🧵 1/ "Religious people are pro-life, so if you're pro-life you must be religious." This is a bad argument. Let me count you the ways.
2/ First, this is a very common logical misstep called "affirming the consequent" or "converse error." We see a conditional statement ("If you're swimming, you're wet") & incorrectly assume its converse ("If you're wet, you're swimming") must also be true. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming…
3/ In this context, the conditional statement is "If you're religious, you're pro-life" & the converse is "If you're pro-life, you're religious." You can't assume the converse based on the conditional statement.
4/ Second, in this context, even the original conditional statement ("If you're religious, you're pro-life") is not at all consistently true. For example, Pew finds sig. portions of every religious tradition say abortion should be legal in all/most cases. pewforum.org/religious-land…
5/ It's true that most PL Americans are religious. It's also true most PC Americans are religious. Because most Americans are religious. It doesn't follow that any particular PL or PC person bases her views solely on religion--or on religion at all. pewforum.org/religious-land…
6/ Third, we could instead say PL people are more *likely* to be religious than PC people. Note in the chart above 87% of "illegal in all/most cases" ppl profess a religion compared to only 68% of "legal in all/most cases" ppl.
7/ Here the converse also happens to be true: religious ppl are more *likely* to be PL than non-religious ppl. 63% who attend religious services weekly think abortion should be illegal in all/most cases compared to only 24% who attend seldom/never. pewforum.org/religious-land…
8/ So it's true being pro-life & being religious correlate. This point is more nuanced, though, then insisting a person *must* be religious to be pro-life. We can recognize a general trend and its exceptions at the same time.
9/ For example, of people who think abortion should be illegal in all/most cases, 41% never participate in prayer, scripture study, religious education... pewforum.org/religious-land…
10/ ...17% seldom or never attend religious services... (pewforum.org/religious-land…)
11/ ...and 12% consider themselves unaffiliated with religion...
12/ ...including 4% who are agnostic (not certain god exists) and 2% who are atheist (do not believe in god). (pewforum.org/religious-land…)
13/ Sometimes the people making the original claim will amend it to something like "You may not personally believe in a religion, but you could only be anti-abortion if you've been indoctrinated by the religious society we all live in."
14/ This sounds suspiciously like a non-falsifiable theory: only religious ppl are pro-life so if a non-religious person is pro-life it must be because she's secretly or subconsciously religious. (This claim is similar to saying millions of PL women are internalized misogynists.)
15/ I find most who purport this non-falsifiable theory won't commit to it to the point of claiming Christopher Hitchens was subconsciously religious. blog.secularprolife.org/2020/04/christ…
16/ As another example, Dr. Bernard Nathanson was an atheist and an abortion provider, yet, as he witnessed what was then new ultrasound technology, defected entirely to the pro-life side. bmj.com/rapid-response…
17/ Being pro-life doesn't require religion any more than any other human rights cause. No one claims you need religion to care about the wellbeing of born children, refugees, LGBT folk, people with disabilities, or other marginalized groups. Prenatal children are no exception.
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