In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Trent Horn to discuss the claim that abortion is no one else’s business and why that argument fails.
Transcript:
Caller: I’m not pro-abortion, but I’m not necessarily pro-life either. Would I tell somebody to get an abortion if they asked me? No, I wouldn’t. You know, I’d say, you know, well, I would keep it, but is that my decision to make for somebody else? No. So I guess can you see why I’m, like, kind of struggling with this?
Trent: Yeah, I see. I see where you’re struggling a little bit, Whitney. Like, for example, we homeschool our children, but I wouldn’t tell other people, hey, you have to homeschool your child. That may not be the best fit for them, but I could tell them, hey, you can’t whip your kid with a belt so hard that they’re bleeding and left with black and blue bruises and they can barely walk. Like, I, I’m, you know, you can leave parents and people with some latitude in their personal decisions, but there’s certain bright lines they just can’t cross. And I think hurting children should be one of them that you can’t say, even if it’s your personal choice. You can’t do that if it harms another human being. So I think that would kind of flow over into the issue of abortion for me. What do you think of that?
Caller: Yeah, I agree with that. I guess so. I guess my whole thing is morally, I think abortion is wrong. I would never do that myself, but legally, I guess, I guess it’s an option. I don’t think it shouldn’t be an option. I know there, you know, before it was legal, there was a lot of women dying as well as babies, because they’re going to do it no matter what, you know, and it’s like, well, let me.
Trent: Whitney, let me jump in on this. There’s two issues here, a factual issue and a moral issue. So from a factual perspective, the claims that thousands of women were dying from illegal abortions prior to Roe versus Wade is actually false. Bernard Nathanson, who is an abortion provider who became pro-life, he passed away a few years ago. He said that we made those numbers up in order to facilitate our movement.
We. Mary Calderon, who was the president of Planned Parenthood back in, like, 1960, said that 90% of illegal abortions are done in doctor’s offices. Maybe there were 200 illegal abortion deaths in 1960. In 1972, there were something like 37 deaths from illegal abortion and 25 deaths from legal abortion. But I think that any death from abortion is tragic, whether it’s legal or illegal or it’s the mother or the child. But to me, the answer is not making it legal to kill the child. We should protect both. Otherwise, we’ve got a little less than a million children whose lives are ended every year in our country. So that’s the concern I have, is that if this child is a human being, we ought to treat them humanely.
Now, let me ask you a question, though, because I understand your concern. Like, yeah, things are bad, but not everything that’s bad should be illegal. And I agree with that. But here’s my question for you. How bad does something have to be before we need to make it illegal? Like, when do you cross the line that a bad thing becomes so bad it ought to be illegal?
Caller: Right. And that’s where it’s hard. I mean, so is there a stance? Because, like, so maybe I’m not pro-choice so much as I’m. Maybe. Hopefully there’s a better option.
Trent: A better option.
Caller: Right. Like, I know, I know there was a previous caller talking about the Plan B, and I’m not. I’m not totally up on that. Although it’s similar to, like, birth control, where just, you know, I don’t agree with people using that as a birth control. But it’s like, in the cases of rape and stuff, if that’s a better option than just to, oh, well, abortion.
Trent: Well, in the case of rape, here’s the thing. The Catholic Church teaches that contraception is a sin because every marital act, every sexual act between husband and wife has to be open to life, just as every sexual act has to be faithful, which is why adultery is always wrong. Every act has to be open to life. You don’t have to be always aiming to have a child. You just have to be open. You can’t sterilize the act with contraception.
Now what? The ethical and religious directives for Catholic health care providers. So this is the manual for Catholic hospitals. It says that in the case of rape, when you use something like Plan B, that’s not the sin of contraception. That’s just preventing the rapist’s attack from continuing. So you can use Plan B to keep a rapist’s sperm from, you know, from fertilizing a woman’s egg; you’re just keeping the rape from essentially continuing. But to use it either as a contraceptive or as an abortive patient and a child’s life, that would be killing an innocent human being. It would be a grave matter.
So I do appreciate that you are open-minded to this and I’m very grateful that you’ve embraced the Catholic faith. What I would like to do is I’d like you to stay on the line. I would like to send you, I’ll send you two books. One is my book *Why We’re Catholic*, which is always a great primer for someone who’s new to the faith. And the other one is my book *Persuasive Pro-Life*, and it has everything I write in there about abortion. And then you could always call back if you have questions about that. But do you have any other thoughts or questions for me that you’d like to sort out or anything else?
Caller: Well, yeah, it’s just basically that I just on a political stance, I’m pro-choice, I guess, because for me it’s an out of sight, out of mind. But now being Catholic, you know, I wonder if that is that completely wrong because, you know, we’re supposed to love one another. We’re all brothers and sisters.
Trent: You know, well, think about it. This, Whitney, Jesus said, what you do for the least of my brethren, you do for me. And I would say unborn children are easily the least among us. And so what we do for them is indicative of what we do for Christ. I mean, in the early church, Christians were known and sometimes vilified for rescuing children who had been abandoned in the wilderness. In the ancient world, they had abortion, but it was really safer and easier to just give birth to a child and then leave them in the woods to starve or be eaten by wolves.
So in ancient Rome, fathers would just take children who seemed weak or sickly and took them out to the countryside and left them in a dung heap. And then it was Christians who came along and secretly adopted these children and cared for them even when it was illegal to do so. So for them, if it wasn’t out of sight, out of mind for those first Christians in a culture that approved the killing of human beings because parents believed they had a right to do that, I think it carries over today for Christians who live in a world where the unborn deserve that same protection.
So do stay on the line, Whitney. I want to give you a copy of *Why We’re Catholic* and *Persuasive Pro-Life*. We’re going to need your email or contact information for that. And happy to send you those books. I haven’t sent any books in these two hours. Normally I’m sending books.
Killing people, Whitney. Hypothetically.
Hypothetically.
Caller: Fair enough. All for the greater good.
Cy: I guess so. All for the greater good.
Enjoyed talking with you. Will you call again sometime?
Caller: Sure. Thank you.
Trent: All right. Thank you very much.