What are the pre-born?

Part One of Stuck: A Complete Guide To Answering Tough Questions About Abortion covers how to bridge the conversational gap between talking about the difficult circumstances that can often surround an unplanned pregnancy to speaking about the fundamental question of the abortion debate: What are the pre-born?

If pre-born children are not living human beings, no justification for abortion is necessary. However, if they are living human beings, no difficult circumstance can justify ending their lives. When we arrive at the point in a conversation where we are discussing the humanity of the pre-born child, we and the people we are speaking with often reach the mutual understanding of what, exactly, we disagree on. We agree that difficult circumstances don’t justify killing human beings, but we do not agree on the point that pre-born children are human beings. This is the point that we need to prove, and as STUCK points out, it’s not as difficult as we might think:

Conversations about abortion often come to a stand-still once we get to the point where we must agree on the nature of the pre-born. It is here that we employ the human rights argument, which consists of four of the most important questions we will ever ask:

                        1. Do you believe in human rights?

                        2. Who should have human rights?

                        3. If two human beings reproduce, what will their offspring be?

                        4. If something is growing, isn’t it alive?

Part Two goes through each of these questions in detail, explaining the importance of emphasizing the common ground most members of our society have—a belief in fundamental human rights. One of the testimonies recorded in this chapter shows just how simple such a conversation can be:

“Did you know that abortion is legal through all nine months of pregnancy in Canada?” I (Cana Méndez Campos) asked a teenage girl.

“No!” she said, shocked. “I didn’t know that. I don’t agree with abortion when the baby is older. But in the first couple weeks, I don’t really see the problem with it.”

“Do you believe in human rights?”

“Of course!”

“And who should get human rights?”

“Humans.”

“If two human beings reproduce, what species are their offspring?”

She hesitated. “Human, I guess.”

“Then doesn’t it follow that abortion is a human rights violation?” I finished.

Her eyes widened. “Yes, yes it does!” she said, nodding. “It’s not okay to kill a child, I get that now.”

The Human Rights Argument is powerful—there isn’t a member of staff or intern alumni at CCBR that has not used these questions successfully, changing someone’s mind from pro-life to pro-choice. STUCK explains the argument thoroughly so that you can use it to—and have the same incredible results.

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