Before we met, my husband was a political journalist whose work focused heavily on abortion and other life-related issues. He’s taught me a great deal about the pro-life movement in the six years we’ve known each other, such as the prominence and importance of pregnancy resource and help centers, as well as how to use important data and facts surrounding abortion to argue in favor of life.

But as is often the case, those who are enmeshed in something often can’t see things that are blindingly obvious to outsiders. And in this case, my husband — whom I admire for being able to have friends who openly support baby murdering, and for seeing past their barbaric views to their morally and prudentially positive characteristics — has completely missed a critically important fact about abortion justifiers: Every single argument is a justification and a dodge to avoid the scientific, biological, theological and emotional fact that abortion slaughters an innocent human being.

Five Common Justifications 

Dodges are simple: They are reasons, perhaps well-intentioned, which allow someone to intellectually justify the murderous reality of abortion.

“Women should have autonomy with their bodies.” Great. Don’t have sex until you’re ready and willing to raise a child. Your autonomy ends when the separate, unique human life begins.

“The baby will have a tough life (due to poverty, disability, or other factors).” Yes, a tough life is so much worse than being dismembered or starved to death.

“The mother is single and poor. Having a baby will reduce her options.” Yes, that’s true. Taking responsibility for our actions does limit our options. Murder is the worst option.

“The woman has been abandoned by the father.” That’s awful, and he should be held accountable. Let’s work together on that. In the meantime, she can now rely on family, friends, non-profits, and the government for help … instead of hiring a hitman to murder her baby.

“Pro-lifers don’t care about people, it’s all about politics and power.” That doesn’t actually rebut the fact that the baby is being murdered. Also, tell that to the women-led, volunteer-driven PRCs, and the Catholic Church, which helps people from womb to tomb.

Why are Dodges Important? 

Let’s put the question a different way. How would someone who supports murdering unborn children react to the following: “If we free slaves, the government will have to help them out because they have no education, and they and their ancestors have been abused. That’ll be expensive.”

Or how about this one: “When your neighbors are inconvenient, go ahead and stab ‘em in the night. If it’s okay to do to babies, it’s okay to do to everyone else.”

You don’t need the Catholic belief that two wrongs can’t make a right. Anyone who supports abortion would be rightly horrified at excuses to dehumanize and enslave black Americans. Yet, that is what they are doing to the unborn.

Calling out dodges is important because people who are in many other ways good, moral and decent are lying to themselves. These people are burying their heads in the sand, having what one writer at the liberal site The Nation correctly called “selective empathy.” (The writer was talking about war and foreign affairs; but the term fits when discussing barbaric practices like abortion.)

It’s also important to call out deflections — not quite justifications and dodges, but under the same umbrella of irrelevant arguments. These are typically attempts to shift the conversation, rather than a belief in favor of legalized abortion.

Here are a few examples:

“Pro-lifers only care about people until they’re born.” Again, I call your attention to the PRC movement and the Catholic Church, which provide tremendous care to the born. My husband and I donate to two Catholic parishes and a pregnancy resource center which provide various resources to unborn children and born parents. Also … who cares? One should oppose abortion on the same moral grounds that people oppose slavery … and those reasons are independent from any belief about helping people who aren’t in the womb.

“What about the woman who is raped?” Being impregnated after being raped is a horrifying reality of being female; but the data is clear that abortions linked to rape constitute about 0.9% of all abortions. And since all abortions kill an innocent baby, a better solution is to help the rape victim and her child. As we recently saw with the 10-year-old who sought an out-of-state abortion, the real issue wasn’t access to abortion — it was that the girl’s alleged rapist is her mother’s boyfriend, something that abortion advocates have closed their eyes against seeing.

“Anti-abortion views are based on religion.” The science of unborn life is clear. But even if the foundation of pro-life views are based on religion — a reality for millions of Americans — that doesn’t change the fact that an unborn child is a human being.

“That’s just your belief.” Yes, you’re right. It is my belief. It’s also true. And your belief, clearly, is that baby murder is OK.

Please Call Out the Dodges and Justifications 

The abortion movement has fooled tens of millions of Americans into believing their abortion justifications. But I suspect that most people who support abortion really know it’s wrong, in their heart of hearts, which is why they deflect, instead of address, murder-for-convenience in the womb.

Leslie Anastasia (a pseudonym) cares for life in and out of the womb as a mother of three and a RN.