Scott Klusendorf addresses students at Lutheran High School, one of eight schools in his Defend Life-sponsored tour.

Pro-life apologist makes 8-school sweep

Who is waiting for you?

That's the question that Defend Life-sponsored speaker Scott Klusendorf asked his audience at Mount St. Joseph's High School November 6.

"Within four years you will leave the safety of a Catholic school; you will meet people who don't share the world view that you do."

Waiting out there is a mindset, held even by an overwhelming majority of Christian youth, that there is no real right or wrong‹that moral decisions are just personal preferences, said Mr. Klusendorf.

The pro-life apologist told the students that he would explain how to show that abortion is wrong using rational argument‹and, in the process, convince any of his listeners who believe otherwise that it is wrong.

Arguing is a good thing, if it's making a case for what is right, he pointed out: the encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, tells us that we should make our case for life, from conception to natural death.

But, he warned, you need to know three things if you are going to argue the pro-life case: that truth is real, not just personal opinion; that right and wrong are real; and that if you believe these things, you're going to take a hit.

You will be fighting the Post-Modernism dictum that there is no truth‹that one person's ideas and morality are as valid as another's.

In defending the humanity of the unborn and the resulting wrongness of abortion, you need to show that the unborn is as human as you are.

"There are only four differences between you and an unborn," he said, "and none of those differences make an unborn child any less human than you."

The differences, which can be summed up in the acronym, SLED, are:

1. Size (Are large people more human than small people?)
2. Level of development (Is a 4-year-old less human than a 14-year-old?)
3. Environment ("How does where you are have any bearing on who you are?" Klusendorf asked rhetorically. "How does a simple journey of 8 inches down a birth canal change a blob of tissue into a human being?")
4. Degree of dependency (The argument that until someone can live fully independent of any other human, he is not fully human, can be easily shown to be absurd.)

In addition to rational argument, because we live in a society that learns visually, we must employ visual proof; we must, at appropriate times, use pictures to establish the fact that an unborn child is human, said Klusendorf.

He made his point by showing a brief but hard-hitting video (first warning the students of its graphic nature and that they could avert their eyes if they preferred).

The video first showed a living, moving baby in the womb, and then the bloody and mangled remains of aborted babies.

"We need people who will fight on this issue with rational arguments. If you're convinced that the pro-life position is right, are you strong enough to stand up for what you believe?" Klusendorf challenged his audience.

He referred them to his website, Stand to Reason, str.org, for back-up material.

In addition to his talk at Mount St. Joe, Mr. Klusendorf's Defend Life November 6-8 tour included talks at Our Lady of the Rosary, Mount DeSales, John Carroll, Maryvale, Towson Catholic and Baltimore Lutheran high schools, Loyola College, the American College for Cultural Studies, and St. Francis Xavier and St. Louis Catholic churches.

Scott Klusendorf is director of bio-ethics for Stand to Reason, a Christian apologetics organization.

Scott Klusendorf talks with Mt. Saint Joseph students after his lecture.