In 40 seconds, Scott Klusendorf defended his argument that the unborn have rights equal to human beings outside of the womb. He taught the audience, who gathered for the 2023 Pregnancy Decision Health Centers (PDHC) Celebration for LIFE gala on Sept. 21, how they can defend the right to life in a minute or less.
Klusendorf is president of the Life Training Institute, which prepares Christians and pro-life advocates to defend their views. He is also the author of the book The Case for Life and was the special guest of the PDHC Columbus gala, which was preceded by the Lancaster Gala on Sept. 14. The Bible verse Esther 4:14 – “For Such a Time as This” – was the theme of both galas.
The evening began with a message from PDHC president Kathy Scanlon. She spoke of the impact PDHC has through its 24/7 crisis hotline, which helps women facing unexpected or challenging pregnancies, and personalized consultations, pregnancy tests, ultrasounds and resources.
PDHC offers abortion pill reversal services for women who have started a chemical abortion. The centers, which have four locations in Columbus, also provide parenting classes and abortion recovery services.
“All of us have to step up and become pro-life apologists who can convey the truth of the pro-life position to the people around us,” Klusendorf said.
He said the right to life can be defended in a minute or less by answering three questions: What is the unborn? What makes us valuable as human beings? What is our duty?
“Every argument you hear on the street assumes the unborn aren’t human,” he said. “Why do people argue this way with the unborn? Because they assume the unborn aren’t human. We’re not going to assume it. We’re actually going to make our case.”
When defending the right to life, Klusendorf said, people must understand that the unborn are human beings from the moment of conception. The unborn do not become human, rather, they are human but at a different stage of development.
“You didn’t come from an embryo; you once were an embryo,” he said. “That was you back then, just at a different stage of development. That’s the science of embryology. This is not a religious view. It’s an empirical view, and a lot of people confuse this. They don’t get it.
“One reason they don’t get it – I do sort of understand – I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a picture of an early embryo at maybe the 10-day stage. It just looks like a ball of cells, like a couple of dozen cells.
“And you know what a lot of people say? And they’re right about this: ‘That’s not a baby,’ and they’re right about that. It’s not a baby, but you know what it is? It is a human being in the earliest stages of development.”
Klusendorf used the example of a Polaroid camera. He asked the audience to imagine they captured a photo of a jaguar on a Polaroid camera. The photo first appears as a white paper with a brown smudge.
“The jaguar in that picture was already there,” he said. “We just couldn’t see him yet because he was still developing. Men and women, from the one-cell stage, you were already there. We just couldn’t see you yet because you were still developing.”
The second question that must be answered when defending a pro-life argument, Klusendorf said, is: What makes human beings valuable? He said the culture wants to divide “human beings,” such as those in the embryonic stage, from “human persons” outside the womb.
“Our culture is obsessed with equality, is it not?” he asked. “But what is it that makes us equal in the first place? Are we all equal physically? No, we’re not.
“If Planned Parenthood is right that we can destroy, dismember, literally tear apart a living human fetus because he’s not as developed as you and I, if development is what gives us value, those of you with more of it have a greater right to life than those with less.”
Klusendorf said self-awareness is another example of what makes human beings different. Both human fetuses and newborns are not self-aware, he said, and most humans do not have self-awareness until about age 2, but that does not make them less valuable.
He mentioned Peter Singer, an ethicist at Princeton University, who, Klusendorf said, argued that if human fetuses can be killed, then human newborns can be killed because neither is self-aware.
“If he’s right about that, if self-awareness gives you value and a right to life, if you’ve got more of it than me, you would have a greater right to life than me,” Klusendorf said.
“What’s the one thing we all share equally in this room? And it’s something that doesn’t come in degrees. Here it is – the one big word I’ll use tonight – we all have the same human nature.”
The offspring of two humans can have no nature other than a human nature, he said. Klusendorf asked the audience to consider how two human beings could create an offspring that is not human.
“Now, there are differences, but the question is not, ‘Are there differences between you the embryo and you the adult?’” Klusendorf said. “The question is, ‘Do those differences matter such that we can say it’s OK to kill you then but not now?’”
Klusendorf listed four principal differences, which can be remembered by the acronym “SLED.” None “are good reasons for saying we could kill you then but not now,” he said. Humans in the embryonic stage and adult stage differ in size, level of development, environment (where the human is located) and degree of dependency.
For size, Klusendorf said, men are generally larger than women, but they do not deserve more rights or are more valuable. For level of development, he argued that children are less developed than their parents, but parents do not have a greater right to life than their children.
Considering the environment, or being inside versus outside the womb, Klusendorf asked, “How does where you are determine what you are?”
Klusendorf used an example that he traveled more than 800 miles to Columbus for the PDHC gala. Compared to those who live in Columbus, he asked, does his location make him human or more or less valuable? He challenged why the unborn are considered less valuable because of their location.
“If a journey of 807 miles didn’t change me from one kind of thing to another, how does the journey of 8 inches down the birth canal suddenly transform you from a nonhuman, nonvaluable thing we can intentionally kill and dismember, while if you’re outside, you’re safe?
“How does a simple journey save you in that regard? The answer is, if you weren’t already human and valuable, just changing your address isn’t going to change your essential nature of what you are.”
Klusendorf encouraged the audience to use the “degree of dependency” in the SLED acronym to defend their belief that the unborn are valuable, even though they are dependent on their mothers.
He used an example of conjoined twins who are dependent on each other for survival. If the right to life depends on the ability to live independent of another human being, he said, then conjoined twins could be considered less valuable, too, and not have a right to life.
Klusendorf also addressed his third question for defending pro-life beliefs: What is our duty?
He said every person’s duty is to love their unborn neighbor by defending them.
He summarized his defense in 40 seconds – he used the example of “Aunt Betty” – by saying:
“I’m pro-life because it’s wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings, and the science of embryology says that from the earliest stages of development, from the one-cell stage, you, Aunt Betty, were a distinct living and a whole human being.
“You weren’t part of another being like skin cells on the back of my hand. You were already a whole living member of the human family, even though you had yet to grow and develop, and you know what else, Aunt Betty?
“There’s no essential difference between you the embryo and you the adult that would justify killing you back then. Differences of size and level of development, environment and degree of dependency are not good reasons for saying you could be killed then but not now.”
In addition to defending the unborn, Klusendorf said, it is every person’s duty to love the mothers of the unborn. He said more than 50 percent of abortions annually are repeat abortions because “the first abortion never got healed.”
Jesus Christ is the source of healing, Klusendorf said, and every person is guilty of sin and needs healing. He encouraged the audience to recognize Christ as their source of salvation, the one Who bore their sins, and to share His mercy with others, especially women who had abortions and are in need of Christ’s healing.
Peggy Hartshorn offered remarks on Issue 1, a proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution that will be on the ballot Nov. 7. Hartshorn and her husband, Mike, founded PDHC. She is also chairman of the board for Heartbeat International, the first network of pro-life pregnancy resource centers in the U.S.
“The goal of this constitutional amendment is to make abortion an unlimited right in our constitution,” she said. “They put language in this amendment that would make it unconstitutional for parents to have any right to advise their children or need parental permission for children to have abortions or sex-change operations. … There is no wiggle room in this right to abortion they’re trying to put into the constitution in the state of Ohio.
“This would set us back even worse than Roe v. Wade (the U.S. Supreme Court decision that stated there is a right to privacy, including abortion).”
Hartshorn encouraged people to pray, vote and volunteer. There is a 54-day rosary novena, or series of prayers, she said, taking place through Election Day across the state. She also encouraged early voting, which begins Oct. 11 in Ohio.
“The early results do affect how people think and whether they come to the polls, so vote early,” she said.
