Today, we're pleased to share with you an audio essay written and read by Scott Klusendorf entitled

Five Myths About Abortion.

Scott is the author of The Case for Life, equipping Christians to engage the culture from Crossway.

Five Myths About Abortion by Scott Klusendorf.

Myth number one, Christian pro-lifers impose religious arguments on a pluralistic society and thus violate the separation of church and state. The religion objection is a dodge,

not a refutation. As Francis J. Beckwith points out, arguments are either true or false, valid,

or invalid. Calling an argument religious is a category mistake like asking, how tall is the number three?

Prolifers argue that it's wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings. Abortion does that,

therefore it's wrong. If critics can refute that argument with evidence, go for it,

but it won't do to dismiss it with a label.

Moreover, pro-life Christians aren't imposing their views any more than abolitionist

Christians were imposing theirs, or the Reverend King was imposing his. Rather, we're proposing them

in hopes we can persuade our fellow citizens to vote them into law.

That's how a constitutional republic like ours works.

We're not looking to establish a theocracy we impose on non-Christians, only a more just society for the weakest members of the human family. Indeed, it is

no more religious to claim a human embryo has value than to claim it doesn't. Both claims answer the same

exact question, what makes humans valuable in the first place? That is an inherently religious question

with no neutral ground. Either you believe that each and every human being has an equal right to life,

or you don't. The pro-life view is that humans are intrinsically valuable in virtue of the kind of thing they are.

The abortion choice view is that humans have value only because of an acquired property,

like self-awareness or sentience. Notice that both positions, pro-life and abortion choice,

use philosophical reflection to answer an inherently religious question,

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