Teach your teens to debate on abortion
Practical and intellectual rebuttals that will stump pro-choice talking points
There’s no avoiding the conversation with kids who have their finger on the pulse of cultural conversations – and teens with access to a smartphone or social media have probably been hearing a lot about abortion lately.
In early May, the Supreme Court of the United States confirmed the authenticity of a leaked opinion draft written by Justice Samuel Alito. The draft indicated that the highest court in the land is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, a 1973 Supreme Court ruling that enables abortion to be protected as a right on the federal level.
Since Roe v. Wade was implemented in the 70s, the National Right to Life Committee revealed in January 2022 that more than 63 million infants have been killed in the womb. Like it or not, abortion is happening in America – and it’s happening by the millions.
How do Christian parents talk to their kids about this incredibly tough topic? How do they prepare their kids to rebut cultural talking points that they will hear from peers and teachers about “women’s rights” or “reproductive rights?”
Let’s take a look at a few powerful and simple ways parents can equip their tweens and teens to stand firm for life in the womb while having a respectful and loving conversation with pro-abortion advocates.
Teach your children to reason
Biblical truth is the most important thing that you can teach your children – but Biblical knowledge without practical skills to apply it will yield no fruit. It is imperative to teach your children how to converse with those who advocate for abortion without dumping mere statistics and figures on them from the get-go.
Of course, statistics and figures matter. But kids, like adults, tend to argue emotionally, and so it is often more impactful to make a logical statement instead. Pro-life apologist Scot Klusendorf contends that an intellectual grounding is necessary to make a strong argument against abortion, because the entire issue hinges on one very important question: what exactly is the unborn?
Klusendorf’s book, The Case for Life, is a helpful resource for parents who are looking to understand valuable and practical advice in the abortion debate that they can share with their kids. Remember, teaching your kids to defend the unborn begins with a right understanding of what the unborn is, and why it matters when a fetus is terminated.
Separating science from religion
A common rebuke against pro-life advocates by proponents of abortion is that, “I respect religious convictions, but keep your religion out of my medical decisions.” It’s important to ground your child in the truth of the Bible, which clearly tells us that all humans are created in Imago Deo, that is, the image of God (Genesis 1:27). However, for the non-Christian, this argument holds no water. Before you can bring the conviction of the Bible into the conversation, you must first make a logical argument.
How do you do that? For starters, give your child information about basic embryology, which contends that life begins at the moment of fertilization. It’s also helpful to bring up the fact that the stages of development have no moral bearing on a human’s worth. Just because a baby is dependent on their mother at nine months old outside of the womb doesn’t make them any less valuable inside the womb. Remind your child that the onus is not on them to defend why a baby shouldn’t be killed in the womb – the onus is on the pro-abortion supporter to defend why someone should kill a baby in the womb (Relatable host Allie Beth Stuckey has a really good argument about that as well). Teach your child to routinely kick back the burden of explanation to the person who is arguing for killing the child, because it will be very difficult for them to logically reason that out without introducing distracting arguments.
Syllogisms will come in handy
Here’s a handy piece of advice that will give your kids the upper hand when they’re faced with debating friends or peers on the topic of abortion. Syllogisms can knock a pro-abortion advocate off their feet really quickly. What is a syllogism? It’s a form of deductive reasoning, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, and it consists of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion.
Abortion advocates will use illogical statements like, “Abortion is a right because women have value.” They are separating abortion from women’s rights and making a non-existent connection from two totally isolated issues.
Kids can rebuke bad logic like this by bringing good logic to the table. A syllogism they can use might look something like this: Murdering another human is wrong. An unborn child is human (abortion advocates will argue about this). If murder is wrong, and abortion involves the murder of a human, therefore, abortion is wrong.
Many pro-abortion arguments do not logically hold up. Equip your kids with logical, leading questions and premises that they can pose when they are debating the opposite side of the aisle on this issue and it will throw abortion proponents off their game in a major way.
Focus on the baby
Perhaps the most important thing to tell your kids to prepare them to debate secular abortion advocates is to keep the focus on the baby. Pro-choicers will routinely distract from their bad logic and their weak position on the issue by deflecting. They will bring up “reproductive rights” and “maternal mortality rates.” They will say how barbaric it is for women who have conceived children in rape to be “forced to give birth” to those children. First, let your children know that it’s okay to express sympathy for these women (Scot Klusendorf, again, presents some valuable information on this!). Yes, it’s terrible when a woman dies in childbirth and it is a tragedy when someone is raped. However, that is not the issue at stake in the argument of abortion: the argument is regarding the personhood of the baby. Always, always bring the conversation back to the child. Because if the child is human, then terminating its life has savage repercussions for humanity, and it will greatly convict the heart of the person your kid is debating.
To save the babies, impress upon your child that the argument is all about the baby. Don’t get distracted by someone’s chaotic or unorganized talking points about women’s rights or the tyranny of the patriarchy. That’s not the debate.
Anyone who attempts to flip the debate to these outside topics are doing so because 1) they are regurgitating what they have heard in the media and they cannot form a cohesive argument outside of those talking points or 2) they know they cannot win the debate, so they are devolving into attempting to distract you.
Both signify something important: they are losing the argument.
Why women don’t factor into the debate
A red herring is a statement or an argument that draws attention away from the primary matter being discussed. As I brought up before, anyone who attempts to deviate from the conversation of the personhood of the fetus while debating the topic of abortion is doing so because they are either misunderstanding the debate or because they are losing the debate.
Women’s rights, maternal mortality rates, rape, and issues of back-alley abortions are not the issue here. Those are separate moral and societal problems on their own. Abortion is its own issue. When we talk about abortion, we are talking about ending a pregnancy. The circumstances surrounding how that pregnancy began are not what’s being debated – what is being debated are the moral ramifications of terminating a fetus that, if human, constitutes murder.
It is very, very important to understand – and to impart to your child – that abortion itself actually has nothing to do with the body of the mother. Rather, the entire argument itself is centered on the question of whether or not the baby is human.
And if the baby is human, what are the moral repercussions for killing an infant?
Either babies are human or they’re not.
Either killing them is murder or it isn’t.
Either women can justify it or they can’t.
If they cannot, the consequences of such a miscalculation are pretty savage.
Either humanity is valuable, or it isn’t.
These are the questions that you can train your children to be prepared to thrust in the face of their opponents in a loving but firm way.
I actually used this argument verbatim recently in a long-winded Twitter conversation I had with a proponent of abortion. Her response: “Bottom line women have value and you can’t impose your religious beliefs on others.”
Here, you can see that she made a statement about the intrinsic value of women, which was not what we were discussing. Second, she assumed that my stance on abortion was because of a religious conviction, which also did not come up in our conversation at all. Proponents of abortion will always, always deflect.
In our debate, this woman also made rash statements like: “Rapists will have more rights than women” (if Roe v. Wade is repealed).
This is a red herring. It has no place in the argument – not to mention the fact that it is totally untrue. Bring the argument back to the issue at stake: the personhood of the unborn baby. That’s what it’s all about.
(Interestingly, I have been debating people for over a week on issues of abortion because of a response I shared with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and journalist Tim Pool regarding Tesla’s abortion stance…see original tweet below).
Conclusion
Your teen’s and your own argument against abortion is only as strong as the intellectual grounding it stands upon. As a Christian, a Biblical worldview will naturally influence your position on the subject. However, it is imperative to remember that a Biblical argument will not convict a secular proponent of abortion. Therefore, it is imperative to become well-versed in intellectual debate techniques that are rooted in sound philosophical ideas and solid scientific evidence.
Many Christians get this wrong, in my opinion. They try to argue for the personhood of a child by approaching an atheist, for example, with the immediate statement that man is made in the image of God and is therefore valuable.
Is that true? Yes.
But does an atheist or someone with a worldview outside of Christianity care about that? Absolutely not.
First, attack their argument with intellectualism. Use logical reasoning. Pose leading and important questions that will force them to examine the steps they took to land in the position they are in now.
Second, don’t be afraid to cede on issues that require it, like expressing sympathy for victims of rape or a woman who dies in childbirth.
But don’t ever, ever allow the conversation to steer away from the primary issue at hand: whether or not the unborn child is human.
Resources
I really can’t say enough about how much I’ve learned about “pro-life apologetics” from Scot Klusendorf. He’s a brilliant communicator and I highly, highly recommend checking out his website and work.
If you’re looking for great content to share with your kids about abortion information and data, check out these archives. Tons of good stuff.
Get your kids hooked up with this amazing organization. They will have opportunities to advocate for life and network with like-minded people in their own age group.