On March 28, Josh Brahm, President and Co-Founder of the Equal Rights Institute (ERI), a pro-life apologetics organization, gave a talk entitled “Engaging with the Pro-Choice Position” in the Fulton Hall 511 auditorium. In the talk, which was sponsored by Students for Life of Boston College, Brahm explored pro-choice defenses of abortion and discussed both what he considered to be weak and strong pro-life responses to such defenses.
“When people ask me what I do for a living in airports or airplanes,” Brahm, who has worked for 12 years professionally in the pro-life movement, opened, “I typically have kind of a goofy response—‘I try to help pro-life people be less weird.’ And when I say ‘weird’, what I mean is something that probably everyone has experienced … people who are well-meaning but off-putting, who sort of get in their own way of having a productive dialogue.”
Citing the pending United States Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that could potentially overturn Roe v. Wade and return the legal status of abortion to individual states, Brahm continued by saying that productive dialogues about abortion will be harder to conduct this year, as “pro-choice people will understandably be infuriated and/or terrified [if Roe is overturned].”
“It is really hard to watch our society become more tribalistic,” said Brahm, “we can’t even have any conversations about anything that we disagree about without people … losing friends.” Brahm pointed to “political pundits on both sides” as an example: “they have this effect for a lot of people of making them feel like the other side is stupid or morally bad, and it is not good for our souls, and it hurts our dialogues.”
“If you are pro-choice, I am so glad you are here,” Brahm stated before starting discussion of the philosophical arguments underlying abortion debates. “I am not expecting you to change your mind today … my hope is to give you some things to think about; maybe you will hear some better pro-life arguments than you’ve heard in the past.”
“And I want to say for pro-choice [people] I’m also really impressed that you’re here because it speaks highly of your character,” Brahm continued, “if you’re here, that speaks of intellectual virtue, honesty, and open-mindedness.”
Brahm began his discussion on abortion arguments by noting that he would be giving “a non-religious reason to believe that the unborn [are] valuable person[s] like you and me and should have an equal right to be protected from violence.” He then stated he would discuss bodily autonomy arguments, as he believes “it’s the most interesting category of pro-choice arguments.”
“Here’s the most obvious thing—or one of the most obvious things—that everyone in this room has an equal right to protection from violence,” Brahm began. “[But] the unborn are not a clear case of persons … sometimes it can be helpful to think about clear cases to help us think better about less clear cases.”
Brahm then described his idea of an “equal-protection-from-violence” circle and discussed who or what belongs in this circle. “Clearly human adults get an equal protection from violence,” Brahm claimed. “A little less obvious but still fairly obvious … is human newborns … There’s, like, four philosophers who would disagree with that.”
“But then I want to think about something a little bit weirder. What about squirrels? … I don’t think squirrels don’t matter at all … [but] should we protect squirrels at the same level that we protect newborns or adults? I think we shouldn’t.”
“So that leaves the question,” Brahm continued, “what gets you into the circle? … It seems obvious that to get into the circle, there’s got to be something we all have in common … You cannot deal with something … that you can have more or less of if we’re trying to ground equality.”
Brahm then considered some pro-choice answers as to what this common property could be. Brahm argued that intelligence cannot be the property, as some humans are more intelligent than others, nor could it be sentience, as squirrels are also “minimally aware of the world around [them],” nor could it be self-awareness, as newborns would not then be considered equal.
Similarly, Brahm argued against using fetal pain as the common property, as squirrels can also feel pain, as well as rejecting a viability standard: “I would argue viability is maybe the weirdest line to draw because it’s the only moving target. Viability was different 50 years ago, not because of philosophy, personhood, metaphysics, or anything, but because our technology has gotten better. So it seems weird to think that personhood is affected by outside technology.”
Brahm then claimed that “something like human nature … gestur[es] toward the right answer” because “that makes sense of a lot of our human intuitions—human adults and human newborns are in and squirrels are out … So that then makes me believe that the unborn should get an equal protection from violence.”
Afterwards, Brahm moved to discuss particular bodily autonomy arguments in favor of a right to abortion, the first being the idea of a “sovereign zone,” or that “it would be such a government overreach to control what women can do with their bodies, or anything inside of their body.” Brahm then argued that a necessary conclusion of this view is that no restrictions on abortion should be allowed at all. Brahm mentioned that “there are other issues with ‘sovereign zone’ arguments,” but moved to what he called a “more interesting category” of bodily rights arguments for the sake of time, namely “right to refuse” arguments.
Mentioning Judith Jarvis Thomson’s famous 1971 “Violinist Argument,” Brahm explored the claim that a person is not morally obligated to use his or her body “to be a life-support vessel for another person.” Starting with what he claimed to be a bad pro-life response, Brahm noted that the objection claiming that because a uterus is designed to carry a fetus, it has the right to use it, is unconvincing, because teleological arguments—arguments from design—do not work if someone rejects the concept of intelligent design.
Brahm then explained what he believed to be a better response—the “responsibility objection”—that engaging in an act, such as consensual sex, that one knows might result in a consequence holds one responsible for the consequence if it happens.
Brahm qualified the “responsibility objection” by shifting the discussion to cases of rape “because in that case, [the] responsibility objection does not work.”
He then asked to “get out of philosophy mode” and acknowledge the experiences that survivors of rape undergo: “I think most pro-lifers are not such jerks that they actually don’t care about survivors of rape, I think they’re just really bad at showing that compassion. So when I’m asked about it, I’m going to spend some time acknowledging how horrible rape is.”
Brahm went on to discuss societal problems involving rape including victim-blaming, untested rape kits in police stations, and what he believes to be insufficient punishment for rapists. He then shifted the conversation back to abortion: “One of the reasons that I’m opposed to rape is because it’s an act of violence against an innocent person. The reason I’m against abortion is because it’s an act of violence against an innocent person.”
Brahm proceeded to caution against the “obligation-to-help” approach of pro-life apologetics, namely arguing that pregnancy is a situation where a pregnant woman is obligated to help preserve the life of a fetus, because “in America right now, the importance in people’s minds of bodily autonomy is absolutely paramount.” Instead, Brahm discussed another approach on which the ERI philosophy team has recently focused: “We call it the ‘obligation to not freaking kill people’ approach.”
Brahm then briefly discussed abortion procedures despite not “want[ing] to talk about gory stuff … because in this argument the details matter.” Brahm then explained both the procedure of chemical abortions and dismemberment abortions.
“So once you’re pregnant,” Brahm argued, “you only have two options. You can help, like carry the pregnancy to term, or kill. There is no ‘I just refuse to help’ option.”
As for chemical abortions, Brahm challenged the pro-choice objection that they are not directly killing a fetus, even if it is conceded that dismemberment abortions do. Having explained earlier that an embryologist told Brahm’s team that chemical abortions function by suffocating an embryo, Brahm stated that “a chemical abortion is a less direct form of killing, but it doesn’t make it ok. So if I killed [Students For Life of Boston College Co-President Max Montana, MCAS ‘23] with a rock, it’s a little less direct than if I killed him by hitting him with my fist … I don’t act like that’s not killing. It’s still killing.”
Brahm then provided pro-choice attendees priority in asking questions in the ensuing question-and-answer session.
The next day, Brahm joined members of Students For Life of Boston College for pro-life apologetics tabling on the ground floor of McElroy Commons to both engage in conversations himself and critique club members as to the quality and effectiveness of their conversations.
Staff Photo by Adam Sorrels
Adam is a senior from Columbus, Ohio. He previously served as Campus News and Culture Editor, and boasts the title of least cultured to ever serve as the latter. Holding a minor in Biology, he recently converted from STEM and now majors in Philosophy and Classical Studies. He currently leads Una Voce, the Latin Mass society at BC, and sings with the University Chorale of Boston College and the Chorale Chamber Singers. He enjoys Gregorian Chant, relearning the clarinet, and is an unabashed Ohio apologist.
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