Podcast: Roe v. Wade Has Been Overturned. Now What? (Scott Klusendorf)

June 25, 2022 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

What This Means for the Pro-Life Movement

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States released their ruling on the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, effectively overturning a long-standing precedent set by the landmark Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. This decision is widely viewed as an unprecedented legal victory for the pro-life movement—and one that will have major legal, political, and personal consequences for Americans for years to come.

In today's episode, Scott Klusendorf talks about what this decision means for the pro-life cause and how it should impact how we, as Christians, seek to advocate for the lives of the unborn in our communities.

The Case for Life

The Case for Life

Scott Klusendorf

The pro-life message can compete in the marketplace of ideas—provided Christians properly understand and articulate that message. This book helps pro-life Christians make a persuasive case for the lives of the unborn.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:00 - A Tremendous Victory

Matt Tully
Scott, thank you so much for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.

Scott Klusendorf
It’s good to be with you, Matt.

Matt Tully
The Dobbs decision is this huge landmark case that has just been decided, and it obviously marks a major legal victory for the pro-life movement. I want to get into how we, as Christians, should engage with our pro-choice neighbors, friends, and family in light of that, but before we do that, I wonder if you could share a little bit about how you’re feeling today.

Scott Klusendorf
It’s a tremendous victory. Anybody who tells you it’s not is unaware of the history and unaware of the cultural settings we are in right now. This is a remarkable moment. Now, it’s true that it’s not a sufficient victory, but it’s a very necessary victory. Without overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey—the two decisions that upheld the abortion license in this country—you cannot move meaningful pro-life legislation forward. Well, now we have an opportunity to do that in the individual states. It’s a remarkable event. We all ought to stop and thank the Lord for this day. It’s a good thing. The reason why it’s a good—just to give your listeners, Matt, a little background—in 1973 when Roe v. Wade was decided, one branch of the federal government—the courts—co-opted the abortion issue and took it away from the legislative and executive branches of the government. Not only at the federal level, but at the state level. That left the people of the United States with no voice on abortion when it comes to meaningful pro-life legislation. The courts and the courts alone would be the ones determining abortion policy. As a result, the public has not had any real say on the issue. With Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey now being gutted and tossed, what we have instead are the people getting their voice back on the issue. Now, of course, this does not mean pro-lifers have won, because right now where things stand, twelve states have trigger laws that are designed to go into effect as soon as Roe and Casey were overturned, which means they’ll go into effect immediately. These are pro-life laws that restrict abortion significantly. They don’t need to be re-legislated, they don’t need to be re-debated; they are ready to go. Then, you’ve got another ten states that are poised to pass meaningful pro-life legislation, so you’re going to end up with twenty-two states that significantly restrict abortion. You’re going to have another twenty-six, though, that run the other way and make it as open and legal as they possibly can. We’re already seeing that with states like California, Colorado, Delaware, and New Mexico. What they’re going to do is go the opposite way and basically say, We’re not even going to protect children who survive abortion procedures. We’ll let them die on the table. That’s how radically committed some of these states are. Not all of the pro-abortion ones, but some of them. So, we’re going to have a house divided. There is no doubt about it. The role of Christians in that kind of environment is going to be very important. We are going to have to know how to make a case for what we believe, defend what we believe, and do it persuasively.

Matt Tully
I want to get into what it will look like to make that case as you say, but maybe before we go there, I think some people—some Christians, some pro-life Christians who are eager to defend the life of the unborn—might nevertheless feel a little bit conflicted about this decision and about a “legal victory” or a “legislative victory.” They wonder, Is that really the right way to be doing this? What would you say to that? How should Christians think about fighting this on a legal, or legislative, way vs. a hearts and minds kind of approach?

Scott Klusendorf
When people say to me, I don’t want to make abortion illegal; I want to make it unthinkable, or I don’t want to make abortion illegal; I want to change hearts, I have no idea what they’re talking about. Let me tell you why: the purpose of law is to control the heartless. In fact, civil law presupposes that hearts won’t be changed. By the way, the Christian worldview affirms this. Most people are not going to be saved, Matt, as you know. The road to salvation is narrow, few find it, and if the requirement is that we have to change everybody’s heart before we can have a change in the law that protects innocent human beings, we’ll never have laws that protect innocent human beings because we’ll never change enough hearts to change everybody’s view of legality. In fact, Martin Luther King put it real well. He said, “The law cannot make the white man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me.” That’s important. So, I want the unborn protected in law. Yes, I want to change hearts. As much as I can, I want to do that. But I want to protect unborn children from being butchered. That’s what pro-life victory is. Let’s define what pro-life victory looks like. Pro-life victory is not that every woman who is pregnant finds the services she needs. Although, as Christians, we want to provide as much care and support as we can. Pro-life victory is not that we merely reduce abortion. A society that reduced racism but still left it legal for you to act in a racist manner and own slaves and segregate the public and treat minorities unjustly is still a very evil society, even if you do reduce racism and segregation. So, we want to do more than merely reduce abortion; we want to make it illegal. That’s pro-life victory. Now, pro-life victory has an application. It means as Christians we’re also going to care for those mothers that are facing a crisis pregnancy. It means we’re going to do what we can to care for their children. But make no mistake what our primary objective is here: we want to protect unborn children legally, and reversing Roe and Casey is a gigantic step toward making that a reality one day. Again, it’s not a sufficient victory, but it’s a necessary victory.

07:38 - Fighting to Protect the Unborn

Matt Tully
You’ve spent your career advocating for life in the marketplace of ideas. You’ve spent, I’m sure, hundreds of hours on college campuses and at high schools talking with people, giving presentations at churches, trying to convince everyday Americans of the importance of the life of these children. You haven’t been as active, as far as I’m aware, in the political or the legal arenas. I wonder if you could share a little bit about your own history in this fight to protect the unborn and why it is that you chose the path that you chose.

Scott Klusendorf
The short version of how I got involved is I was an associate minister at a church in southern California in 1990. I had always been pro-life. There was never a time I was not, Matt, but I wasn’t doing anything really significant to stop the bloodshed. I got invited by a local crisis pregnancy center director in Glendale, California to come to a meeting for pastors (a pastor’s breakfast) on the topic of abortion where there would be a special speaker with a legal background. This director bugged me and bugged me until I agreed to show up. By the way, there’s something to be said for that. We need to get comfortable with bugging people to consider pro-life advocacy. I think we’re far too polite sometimes. She did not let go of this, and I agreed to go. I showed up thinking there would be maybe a hundred other colleagues of mine in the area. Whenever there was a pastor’s breakfast on a Saturday morning with free food, the guys showed up! Well, this particular day it was abortion, and it was myself and four other guys and their wives that were there. Thankfully, the speaker, undeterred by the dismal numbers, gave a very persuasive talk. It was a fellow by the name of Gregg Cunningham, a former member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and former member of the Reagan and Bush administrations in the Justice Department. This attorney layed out a case for the pro-life view, and I thought, I really like what he’s doing. He doesn’t hurt the brain to listen to. I had heard pro-lifers who did hurt the brain to listen to, quite frankly, and this guy laid out his case. But then he did something, Matt, that changed my life forever. He showed an eight-minute video depicting abortion. I had never seen abortion. When I saw that, I was just cut to the core of my being and I thought, I am no different than the priest and the Levite who passed by on the other side of the road. I say I care about this, but I’m not lifting a finger to stop it. Bottom line: within six months of being at that presentation on that Saturday morning of November of 1990, I had, with the blessing of my church, resigned my position as an associate pastor to pursue helping Christians make a case for life and do so in a public arena. That’s kind of my background of how I got here. Since then, over the last thirty-two years I’ve worked for two different organizations besides the one that I founded. I worked for five years for Center for Bio-Ethical Reform with Gregg Cunningham, and then I worked for seven years with Stand to Reason with my good friend Greg Koukl. Then, we started Life Training Institute in 2004.

Matt Tully
Why the focus on trying to train and equip everyday Christians vs. reaching out into the legal field or reaching out to our congressional leaders? Why is there that focus for you?

Scott Klusendorf
Because nobody was doing it. That’s the reason. We had lots of people doing crisis pregnancy center ministry, and that’s vitally important. We’ve got to have it, and may God grant us more workers in that field. We had a lot of people giving abstinence talks on why you need to reserve sex for marriage, and trying to reduce abortion by getting people to wait for marriage before they engage sexually. But nobody was training Christians how to make a case with unchurched people, and nobody was systematically targeting the audiences that most need to hear a pro-life apologetics presentation, so we decided that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to go where the need is. By the way, that need continues today. I’m a faculty member at Summit Ministries in Colorado. Every summer for two weeks—all summer long—we get a new group of 188 students that come through there—roughly 2,000 a summer. We have been doing a survey of all the students that come through Summit for the last five years, and these students who are coming to Summit to learn how to defend their faith in a hostile arena, we ask these students who come from some of the best churches in America, How many of you before coming to Summit ever heard a pro-life apologetics presentation at your church designed to train you how to engage non-Christian friends on the issue? Out of 188 students at every session, we get maybe six to eight hands that go up. Then, if I ask, How many of you have been trained how to think about bioethics in general? How about end of life issues like doctor-assisted suicide? What about beginning of life issues like reproductive assisted technologies? What about things like genetic enhancements? Now the hands drop down to two to three a session. And we wonder why we’re losing on these issues? This is bad, bad news. Christians need to be equipped, and that’s why I’ve run to that side of this battle. I just see a crying need to give Christians the confidence that they’re pro-life views are true and reasonable to believe.

13:18 - How Do I Engage This Issue at Church without It Becoming a Partisan Debate?

Matt Tully
You mentioned that one of the questions you ask relates to whether or not these students are being equipped in the context of their churches. That gets to a question that I think maybe many pastors and church leaders wrestle with: How do I engage on this issue in the context of my church without it becoming overly political or giving into some kind of partisan debate that is maybe not helpful or leads to some unhelpful places? What would you say to a pastor who wants to help his church be pro-life but doesn’t want to get unnecessarily political?

Scott Klusendorf
It is a moral argument that pro-lifers are making and a biblical argument that pro-lifers are making. I’m not asking pastors to stand in the pulpit and endorse candidates. I am asking them to preach inconvenient biblical truth, even if some people want to falsely reduce it to a political narrative. Let’s get straight here. We need to teach the whole counsel of God, and the biblical case against abortion—which I’m sure we’ll get to in just a moment—is clear and to the point. If we’re going to teach the whole counsel of God, we have a duty to teach that truth on abortion and not avoid our responsibility by saying, Oh, I don’t want to get political.

Matt Tully
Would you say that this is an issue that transcends politics?

Scott Klusendorf
It transcends it, but it unavoidably is tied to it. If I were to say it transcends it, we can’t just reduce it to the political. It is political, but it’s more than political.

14:59 - Is This Really a Step in the Right Direction for Women?

Matt Tully
A lot of people in our country today who are on the pro-choice side of the aisle likely feel pretty upset and maybe even fearful about what this means for women moving forward. I would say many of those people probably feel this quite sincerely. They would struggle to understand why we, as Christians, would see this as a step in the right direction (this decision that we’ve just had come down). What would you say to someone like that if you’re actually seeking to persuade them—or start to persuade them—of your position?

Scott Klusendorf
I think we need to do two things. We need to puncture misconceptions, and then secondly, we need to clarify the core issue that’s in play here. Here are the top three misconceptions we need to puncture: 1) We need to puncture the misconception that Roe v. Wade got the federal government out of the abortion issue. A lot of American citizens worry that this reversal of Roe is going to put the government back in the abortion decision. This is absolutely false. Roe v. Wade put the government smack dab in the middle of the abortion decision because one branch of the federal government—the courts—co-opted the issue from the other two branches and left the people no say. The courts are very much involved in the abortion decision, and they’re part of the federal government. They’re one of the three branches. By reversing Roe, we actually give the people more of a say on this issue. I’m just shocked how many Americans don’t understand that. They’ve had no clue that’s what Roe actually did. 2) The other thing that we need to do is point out to people that reversing Roe does not make abortion illegal, because abortion is now going to be fought out state by state. It is no longer going to be the federal courts alone determining abortion policy. 3) A third thing we need to point out to people is that by reversing Roe v. Wade, we are not relegating women to the back alleys of America. I’ll tell you in a moment why historically that’s false, but let’s go right to our present time. Abortion has been de facto illegal in Texas for about eight months. In fact, abortion rates plummeted after the passage of their heartbeat bill. In fact, even magazines like Political noted this, that there was a 60% drop in abortions almost immediately and it continues to this day. Did we have women dying by the thousands in Texas because they now had to go find illegal abortions? No. They just chose not to get abortions. This is a key point. A lot of people think, Matt, that the law has no impact on behavior. Yes, it does. Most people are going to follow the law. This myth out there that we need to puncture is that the law does not impact behavior at all. It impacts behavior dramatically. Think about anti-smoking laws. Forty years ago, every restaurant and every airplane you flew on had people smoking on it. Then, laws began to restrict smoking. People didn’t just flagrantly disregard the law on those things. They abided by the law. The same will be true here with abortion. We see that in Texas and we see that in other states that have already begun to pass laws restricting abortion. Going back historically, it’s simply false that thousands of women died from illegal abortion prior to Roe v. Wade. In fact, I won’t even quote a pro-life source here. I’ll cite a couple of pro-abortion sources. Dr. Christopher Tietze, Planned Parenthood’s primary statistician during the 1960s—when allegedly all these women were dying from illegal abortions pre Roe v. Wade—said that the claim of five to ten thousand deaths a year from illegal abortion was “unmitigated nonsense.” If you look at Dr. Mary Calderone, Planned Parenthood’s medical director, she, in the 1960s, again, when all these women were dying from illegal abortions, said that the death rate from illegal abortion was so low that it wasn’t even worth commenting on. The reason why it was so low is the widespread introduction of penicillin had made all surgical procedures save, including abortion. And not only that, the vast majority of illegal abortion—she said 90% to be precise—were not performed with guys with rusty coat hangers. They were performed by doctors in good standing in their community who simply skirted the law. It’s a myth that the public is believing that if we somehow return Roe v. Wade to the population and let the people have their say on the issue that women are automatically going to die in the streets. That’s simply false.

Matt Tully
You’ve just shared a few things that you would say to somebody who is on the pro-choice side and is worried about what this means for the future. What’s something that you would not say to someone in that position?

Scott Klusendorf
The one thing I would not do is start by saying, You know what? You’re just a fool who wants to kill children. You’re just a baby murderer. That’s not going to help anybody. What I like to do is get to the second thing I mentioned a moment ago, and that is after we puncture misconceptions we need to simplify the issue. Sometimes the best way to do that is not to make statements but to ask questions that get to the heart of it. One of my favorite questions is to simply ask the person, Do you believe each and every human being has an equal right to life? In today’s culture that’s obsessed with egalitarian notions of equality, who’s going to say no? Almost nobody says no to that. Does each and every human being have an equal right to life? After they answer, and they always say in the affirmative, yes, I then will say, If I can show you, using science, that the unborn are members of the human family, would you agree that they, too, have an equal right to life? About half the people are going to start back pedaling and making all kinds of excuses that then allow me an opportunity to move to the next thing they’re going to bring up: the question of human value. Some humans have a right to life, but not others. Then, you can simply say something along the lines of, *Do you think there’s a danger in creating two classes of human beings: human beings we can’t kill that we call “persons,” and human beings we can kill that we call “non-persons”? What has our history been like whenever we’ve done that? Of course, we’ve got example after example of what happens when you do this kind of thing. I prefer thoughtful questions as opposed to making inflammatory statements.

21:53 - Making the Case for Life in Less Than a Minute

Matt Tully
That’s so helpful. That leads into your argument, which you’ve already started to lay out. We talked about this a couple of years ago when we did another interview together, so if listeners want to hear a more robust statement of this, they can go listen to that episode, which we’ll link in the show notes. I wonder if you could give us the concise version of the core argument—the core case—that you would lay out if you were trying to convince somebody.

Scott Klusendorf
I’ll give you the pro-life syllogism—the basic formal argument— and then I’ll show you how to defend it, or state it, in a minute or less so that you can do this with anybody. Here’s the formal pro-life argument. Premise 1: it’s wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings. Premise 2: abortion intentionally kills innocent human beings. Conclusion: therefore, abortion is wrong. It’s wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings. Abortion does that; therefore, it’s wrong. The beauty of stating it this way, Matt, is I’ve stated my case in a way that can only be refuted one of two ways. You’ve got to show that one or more of the premises are untrue, meaning the argument is unsound. Or, you’ve got to show the conclusion does not logically follow, meaning the argument is invalid. Outside of that the argument stands. In fact, when I teach pro-life apologetics, I give people the three most important words they need to remember: syllogism, syllogism, syllogism. In other words, that argument we just put out there. Why? Because people love to change the subject on abortion. You have to keep bringing them back to what you actually argued, not what they think they believe about the issue. Then, we can defend that argument in a minute or less. Let’s say your Aunt Betty comes to visit you, Matt. I’m assuming you have an Aunt Betty, of course. This is all fictional. She comes to your house at Thanksgiving. She’s from Boston. She does not believe the Christian worldview. She does not believe pro-life. She looks at you between bites of turkey and stuffing and says, Matt, why are you pro-life? Here’s what you’re going to say, and you’re going to get it said in a minute or less. Your listeners can time me if they want to take a second to get their phones or watches ready to see if I can pull this off. Here’s what you will say: Aunt Betty, I’m pro-life because it’s wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. The science of embryology is clear that from the earliest states of development, you were a distinct, living, and whole human being. You weren’t part of another human being like skin cells on the back of my hand. You were already a whole, living member of the human family even though you had yet to grow and develop. You know what else, Aunt Betty? There’s no essential difference between you the embryo and you the adult that would justify killing you back then. Differences of size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency are not good reasons for saying we could kill you then but not now. Notice that I didn’t cite any Bible verses, but I did convey biblical truth, and I did it in under a minute.

Matt Tully
That’s right. I timed you. It was under a minute.

Scott Klusendorf
At 62 I may be slow on the basketball court, but that was rocking it, okay? Notice what I did there. I just very concisely summarized my argument. Now, to be clear, even though I’ve laid out an argument for the pro-life view, I don’t expect Aunt Betty to just look at me and say, Thank you for straightening out my twisted thinking! That doesn’t even happen in marriage. If you’re in an argument with your spouse and you’re wrong and you know you’re wrong, you don’t look at your spouse and say, I am so glad Jesus put you in my life to straighten out all the areas I’m mistaken. No! You have to process it for a few days, right? This is human nature, and Aunt Betty is no different. Here’s what happens: two weeks later when Aunt Betty is alone with her thoughts, maybe driving through McDonalds to pick up her Big Mac, she, in the privacy of her thoughts alone in that car, will admit that you had the better of the argument. That’s when the argument is won. Our goal is to give something for people to think about, not necessarily have them fall to the ground and say, I convert! You’re absolutely right!

Matt Tully
I think that’s maybe one of the concerns that someone might have when they hear you lay out that syllogism, which is so tight and so irrefutable if the premises are true, but it's just that how many people are actually interested in a logical argument like that? It seems like many of the arguments for abortion tend to be more emotional in flavor. How successful, even a few days later, would you say a logical approach like that is actually going to be?

Scott Klusendorf
I never argue that arguments alone are sufficient to change minds, but they are always necessary. You will never truly change a person’s mind on emotion alone. You are going to have to give them a foundation for what they think. I do believe there’s a bit of a myth out there that people don’t care about logic. Yes, they do; most people simply haven’t heard a pro-life argument. It’s not that they’ve heard it and logically rejected it or emotionally decided they don’t care. They haven’t heard it. When we lay it out for them and we gently but firmly keep bringing them back to that syllogism that it’s wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings, abortion does that, therefore, it’s wrong, we are able to keep the main thing the main thing. If they bring up something like religion—Oh, well that’s just your religious argument—we can gently say, Can I make an observation? Arguments are either sound or unsound, valid or invalid. Calling my argument religious is a dodge, not a refutation. You cannot dismiss an argument by calling it a name. You’ve got to do the hard work of actually engaging it. If they say, Oh, you’re against all killing? What about war? What about capital punishment? you can gently say to them, Let’s go back to what I actually argued. I argued it was wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings. I didn’t say I was opposed to all killing. I said it was wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings. Abortion does that. Therefore, it’s wrong. In other words, I can gently point out that my critic is attacking a straw man. This is why: we’ve got to always come back to syllogism, syllogism, syllogism—that argument that we just laid out that it’s wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings, abortion does that, therefore, it’s wrong.

Matt Tully
I want to go back to something you said just a minute ago. You said that maybe, surprisingly, many pro-choice people haven’t actually heard a logical argument against abortion and for the pro-life cause. That seems surprising to me. I think we assume that a pro-choice person would typically really understand what we believe and just reject it. Has that not been the case in your experience?

Scott Klusendorf
It’s not been. In fact, when I ask them to state the pro-life argument they almost never state it correctly. They will say things like, Every person has a right to life. You believe the unborn are persons. Therefore, they have a right to life. I didn’t say persons. I said it is wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings. Or they will say, You just want to restrict women’s rights. Abortion is a way to do that. Therefore, you’re in favor of restricting rights. They don’t know what the argument is. They don’t know the support for the argument—why we believe what we believe. The reason I know this, Matt, the team I have at LTI we go into a lot of schools—Catholic and protestant schools. Some of those schools are filled with secular kids. We do assemblies sometimes in front of as many as 2,500 kids at a time, sometimes as small as 200. Without question, the number one thing we hear after every presentation is, I’ve never heard anything like this before. Nobody has ever laid out a rational case for the pro-life view. We’ve had atheist students come up to us. In fact, one guy sticks out in my mind. One of our speakers, Megan Almon, she spoke at this large Catholic high school in Philadelphia. She laid out a case for the pro-life view, much the same way we just did only she expanded it because she had more time, and the leader of the philosophy club on campus—a hard-core atheist kid who had spent his high school career trying to debunk Christianity—came up to her and said, I am absolutely spellbound by what you just said. I cannot believe I just heard what I just heard. You laid out a rational case for the pro-life view, and I sat there listening to you thinking, ‘Oh my goodness! I have nothing to say in response to this.’ You totally destroyed my case. Now, that’s a kid who is intellectually engaged, and he’s saying, I’ve never heard anything like this before. We hear it time and time again.

31:00 - The Gospel Is the Only Hope for Human Healing

Matt Tully
You’ve given us a little bit of a taste of the argument that, as you said, doesn’t even require Bible verses or theology to make the case, although it is founded on some biblical worldview things. On your website—which is just packed full of resources aimed at helping Christians make the case for life, so I would encourage people to go check out your site—you write on the site, “Though our arguments are rooted in science and philosophy, the gospel of Jesus Christ is central to our presentations and our goals, as it’s the means by which the suffering, guilt, and division caused by this issue are healed and people are restored.” Can you unpack why you see the gospel—the Christian gospel—as so central to your approach to this issue?

Scott Klusendorf
Great question. Thank you for bringing that up, Matt. Unlike some pro-life advocates, I reject the premise that only preaching the gospel will end abortion. I think that is false. We didn’t end slavery by preaching the gospel. We did not end racial segregation by preaching the gospel. As we mentioned a moment ago, very few people are going to respond to the gospel. If the only way you’re going to end abortion is to preach the gospel, you’ll never get enough converts to change the culture and change the law in this nation. We preach the gospel for a different reason. By the way, we do it in virtually every presentation we make. Even in debates I find a way to get gospel in there. Why? Because it is only the gospel that can restore and heal broken lives that have been wounded by abortion. That is why we preach the gospel, because it’s the only hope for human healing. God may choose to end abortion by simply restraining the evil of those who want to perpetrate the evil. The law can do that, going back to Martin Luther King’s quote: “The law can’t make the white man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me.” God may choose to use civil law as he did with racial segregation and as he did with slavery to restrain an evil. But only the gospel changes hearts and provides healing. On our team, if you work for LTI, you preach the gospel in virtually every presentation, but not because you believe it’s the only way to stop abortion, but because it’s the only hope for broken lives.

33:34 - A Second Edition of *The Case for Life*

Matt Tully
That’s so helpful, and a helpful distinction between the different purposes for those portions of your presentations. You’re currently working on a second edition of your popular book with Crossway, The Case for Life, where you really summarize this and provide people with very helpful application-oriented guidance for engaging on this issue. This second edition is due out in March of 2023. I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about what you’re hoping to do with this new edition.

Scott Klusendorf
I’ll tell you what, anybody who reads it is not going to complain that I just did some cosmetic changes. There are eight new chapters; we’re talking eight new chapters, 44% new content in the book. There are chapters that go into the worldview behind the abortion debate. What are the major worldview players involved? We look at worldviews such as naturalism. How does that impact the abortion debate? How does postmodernism impact the abortion debate? How does critical theory impact the abortion debate? Why is the Christian theistic worldview more persuasive in accounting for human rights, human dignity, and moral truth? We get behind the abortion debate in this chapter and look at the fundamental worldviews that are in play because oftentimes we’re in conversations with people and we think, It feels like I’m just talking right past the person. We’re not even in the same world. Well, guess what? We’re not in the same world. We need to address those underlying worldviews at the same time we’re making our case. There’s a chapter on that. There’s a very important chapter—crucially important chapter—on what it means to be pro-life. There are competing views about what that means. There is an attempt right now to change the pro-life movement from being primarily about abortion to being about what’s called “whole life”—the idea that pro-lifers should not just talk about abortion; we need to take on other issues. We need to take on immigration, we need to take on alleviating poverty, we need to take on refugees, we need to take on gang violence, we need to take on the opioid crisis. The list goes on and on. We need to be pro-life from womb to the tomb, so the argument goes. I make a case that that would be disastrous for the operational objectives of the pro-life movement. Not only would it be disastrous, it’s highly unfair, and I give several reasons why. Imagine if your church, Matt, were to open an inner city daycare in downtown Chicago—on the south side of Chicago—so that on weekdays during the school year, for three hours each day, you could pull kids off the street so they would not be at risk for gang recruitment. You open this daycare center that reached out to kids K–6th grade, and every school day you did that. Imagine a critic came to you and said, You don’t really care about kids. If you did, you would be there for all aged kids, not just elementary aged kids. How come you’re only open three hours a week and not twenty-four/seven? What are you doing to address all the fundamental issues that lead to gang violence in the first place? What are you doing about guns in the city? What are you doing about poor housing conditions in the city? If a journalist wrote a hit piece on you saying those kinds of things, he would be out of the job by noon that day. But if he writes those things about pro-lifers, he’ll win an Emmy. Why? Because it’s fashionable to attack pro-lifers, many of whom have devoted their lives at great personal sacrifice to stopping a particular injustice. While nobody attacks other social justice groups for being too singular, pro-lifers have to put up with that everyday. So, I’ve got a whole chapter in there on what it means to be pro-life so that we keep the main thing the main thing. We also have a whole section—and this is really exciting to me—where we survey the big thinkers from the other side. Who are the major players? People like Kate Greasley, Michael Tooley, Peter Singer, David Boonin, and others. We take a look at what their arguments are and provide some responses to those arguments so that we can equip ourselves intellectually to be ready for what’s in front of us. Then, I’ve got another section on how to build a pro-life presentation for a short speech at your church or a local school classroom. My contention is we are all apologists now. In a post-Roe world, we all have to take responsibility, and we cannot use the excuse, Oh, I’m just not good at public speaking. Listen. Good public speakers are not born, they’re just organized. They need to know a few special things to make their presentation hum, and once they get that, you can do this. You don’t have to be a spellbinding order. You just have to be clear, and I give pointers on how to do that. So, that’s just a little preview of what’s in there. I got to tell you, I’m beyond excited about this. At first I was thinking, What am I going to say about this new edition? When Crossway approached me and said, Hey, would you consider a second edition? I thought, My goodness! I’m just swamped right now with writing. Why would I want to take this on? Thanks a lot, guys! But the more I thought about it, the more I thought this is an opportunity to equip people in a post-Roe world. I think the book is going to do that. Nobody is going to be able to say, I wasted my money. I really didn’t get anything new out of this new edition. Yeah, you are. Eight new chapters, 44% new material. Oh, and in addition to the eight new chapters, another four chapters have been so significantly rewritten that they’re almost brand new. They just retain the same title.

39:29 - My Hope for the Pro-Life Cause

Matt Tully
The first edition has been so helpful in so many people’s lives. I’ve heard many Christians testify to how it really did equip them to start to make this case in their own relationships. We are excited about this second edition and can’t wait for it to come out this next March. Maybe a final question, Scott. You’ve been part of the pro-life movement for years now—decades. You’ve spent hundreds of hours engaging with regular Americans, and as we’ve said, many of them are young people at high schools and college campuses. What’s your hope for the pro-life cause moving forward?

Scott Klusendorf
My hope is this: that more and more Christians will become intellectually engaged on this issue. Not for the purpose of just being heady, not for winning a Twitter debate or a social media exchange, but for the purpose of graciously—and yet persuasively—engaging those who think differently than we do. Like I said a moment ago, we’re all going to have to be apologists in a post-Roe world. The idea that you can leave the defense of the pro-life movement and the pro-life position to professionals, those days are over. We all have to bear witness to the truth of the pro-life view. We need to do it in ways that unchurched people can understand, but we’re doing it always with a biblical worldview in mind, and always with the gospel in mind, in hopes that we can reach broken men and women and say, You know what? Yeah, abortion is a real sin, but guess what? We have a real remedy. Our sin is great; but our Savior is greater. We can point people to the hope that’s found in the Christian gospel. By the way, not that you’ve asked me to say this, but it’s always been one of the things that I’ve appreciated about Crossway is that gospel focus. Even though I’m writing a book about a cultural issue, I’m allowed to bring the gospel into it and make the case without any reservations that there’s no other hope for sinful human beings than that found in the gospel of Christ. It’s a great way to be truthful about abortion and also present the only remedy.

Matt Tully
Thank you, Scott. That is, as you said, so central to Crossway’s identity. We are about the gospel here. That makes us so excited about partnering with you to publish this book and to bring the gospel to bear on this important cultural issue of abortion. Scott, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us today.

Scott Klusendorf
Glad to join you.

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