Q&A Session with Rock for Life Activists - Part 1

Last month I spent about four hours in two sessions answering questions from Rock for Life activists before their outreach tour this summer. This is the audio from the first of those two sessions.

I'll list the topics below in case you want to jump around:

• 2:32: "Why are you pro-life?"
• 6:57: My views on capital punishment and how pro-life people who are pro-capital punishment can justify those two views.
• 14:31: Are pro-choice people inconsistent for criticizing pro-lifers who are pro-capital punishment, since they're for the choice to kill people in abortions?
• 18:06: How to think clearly about life-threatening pregnancies.
• 31:03: How do I talk about this issue with a couple that I know who have said that if they were in a situation where they had to choose between the mother dying and the child dying, that they would never do something that results in the death of the child. (This includes an analogy that explains why I'm not a pacifist.)
• 44:52: Thinking clearly about really difficult pregnancies that are not life-threatening.
• 46:37: "What about a woman who has an awful but not life-threatening pregnancy, but also does not have any support system?"
• 52:17: "That was really helpful, but what is a soundbite we could use when people ask us about life-threatening pregnancies at outreach?"
• 53:37: How should we think about birth control?
• 1:06:40: "I recently met someone who said that they're 'personally pro-life' but they also identify as 'pro-choice' because they think that should be a decision that people can make. What should I have said?"
• 1:20:46: "Sometimes when I tell people I'm pro-life I tell them about my mom who chose life for me in extraordinary circumstances. Is that a good idea?"
• 1:24:07: "What if a 10-year old is a rape or incest victim? Can she have an abortion?"

Notes:

• I said that the youngest premie to have been born was 18 weeks and six days. While I have seen that fact somewhere, I can't find a source for it now. We do have a source for a premie being born at 19 weeks and five days though: Folkard, Claire. “Guinness World Records 2004 (Guinness Book of Records).” By Guinness. Random House, n.d. Web. 06 Feb. 2015.
• The point about how different people need different tools to change their mind is from Timothy Brahm, and he expands on this a lot in episodes six and thirteen of the Equipped for Life Podcast.
• The movie that depicts the true story I told about the mountain climbers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates is "Touching the Void."
• Click here for the "6 Resources on Whether or Not Birth Control Pills Cause Abortions" piece.

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