What makes this challenge odd is that it presumes the pro-life community is doing nothing to meet the needs of women (pregnant or not) and their children. The reality is that there are more pregnancy resource centers in the United States than there are abortion clinics. These centers and their staff provide counseling, pregnancy testing, maternity supplies, ultrasounds, housing, and even financial assistance for women and their unborn and born babies.
The Planned Parenthood employee thought she had me with her question: “How many unwanted children have you adopted?” “None,” I replied. She probably thought, Checkmate, I got him. The pro-life view results in more babies being born. So it follows, according to this lady’s thinking, that if I don’t adopt any of them, I’m disqualified from arguing against abortion. Though this question is rhetorically powerful, it’s not a compelling case against pro-lifers.
Let me be clear: Adoption is beautiful. That’s for certain. It’s a noble and praiseworthy act when a loving couple sees a child in need and adopts him as their own.
But if you’ve never adopted a child, does this disqualify you from speaking out against abortion? Although this is a common challenge raised by abortion-choice advocates, there are (at least) five problems with this thinking.
First, there is no logical connection between a person’s unwillingness to adopt a child and their moral claim that abortion is wrong. Just because both are related to the subject of abortion, that doesn’t mean they are contradictory. How does a pro-lifer’s unwillingness to adopt a baby give another person justification to kill that baby? In logic, this is called a red herring. It’s a distraction from the main point. The question illegitimately shifts the attention from the morality of abortion to the pro-life person. It’s clever sophistry but bad logic.
Second, the misstep becomes more obvious with two morally comparable illustrations. Imagine you’re arguing in 19th-century America that slavery is immoral, and a slavery advocate retorts, “How many ex-slaves have you employed in your company?” Your argument against slavery is dismissed because, if it succeeds, it results in freed slaves who are “unemployed.” If you don’t employ them, it’s alleged you can’t argue against slavery. That doesn’t make sense, though. The question of whether or not slavery should be abolished should be decided based on the merits of the argument against slavery and not on your willingness to hire freed slaves.
Or imagine you argue to criminalize sleeping on a city’s sidewalks, thereby displacing the homeless population. Someone responds by asking, “How many homeless people are you willing to house in your home?”