will on another.

The Abolition of Man as Counter and Corrective

The entire time I was reading After Virtue, I was waiting for MacIntyre to reference C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man. After all, it was published only a few decades prior, and it too addressed a world marked by the rejection of classical or “traditional” ethics.

Nor am I the only person who makes a mental connection between the two books. Michael Ward, a noted scholar of Lewis, traces an intellectual history from Lewis in The Abolition of Man to G.E.M. Anscombe in “Modern Moral Philosophy” to MacIntyre in After Virtue. I find it uncontroversial to accept an intentional, if silent, relationship among these works. Lewis and Anscombe knew one another through the Oxford Socratic Club, quite famously sparring over the “non-rationality” of naturalism as described in Lewis’ Miracles. And MacIntyre seems to be expanding on the arguments in Anscombe’s article.

What is most notable about MacIntyre’s relationship to The Abolition of Man, however, is that he declines to reference it. In fact, the only time Lewis is mentioned in After Virtue is as a witness to Jane Austen’s particularly Christian idea of the virtues (185, 240)! I appreciate Austen more than most, but The Abolition of Man is clearly the go-to citation here, not Pride and Prejudice.

Lewis’ account of natural law significantly undermines the extent of possible moral incommensurability argued for by MacIntyre. For Lewis, all true morality is connected to the natural law, and therefore anything which is not a mere innovation is recognizable as a part of that whole.

The most interesting thing for our purposes here, perhaps, is actually the appendix to The Abolition of Man. There, Lewis gives examples of moral principles which he considers to be bound up in the natural law as they have been articulated by representatives of vastly different religious, philosophical, and cultural traditions over time. The threat to MacIntyre’s account should be clear: if there are moral principles which transcend all cultures, then a) virtue cannot merely be internal to a particular political-cultural setting, and b) there seems to be, even in a culture such as ours, some accepted notion of objective right to which we can appeal.

Even if MacIntyre chose to avoid citing Lewis because it would undercut his narrative, we can supplement his arguments with Lewis as a corrective. We can reasonably conclude that moral incommensurability is a real threat, but that ethical dialogue is still possible to the extent that people (often in common sense rather than chosen philosophy) hold onto the classical morality considered to be bound up in ideas of natural law. With the objective morality of natural law as a backstop, we need not worry about descending into moral relativism.

Crucially, even if MacIntyre’s assessment of the way forward—tactical retreat and cultivation of virtues in a “Benedict option”—is largely correct, the fact that there are at least some limited points of ethical agreement which remain allows us to continue to fight for ethical truth in a society which has largely abandoned a belief in objective morality.

In summary: MacIntyre’s strongest point, like the philosophers he detracts, might be articulating the problems with everyone else’s philosophy. He does that with clarity and force. He then moves to recover a particular version of classical ethics, a virtue ethics which has been highly influential in the decades since the publication of After Virtue. His decision to point back to pre-Enlightenment thought, even as he is clearly influenced by modern and postmodern thinkers, opens the possibility that we can recover something we shouldn’t have discarded in the first place.

MacIntyre casts doubt on our ability to actually convince people through rational arguments because we lack a shared moral framework. Following Lews, I counter that natural law provides an inescapable framework, one which is implicitly accepted in part by nearly all people. We may be unable to reach substantial moral agreement because people increasingly reject more aspects of the natural law (and therefore we have less in common), but we can still dialogue within areas like unwarranted killing, about which there is nearly universal commitment to moral principles. That is to say, it’s still possible to convince people about abortion using reason. Accordingly, while conversations about abortion will remain difficult absent a substantial moral consensus, they are not hopeless.

This review was done based on the Second Edition of After Virtue; the Third Edition can be purchased on Amazon, or you can choose from multiple editions, as available, at Thriftbooks.

Please tweet this article!

• Tweet: Review: After Virtue

The post Review: After Virtue originally appeared at the Equal Rights Institute blog. Subscribe to our email list with the form below and get a FREE gift. Click here to learn more about our pro-life apologetics course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations About Abortion.”

The preceding post is the property of Andrew Kaake (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public,) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of Equal Rights Institute unless the post was written by a co-blogger or guest, and the content is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (Andrew Kaake) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show only the first three paragraphs on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

The post Review: After Virtue appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.

Name-calling isn’t new. It’s been a classic bullying and teasing tactic amongst children for centuries, and while our education system tries to eradicate such childish behavior before adulthood, we’ve clearly failed on this one. If you’ve sneaked a peek at any social media website, you’ve certainly noticed that adults show about as much maturity as your average middle schooler in this department. The abortion debate, in particular, brings out the worst in people, and you can find a whole host of names and labels being thrown around from “anti-life” and “baby killers” on the one hand to “anti-woman” and “forced-birthers” on the other. 

While few pro-choice people are actually using terms like “forced-birthers,” many have adopted the term “anti-choice” in order to avoid referring to us as standing for life. Many pro-life people have decided to reclaim the term in response, openly embracing their view as being “anti-the-choice-to-kill” or something like that. A few weeks ago, we received a comment on our YouTube Channel pointing out precisely that:

This comment really got me thinking: How should we respond when someone calls us “anti-choice?” When is it helpful to debate labels, and when is it really just a distraction from the issue at hand?

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

Labels Can’t Get You Very Far

In case you haven’t noticed, our brains love labels. Labeling people, objects, places, or literally anything else helps us to organize our thoughts and reactions by categorizing things as being like or unlike other things we’ve previously come into contact with. This is incredibly helpful for organization and memorization in our brains, but incredibly unhelpful for nuance. Our brain’s natural inclination to slap a nametag on everything and everyone causes us to judge books by their covers and come to unfounded conclusions about the people we meet. There’s a fairly recent trend in the education system that helps growing children understand the harm that labels have on others and encourages them to never let the labels others put on them “define them.” As a product of a teacher education program myself, I spent hours reading about how children internalize the labels we put on them and learn to live up to those expectations as the “slow-learner,” “genius,” or “class clown.” One of the worst things I could do for my students’ development would be to openly label my students like that. 

But no matter how much we learn about how unhelpful and even harmful labeling can be, we still do it all the time to both ourselves and others. Thus, we must learn to see past labels, utilizing them for their helpful effects but moving beyond them to uncover the uniqueness of each person as quickly as possible. We must recognize that labels, even self-selected ones, are ambiguous and confusing, and people are far more complicated than the terms they’ll use to describe themselves. In conversations about abortion, for example, the word “pro-choice” actually tells me precious little about what someone believes. Think about it: if someone’s Twitter profile says “I’m pro-choice,” what do I actually know about her? She believes that at least one type of abortion should be available as a legal choice for at least some women at at least one time during the pregnancy for at least one reason. That’s so unspecific! She might think that all types of abortion should be available for any woman who wants one at any time during the pregnancy, or she might think that abortion should only be available for women who are survivors of rape or incest during the first trimester. Those are drastically different views, and I’ve met both of those self-identified “pro-choice” people in real life! Just reading “I’m pro-choice” on someone’s Twitter profile tells me nothing about what she actually thinks or what is driving her view.

Labels can not only be ambiguous and refer to wildly different views, but they can also be used “inaccurately.” I’ve seen many a self-identified pro-life person get lambasted on social media for saying that they’re pro-life but think there should be an exception that allows for abortion in cases of rape and incest. “If you’re not against all abortions, then you’re not really pro-life” they’ll say, usually in a much more derogatory and ALL-CAPS WAY. All of this to say: labels on both sides of the abortion debate are confusing, unhelpful, misused, and easily misunderstood. Maybe that person shouldn’t be calling themselves “pro-life,” or maybe the person who is for all abortions at all times should be called “pro-abortion.” 

But let me be frank: I don’t really care. I’m not here to debate labels. I am here to foster better dialogue about abortion and save lives. I have way bigger fish to fry than caring what people call themselves; I care what you think about abortion, not what syllables you slam together to vaguely identify your viewpoint. If someone brings up a label in our conversation, I’m going to use it to point me in the right direction and then assume nothing more. If someone says they’re pro-choice, I’m going to start asking clarification questions to better understand what’s going on for them. It will do me zero good to start making pro-life arguments if I don’t understand why they’re pro-choice in the first place. My questions might include:

• “I’ve heard a lot of different people say ‘I’m pro-choice’ but mean drastically different things by that, and I want to make sure I understand you. Can you help me out here—what does being pro-choice mean to you?”
• “Do you think that abortions should be available during all nine months of pregnancy? Or should there be a cut-off somewhere?”
• “Do you think that abortions should be available for any reason? Or are there certain reasons we should make illegal, like an abortion because the fetus has Down Syndrome or because the fetus is a girl and that family doesn’t think girls are as valuable as boys?”

Only once I understand a bit more about how they think and what’s actually driving their view can I make a pro-life argument that will resonate with them. In order to be as effective as possible, I need to move past whatever label they used as quickly as possible and get to the meat of the issue.

But What About Derogatory Labels like “Anti-Choice”?

You might be thinking: “Okay, that’s all fine and good, but you’re talking about the term ‘pro-choice’ here. That’s a widely accepted term that pro-choice people use to identify themselves. That is way different from something like ‘anti-choice,’ which is specifically designed to throw negative PR at the pro-life movement. We should certainly care and not just move on when someone does that!”

Yes, I do care. But I care far less about myself getting offended and way more about what’s driving their decision to call me “anti-choice” in the first place. Remember: my goal here is to have the conversation. Minds and hearts change because of conversations, not slogans, and so it’s a waste of valuable time to focus on the label rather than figure out what’s going on under the surface. If someone calls me “anti-choice,” I do know one thing about them: they probably have a pretty negative view of pro-lifers since the term itself implies that we’re denying rights and choices to women. Thus, that’s probably the place I’m going to start. I might reply with something like: 

“It sounds like you care a lot about this issue! By using the word “anti-choice,” it seems like your view is that abortion should be an available choice for women, which people like me are trying to wrongfully restrict. Am I understanding you correctly? Don’t worry, you can’t offend me; I’d much rather have an honest conversation where I can understand your views than have us censoring what we think and not actually getting anywhere.”

Notice how I’m not attacking the use of the derogatory label; instead, I’m using it as a tool to start a conversation and dig a little deeper into what’s driving their view. After I’ve discovered their underlying assumptions and we’ve fully explored those, and after I’ve built rapport that challenged the caricature of the pro-life movement they had in their head, I might bring the conversation back to that label that started it all. It might be a hundred messages or an hour later, and that’s okay. It’s not that I’m never willing to discuss labels; I just don’t think they’re my number one priority in a conversation. So if the pro-choice person and I have built the rapport to go there, then let’s dive right in.

“Anti-Choice” is Blatantly Inaccurate

Let me be clear: I am not against people being able to make choices. I am saying that women shouldn’t get an abortion—that getting an abortion isn’t something she should have a right to do—and that is not the same thing as being opposed to women making choices.

We know that abortion kills a human organism, and I believe that all human organisms are persons. Pretty much everyone agrees that killing innocent persons is always wrong except sometimes in cases like self-defense. So, if I’m right that abortion kills a person, and if I’m right that it can’t qualify as self-defense, then abortion shouldn’t be a legitimate option. Thus, I’m arguing that we should take away an illegitimate option; we should take abortion off the table of legitimate options, just like we have taken murder and rape off the table of legitimate options. Defining these options as unacceptable is very different from being against people making choices or forcing people to choose a certain option. 

Consider this thought experiment courtesy of my colleague Andrew: a man tells you, at gunpoint, that you have to get ice cream from the soft-serve machine. He doesn’t care whether you get chocolate or vanilla, but you have to get one. I come along right then and take off the handle for the chocolate ice cream side. I happen to know that, if you pull the handle to get chocolate ice cream, it would poison one of your relatives who you’ve never met, so I take off the handle for the chocolate ice cream side. You shout at me, “How dare you! You’re forcing me to get vanilla ice cream! Are you opposed to me making my own choices?” Doesn’t that seem ridiculous? I haven’t made you choose vanilla, even though I took away your only other ice cream option; the guy with a GUN is forcing you to choose vanilla! I’m not forcing you to do anything, and I’m actually saving the life of one of your relatives. If there were three ice cream flavors available to you, and I took away the chocolate ice cream handle because it would poison one of your relatives, I wouldn’t care if you chose vanilla or whatever other flavor is there. I have absolutely no problem with people making choices; I just don’t think that killing should be an option on the table. 

In pregnancy, there are only two options available. You can either allow the fetus to exist in your womb for nine months, at which point you don’t have to have any further legal obligation to it if you don’t want to, or you can have the fetus killed through an abortion. Perhaps it’s unfortunate that there are only those two options; it would be really cool if we had the ability to Star-Trek-beam the fetus into an artificial womb so that the woman wouldn’t have to be pregnant anymore and the fetus wouldn’t be killed. I would at least be willing to entertain the idea if we had that technology, but we just don’t. So her only options in pregnancy are to allow the human to exist in her womb or to kill the human, and I believe that killing another innocent human is wrong—the kind of wrong that should be illegal. 

Thus, “anti-choice” really isn’t an accurate representation of my viewpoint; it’s more like I am “anti-killing-being-a-legal-option” or “anti-abortion-as-an-available-choice.” I know that’s not exactly catchy to say, but it’s a much fairer label for my position.

So, Should We Reclaim “Anti-Choice” or Not?

The short answer? I don’t think so. I’m not going to go around calling myself “anti-choice” on purpose because I don’t think it’s true! But I’m also not going to make a big fuss if someone calls me “anti-choice.” Instead, I’m going to use it as an opportunity to start a conversation, get to know what’s driving their view, help them understand what’s driving mine, and ultimately graciously demonstrate why “anti-choice” isn’t actually an accurate representation of what pro-lifers like me believe about abortion. It’s not that I’m never willing to debate labels or try to change the culture about what labels we use. I’m just far more concerned about discussing the real issue—that unborn humans are being legally killed on a daily basis—than about getting offended by the things people call me. Learning how to have better conversations about abortion thanks to resources like our Equipped for Life Course will have a far greater effect in changing the culture than battling labels alone. So don’t get caught up in the labeling and name-calling; diving beneath the surface of their view is a much more effective use of your time.

Please tweet this article!

• Tweet: I Don’t Care What You Call Me: Responding to “Anti-Choice”
• Tweet: Our brain’s natural inclination to slap a nametag on everything and everyone causes us to judge books by their covers and come to unfounded conclusions about the people we meet.
• Tweet: Just reading “I’m pro-choice” on someone’s Twitter profile tells me nothing about what she actually thinks or what is driving her view.
• Tweet: Minds and hearts change because of conversations, not slogans, and so it’s a waste of valuable time to focus on the label rather than figure out what’s going on under the surface.

The post I Don’t Care What You Call Me: Responding to “Anti-Choice” originally appeared at the Equal Rights Institute blog. Subscribe to our email list with the form below and get a FREE gift. Click here to learn more about our pro-life apologetics course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations About Abortion.”

The preceding post is the property of Emily Albrecht (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public,) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of Equal Rights Institute unless the post was written by a co-blogger or guest, and the content is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (Emily Albrecht) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show only the first three paragraphs on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

The post I Don’t Care What You Call Me: Responding to “Anti-Choice” appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

One deeply unfortunate requirement for publishing useful online content is staying informed of current events. I generally despise the modern news media—not even primarily for its ideological slant, but because the constant churn of the “news cycle” and the need for more negative fuel is partially responsible for making those who watch it become worse people.

Fittingly, one of the places this is most evident is in the comment sections of online publications, particularly those which address politics. If news media itself attracts shrill demagogues, the comment section is home to screeching sycophants. If the publication in question has any ideological inclination, commenters largely consist of the most vitriolic elements of that base and provocateurs from the opposition.

My days as a keyboard warrior are behind me. I generally consider comment-section arguments in general to be nearly worthless, and this is most true of comment sections on news publications. Although I haven’t commented in ages, I still read comments too often, either to look for people to agree with my thoughts (a rare occurrence) or because I dislike myself and apparently desire needless emotional harm (much more frequent).

In this case, I delved into the comment section of an article for research. I’m cynical by nature, and believe comment sections are cesspools, but I was surprised by just how awful the comments I discovered proved to be. This was the worst comment section I’d seen, but I have no reason to believe it is particularly atypical or that it doesn’t represent our partisan furor accurately.

I’m going to respond to several screenshots from the article in question, and along the way I hope to provide some tips for those who want to engage with others on the internet. Again, it’s bad and uncensored, so consider this your warning before you proceed.

Online Comment Vitriol Is Shaped and Signaled by the Title

Townhall is a very right-of-center news site, so we can already guess the general sympathies of the commenters. People often self-select into echo chambers; while algorithmic Facebook feeds may have accelerated this process, it is no new phenomenon. That also incentivizes the site to publish articles with both content and voice which panders to its audience (because that’s how they get paid).

Without posting any of the article content (link here), we can see that the title is fairly incendiary. Now, to be fair, the claims in the article are the sort of thing that should anger people, if true; I’m less bothered than the average reader because I’m already aware of unethical experimentation from my background in bioethics. But the use of the word “scandal” in particular signals that people ought to be outraged, to be scandalized. Seeing this word, before you’ve read anything in the article, tells you that something happened which was deeply wrong, that other people are angry, and that you’d better be angry, too.

I don’t want to address the claims of the article because I would have to vet the paper trail; suffice it to say, the author provides several links to evidence which a dedicated reader can judge for themselves. My point is that the content is irrelevant, in some sense, to the effect that this title has on the reader and on those who choose to comment.

The Best Approach to Comment Sections is to Avoid Them

Let me show you the moment I made my error:

You see that button? The one labeled “Show Comments”? Don’t click that button.

In some instances, an online comment section can promote reasoned engagement with the content of an article and different arguments about a subject. If you find a site where that occurs (we aim to be such a site), feel free to comment. Otherwise, don’t even view the comments. You will not benefit—intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, or in the development of virtue—by reading stream-of-consciousness rants about how evil one side is and what should happen to people who think like them.

Furthermore, if you choose to engage in the comments, you must not yourself participate in the vitriol (tempting though it may be). Once you comment publicly on something, you are not merely a private individual with an opinion, but a public representative of “the sort of people who believe X.” Whether that’s fair or not, it’s reality. You’re probably not going to convince online trolls, but you may be able to positively impact a silent third party reading what you wrote.

Online Comments Generally Don’t Display the Best Arguments

Even in a relatively benign comment section, you are unlikely to encounter the strongest arguments for either side of an issue. The commenters above technically agree with the author, but they manage to use two of the worst pro-life arguments in the span of two comments. Not only does the first commenter reference the Holocaust—not a winning rhetorical move—but both commenters use the Beethoven Argument, which actually benefits the pro-choice position. Furthermore, in these and following comments, you will find an unhelpful invocation of God as the vehicle for the commenter’s wrath.

There are much better arguments about why what was alleged in that article is wrong if it happened. But if you’re unaware of better arguments and you read these comments, you might believe that this kind of argumentation represents pro-life thinkers. If you want to engage the best ideas, engage with the content itself; look for what the authors actually think, and pay attention to how they say it. Be willing to call out bad comments on your own side; you can point out that you’re on the same side, but that they’re making a bad argument and there’s a better way to say the point they’re trying to make. And don’t judge a position by the quality of the commenters arguing for it.

Internet Anonymity Provides an Outlet for Cruelty

The next few images show what actual people chose to write on the internet about what should be done to other people, Fauci in particular.

I don’t really care what your views on capital punishment, just war, and justified revolution are: suggesting that political opponents be killed in an intentionally brutal manner on live television is morally damaging to the person who makes the suggestion. Harboring that kind of flippant hatred turns you into what you hate: the people in this thread participate in the dehumanization of others because of their actions or beliefs.

The commenter “joe” deserves special mention. Let’s begin with his avatar. Put aside the whole debate about the confederate flag itself; this guy is going out of his way to be racist (and invokes God as a party to it). Historically, people have primarily been this boldly racist when wearing white robes at night. The internet, with the illusion of anonymity, changed that.

His hashtag manages to draw on opposition to another famous hashtag while targeting tens of millions of his fellow countrymen for subhuman status. After all, the claim that a creature’s life “doesn’t matter” is the same as saying it is not a person and lacks serious moral status. It’s important to distinguish this from saying that someone’s life is forfeit based on his evil actions (such as an assailant killed in self-defense). Someone whose life is forfeit is being treated as a person whose life matters and whose life is being deprived precisely because the criminal is treated as a competent moral agent able to understand and pay the consequences of his actions.

Finally, “joe” proposes mass violence against pro-choice people; not merely abortion practitioners, mind you, but all people who support legal abortion. His statement literally boils down to “make people pay for their wrong beliefs with their life and maybe they’ll reconsider.” It boils down to what John Locke decried as men being “compelled by fire and the sword to profess certain doctrines.”

I can tell you that “joe” is not representative of pro-life people. But, honestly, a pro-choice person looking at those comments and the responses from people supportive of his garbage can’t be expected to believe me. Pro-choice people could be forgiven for thinking that “joe” and those like him are the id of the pro-life movement; as if they said what pro-life people really believe but suppress because it’s not socially acceptable.

I don’t necessarily recommend engaging in comment sections. But, if you choose to do so, know that it’s valuable to provide a visible pro-life presence that isn’t like “joe.” You’ll probably get negative comments from the trolls, but your goal isn’t to change their mind; you’re providing proof that there are sane people who believe what you believe. You’re convincing the people scrolling through without commenting that good people can think like you do.

This is one large cost of irresponsible people pecking nonsense on their keyboards: they are an impediment to what they profess. How much good pro-life work, how much hard-earned goodwill, would be neutralized in an instant if CNN displayed a screenshot of these comments in a segment on the abortion debate?

Bad Commenters Belong to All Sides

I’m being hard on the conservative commenters because they deserve it, and there are more of their comments to select because there are more of them. But we shouldn’t pretend for a moment that this is a distinctly conservative problem. I could provide better evidence by appealing to actual tweets by liberals or marxists, or to comment sections from their publications, but I’m artificially restraining myself to this comment section in this article as a case study.

“Martin” and “HandsomeMrToad” are apparently regulars here, and they belong to a subgroup I’ll politely call “pot-stirrers.” They’re trolls trying to get a rise out of all of the people I highlighted above. They incentivize and enjoy the nonsense coming from the other commenters. In other words, they’re no better, even if they sometimes posture as if they are.

These comments don’t promote real discussion. They’re not particularly well thought-out; just ask Marco Rubio how effective it is to sink to Trump’s level and sling insults at the former president. The last comment is ethical nonsense, presenting a viewpoint that a technology’s inevitability (usually overstated as such) implies its legitimacy, and that religious or conservative people need to accept it and get out of the way of progress.

Your Time Is Valuable—Don’t Waste It in Online Comment Sections

You have a finite amount of time available in a given day or week. It’s best to spend it on things which benefit you in some way. Comment sections are often actively detrimental. They can cause you to see the worst elements of each side as normative, to make you think in terms of the worst arguments around an issue, and—most importantly—they actively facilitate the “othering” or dehumanization of the other side. You are unlikely to convince those who inhabit comment sections, but you can do a lot to damage your witness if you sink to their level.

• If you choose to engage in the comment section, remember these tips:
• Your goal is to convince bystanders that pro-life people have good arguments and that most of us are reasonable, normal people with functioning moral compasses
• Call out bad arguments on “your side” so people are exposed to the good arguments for what you believe
• Understand that you will take heat from the trolls, and probably also from those who disagree with you
• Set a limit on your engagement; don’t invest serious time, have a hard limit on the number of comments you write, and stop before it takes a toll on you

There are many pro-life activities which offer a better return on the investment of your time. Go to coffee with a friend and talk about important issues, like abortion, instead of superficial topics. Read the best advocates for each perspective, and minimize unhelpful reading, including of the news. Learn how to engage with other people through content like the Equipped for Life Course. Volunteer at a pregnancy resource center. Don’t waste your time on angry comments.

Please tweet this article!

• Tweet: Comment Sections: Becoming What You Hate
• Tweet: If news media itself attracts shrill demagogues, the comment section is home to screeching sycophants
• Tweet: This was the worst comment section I’d seen, but I have no reason to believe it is particularly atypical or that it doesn’t represent our partisan furor accurately
• Tweet: How much good pro-life work, how much hard-earned goodwill, would be neutralized in an instant if CNN displayed a screenshot of these comments in a segment on the abortion debate?

The post Comment Sections: Becoming What You Hate originally appeared at the Equal Rights Institute blog. Subscribe to our email list with the form below and get a FREE gift. Click here to learn more about our pro-life apologetics course, “Equipped for Life: A Fresh Approach to Conversations About Abortion.”

The preceding post is the property of Andrew Kaake (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public,) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of Equal Rights Institute unless the post was written by a co-blogger or guest, and the content is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (Andrew Kaake) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show only the first three paragraphs on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.

The post Comment Sections: Becoming What You Hate appeared first on Equal Rights Institute Blog - Clear Pro-Life Thinking.