Pushing our pro-life religion

Have you ever been speaking about abortion and heard someone who’s pro-choice exasperatingly exclaim “Stop imposing your religion on me!”? Well, today’s entry in this abortion series addresses that very issue…

Why are you pro-life?

Last year, I posted on Facebook that I was at the March For Life in Washington DC. This raised the interest of some of my pro-choice friends, so I explained to them why I’m against abortion and why I’m pro-life.

In response to my explanation, I was told again and again that Christians should stop imposing their religion on others. I found the objection rather odd. Why? Well, I found it strange because I hadn’t mentioned religion once in any of my arguments. Neither had any of my friends when they contributed to the thread. All the arguments against abortion which were presented did not rely at all on a theistic worldview.

Interestingly, the people who first brought religion into our discussion were those who were pro-choice. Again and again they returned to the idea that we were arguing against abortion on religious grounds. However, we never mentioned God, nor did we cite any religious text or authority. Funnily enough, something very similar happened on Brandon Vogt’s blog around the same time…

Unfortunately, rather than responding to our (non-theistic) arguments, some retorted with cheap shots against the Christian faith. Not only that, we were repeatedly treated to my own personal pet peeve, the armchair interpretation of Bible by non-Christians, which naturally included the classic misinterpretation of “Judge not lest you be judged”.

I’ve said many times bore that, even if I were not a Christian, I’d still be pro-life. The arguments against abortion don’t require a belief in God. The pro-life arguments are scientifically, philosophically and psychologically robust. If I were an atheist I might perhaps have some difficulty explaining why human life has intrinsic value, but it’s an instinct that I don’t think I could deny, even if I wanted to.

It’s not just a Christian thing…

Towards the end of the Facebook discussion, one of my friends wrote the following on the Facebook thread:

“I just hate it when religious groups try to impost[sic] their will on people who are not from their own religious group”

In response to this, I pointed out that religious folk aren’t the only people who are against abortion. There are those who belong to no religious group but who are against abortion:

As you can see, atheism can actually motivate someone to take a pro-life position. If there is no afterlife then the taking of someone’s one and only life is all the more egregious!

I asked my friend if he thought that Atheists Against Abortion were also trying to “impose their will on [other] people”. I was really quite amazed at his response:

“No issues there. They have reached their position without being told what to think or do to win the approval of a divine entity”

Besides being more than a little bit insulting, demonstrating a rather serious prejudice against members of religious groups, this comment was a example of the classic Ad Hominem fallacy. Pure Bulverism! Why is it that an atheist and I can use exactly the same arguments, yet mine are discounted because I’m Catholic?

In my post following the March for Life last year, I spoke about what we can do to improve the quality of discussion in the abortion debate. I would like to close this post by offering a sincere suggestion to my pro-choice friends: please don’t say stuff like “You’re pushing your religion on us!” or “You’re only against abortion because what the Church/Bible tells you”.  If you say this it looks an awful lot like you’re not listening to the arguments we’re actually presenting…