🧵 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…
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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Sitting in on the Quitters panel at the National Pro-Life Summit. Panelists include @TheRealMayraRdz, Kara Germon, Caroline Strzesynski, and Lupita Aguilar.
Mayra is the former Planned Parenthood director from Arizona. She blew the whistle on deficiencies at the center and was let go. She subsequently won a lawsuit for wrongful termination of whistle blowers.
Kara is also a former Planned Parenthood employee from Connecticut. She's now a director of a CareNet pregnancy center.
In January, we attended the March for Life, where we spoke at the Rehumanize meetup and networked at the National Pro-Life Summit. Later that same month we endorsed the Post-Roe Future vision statement, and Kelsey spoke on a panel at St. Thomas University School of Law.
In February, Monica was published in Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics & spoke on Support After Abortion’s webinar “Meeting Clients Across Different Belief Systems.” We joined a broad coalition for #StopAbortionRX, protesting CVS and Walgreens for their plans to sell abortion drugs.
First, we don't even call for the investigation of every woman who aborts, much less every woman who miscarries. In general pro-lifers want to ban abortion, but not criminalize women seeking abortions. I touched on some reasons for that in this vid: 2/tiktok.com/@secular_pro_l…
Second, we'd know in advance these investigations would involve harassing and potentially re-traumatizing hundreds of thousands of parents at the very moment they are going through the emotional crises of losing their children through miscarriage. 3/
Pro-choice and pro-life people view abortion in cases of fetal anomaly very differently. Here are some of the major points of disagreement (speaking generally, of course there will always be exceptions). 🧵
Pro-choicers often don’t view fetuses as people or children, but as *potential* people. Pro-lifers view fetuses as people and children *right now.*
Pro-choicers generally view abortion for fetal anomaly as a kind of euthanasia and a mercy to prevent future suffering. Pro-lifers view it as choosing to kill children because they have certain disabilities.
I want elective abortion outlawed, but in a way that women who are facing medical emergencies can get life-saving care. I share that perspective with maybe every pro-lifer I have ever worked with. And the Kate Cox case leaves me concerned. secularprolife.org/2023/12/kate-c…
Lots of pro-choicers saying pro-lifers want women to suffer and die. This is equivalent to pro-lifers saying pro-choicers want to kill babies (in this case, specifically disabled babies). It's a bad faith, question-begging take, and entirely unpersuasive.