(Oregon Right to Life) — A respectful and thoughtful conversation about abortion posted to YouTube late last month provides an excellent example of how reasonable people can approach and discuss one of society’s most challenging issues. [Scroll down to watch the video]
In the April 25 video, Live Action Founder and President Lila Rose and 20-year-old British YouTuber Elliot Bewick covered a wide spectrum of controversies and objections concerning abortion. Notably, the conversation stayed comfortably within the framework of a calm yet energetic exchange of ideas, rather than a contentious debate.
Bewick, who hosts the YouTube channel The Next Generation, began by asking Rose whether an unborn baby at the earliest stage of development has the same moral worth as a newborn baby – which Rose affirmed without hesitation.
“We all started our life as a single cell embryo – as a zygote – and over time, with some nourishment, we got bigger and bigger and bigger, until we were big enough to be born,” she said.
Bewick then prompted Rose to address a common “bottleneck” in the disagreement about abortion: What makes an entity a human being worthy of protection?
From there, the far-ranging conversation explored common points of disagreement including whether an unborn baby is simply a “clump of cells,” the importance of informed consent and education about prenatal development, moral intuitions concerning the right to life, the impact of abortion on women, and whether it’s possible to be pro-life without being religious (spoiler: it is).
While formally structured debates about abortion can be helpful in their own context, the conversation between Rose and Bewick provides an excellent template for pro-life advocates to follow in respectfully yet confidently discussing the issue of abortion and the humanity of the unborn.
