First we shock, then we try to win hearts, change minds
Everyone’s talking about the secret videos exposing the callous brutality of Planned Parenthood. OK, not everyone, with a few exceptions, there’s been a virtual blackout from many of our primary media outlets.
But for the rest of us, the videos represent a watershed moment in the long struggle to defend the dignity of unborn human life. People are beginning to see this hidden evil for what it is. Thank God — and the brave, determined folks at the Center for Medical Progress.
But it’s not just the media’s job to fight this evil. It’s all of ours, too. So how can we take advantage of this pivotal cultural moment so that people will not only grasp the horror of abortion, but become our allies in the battle for life?
This past weekend on “BreakPoint This Week,” I spoke with two pro-life stalwarts on that very topic. Come to BreakPoint.org to tune in. My first guest: Mollie Hemingway, blogger and journalist extraordinaire for The Federalist website.
Mollie agreed with me that these videos have the potential to move those folks who are in the “mushy middle” on this issue over to the side of life, just as the gruesome murder of Emmett Till did so for the civil rights movement in the 1950s. She also reminded me how the great Frederick Douglass understood the importance of telling stories about the violence, brutality and dehumanization of slavery in order to change people’s minds — and certainly these videos are telling the all-too true story about the abortion industry, as well.
Mollie also concisely debunked several misleading counter- arguments from Planned Parenthood and their media allies. For example, the videos clearly demonstrate Planned Parenthood is violating federal law by altering abortion procedures to preserve fetal organs, and is selling fetal body parts, and is making a profit from them, and how they even refer to the aborted babies as “babies.” You simply must follow Mollie’s work, especially on this story.
My other guest on “BreakPoint This Week” was my good friend Scott Klusendorf, founder and president of Life Training Institute. Scott equips everyday believers like you and me how to argue for life without being argumentative.
And in the interview, that’s exactly what Scott did. For example, we often hear, even from Christians, that Planned Parenthood does so much good in the realm of “women’s healthcare” that we simply have to accept that abortion comes with the territory. Scott’s reply: “If the KKK started giving free medical care to poor women, we would not think it a benevolent organization. Good deeds do not atone for bad ones, and less than 5 percent of its client services to pregnant women … don’t involve killing their unborn children.”
But as Scott said, debunki n g Planned Parent- hood’s lies isn’t the ultimate goal. We need to begin changing people’s feelings, thinking and behavior toward a positive apologetic for life as well, helping them get past their “worldview blockages and personal experiences (that) prevent them from considering the [truth].”
Scott has been testing an approach to get past these “blockages” with college students that involves two simple premises: (1) It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being; and (2) Abortion kills an innocent human being.
To present that second premise, Scott uses the SLED acronym, which stands for: Size, Level of development, Environment and degree of Dependency. “If it’s wrong to kill people based on skin color or gender,” he asks, “why is it okay to hurt them based on their size, level of development, or degree of dependency?”
These videos that show the horrors of Planned Parenthood and abortion are an opportunity for Christians to help stop a grave evil and promote the good of intrinsic human value. In this regard, we all have work to do. So please come to BreakPoint.org and listen to my “BreakPoint This Week” interview with Scott Klusendorf and Mollie Hemingway.
From BreakPoint, Aug. 13, 2015; reprinted with permission of Prison Fellowship, www.breakpoint.org.