1. Some Basics of Good Communication in General

The information you present is extremely important. You may talk and talk and speak up about the issues of abortion all your life and never do any good on anybody that you can see anyway. And yet, talk one mother out of aborting her child and you have done something which is valuable not only for this world but for an eternity for that child if she or he is brought to faith.

A. Know your stuff!

As we talk about “stuff” we are talking about knowing the real substance of the Holy Scriptures. What really does God say in the Holy Scriptures? Not reading a book necessarily, not knowing if counseling worked out, but knowing the Lord Jesus Christ, your personal faith, and the knowledge that God reveals in the Holy Scriptures. So when I say know your stuff, I mean that before you can give capable witness you are a regular worshiper in the house of God, you are a student of the Holy Scriptures, you are a regular attendee at your Pastor’s Bible class. It means that you make use of the means of Christian education in your congregation. It means that you do a personal Bible study at home. It means that you buy good Christian literature, meditation booklets, Christian news magazines, and solid books whose writings about the Bible correspond with the doctrine in the Bible. Anything less than that is a little bit less than “knowing your stuff.” And anything less than that kind of a knowledge of God and His will in the Scriptures is not something that you can pick up in a 50-minute workshop. So when I say know your stuff – remember – you are dealing with the issues of life and death.

When you talk to anyone about abortion, you might share the same point of view with every pastor in your church body. College and seminary professors have reminded future pastors that every time they stand in pulpits and speak the Word of God they may be bringing the message of Jesus Christ to somebody for the last time before they die. I would guess that your percentages in speaking to other people about the life and death issue of abortion are even a little higher. The likelihood of death occurring as a result of somebody’s response to “the stuff” you present is much higher than the likelihood of a pastor losing one of his members on any Sunday of the church year. So, knowing your material is extremely important. St. Paul talks about unity in the church, and he talks about spiritual gifts and he uses the phrase “full knowledge of Christ.” When he says “be filled with the Spirit” he explains that by saying the sword of the Spirit is the word of God. We are going to talk about a lot of things today.

B. Know your audience. Listen.

Nothing is more important than actually knowing your basic stuff. Know the word of God; know what the will of God is with respect to our moral life; be able to illustrate the truth about God’s concern for life in some other way than saying “Abortion is murder, you shouldn’t do that.” Your STUFF has to be a little bit deeper and run a little bit faster than that.

The second thing that you might consider is an appreciation for your audience. When you read books about communication, you can find all sorts of fancy terminology such as audience adaptation, but what this boils down to is “Christian Love.” It means being concerned enough about the other individual that you are willing to listen to him, to know where he is coming from and you have to deal in different ways with different people. If your pastor talks to his Bible class the same way in which he talked from the pulpit Sunday morning, be probably doesn’t have a great big Bible class. It is a different forum it’s for a different purpose. A sermon is a very solemn thing and people have to sit there and listen. If they get too rambunctious, the usher will show them the door. But a Bible class is a place for dialogue. It is a place where you encourage people to think for themselves and even raise their objections. So an appreciation for your audience means that you are concerned about the touching, the feelings or emotions of the people you are talking to in the best way possible – in the way in which they will respond. Remember, people are not all the same. You have to ask people how they grew up, what kind of parents they had, what led them to this idea that maybe abortion was a possibility. You just cannot start out by sitting down and saying – “have a seat right there, I’d like to talk to you for 30 minutes or so about the evil and sins of abortion.” It is a loving concern, called tact if you want. You can call it audience appreciation. It means nothing but love. The kind of love Jesus showed to his different audiences.

Love sometimes means that you have to talk sweet and soft to some people whose conscience is very tender. Sometimes it means you might just yell and speak quite frankly and straightly to others who themselves are vehement in their opposition to God’s Moral Law. That is the way Jesus did it. Remember when he was cleaning out the temple? He was not sweet and soft. He was kicking over tables and yelling at them. When he approached the woman at the well of Samaria, he was very cautious about the way in which he approached her – even though she was a hardened sinner, married over 5 times, and living in adultery now. Jesus was courteous and kind to her to win her confidence so that he could speak to her about her sins. Jesus was more patient in instructing his disciples over three years than he was with some other people who beard him only once or twice and rejected him, subsequently condemned for their lack of faith. Jesus approached people according to where they lived, where they were coming from, and WE have to do the same thing.

C. Adapt your presentation (not message) to your audience.

Adapt your presentation, not your message. In other words, do not change the content of what you are saying. We are not going to say, “Oh abortion is very nice” and to other people say “Well, let’s talk about this a little bit and see if it is good or bad.” The message is God. I am talking about using the fits and talents and personality that God has given you and your expression to other people – and I’m not just talking about counseling. I’m talking about communicating with the next-door neighbor lad, the women’s group, or with a fellow church member who might be weak in a particular point about God’s concern for life. They are all different audiences and as any good speaker adapts himself to the particular audience you must also adapt yourself to yours.

We might also say that knowing your stuff thoroughly helps you make a good presentation. If you’ve got your eyeballs down in a book or on the notes you have written on how to answer every little thing that is coming, you aren’t going to communicate very personally. A chief means of communication that God has given to people is not the mouth – but the eyeballs. I’ve heard some very good sermons that just didn’t sink in because the minister had his eyeballs on his notes and not on his people with whom he was trying to communicate. On the other hand, I’ve heard some pretty average or even half-rotten sermons that were very effective on the people because the pastor looked at people’s eyes when they preached to them.

We don’t add anything to the power of God’s word by the way we are personally concerned for other people. As one of my professors said to me when I was a student at the seminary, “You are never going to add anything to the power of God’s Word or to his message by all of your studies and by all your dynamics and by all your looking people in the eyes, by all of your media consciousness. You never are going to add anything to the word of God.” But, he went on to say, “I want you to sweat and I want you to practice and I want you to study and I want you to be dynamic in the pulpit so that you do not subtract anything from it.”

II. The unique aspect of abortion counseling from a Christian point of view.

It isn’t the way we want it to be, but in talking to many counselors we have found that even though our heart and our mind and our real spirit are in the Gospel – the love of Jesus – often our counseling to most women seeking an abortion will be Law, not Gospel. That is not because we want it to be that way, but because of her spiritual condition at the time. Anyone who is contemplating murder is probably not ready to hear about Jesus Christ, the Savior.

You have to know where people are coming from. Most of our instruction in counseling is what we call moral counseling, isn’t it? We are counseling between right and wrong – making people understand their own consciences or reasoning with them. That is all talk about right and wrong, isn’t it? whenever possible we are going to want to share Jesus Christ and what he has done for us. But say, for example, some woman comes into the center after she has her abortion, and it is tearing up her soul, she feels terrible about it and she wants someone to talk with her about it. What are you going to do? Give her a lecture on it for 35 minutes about how horrible the murder of abortion is? You are not going to speak any Law to a person like that. You are going to lay the promises of God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ the Savior upon that troubled heart. But that is the exception. The rule is, people come in honestly and seriously considering murder as a moral option to a problem in their life.

III. The unique aspect of abortion counseling requires the application of good communication techniques along with adequate knowledge of God’s purposes for the use of His law.

When God himself speaks Law he adapts it to his hearers, or to his audience. God does not speak his own Law in the same way to all his hearers. Do you remember in catechism class when you studied the Law as a curb? As a mirror? As a guide? It is the same Law – the message doesn’t change but God changes in his purpose and cause for preaching that Law.

A. God’s law is a curb.

Now, to whom does God preach the Law as a curb? He preaches the Law as a curb to people who are not at all sorry for their sins – people who have no respect for his Law. The Bible itself says, the Law is not made for the righteous man, but for the unrighteous, for the ungodly, for murders of fathers, mothers, the adulterers, and sinners. When someone rejects God’s Law, he does not respect right as right and wrong as wrong. God does not give up on them.

The same thing is true when you have people coming in for counseling who are not sorry about their wrong opinion. You can tell them abortion is murder, you can expand from a number of different ways, you can show them the foolishness of their excuses and yet, they do not accept what you have to say. And what I’m saying is don’t give up. Just because people do not have respect for God’s Law doesn’t mean that you are to give up on them.

You’ve got someone that has come into your center, sits down and says, “Where do I sign up to get the money for the abortion? I thought this was the place where you tell me where the abortion clinic is?” That’s happened! But you say – “Ah, well, this is not that land of place – I guess you have to go down the street.” Even though someone rejects God’s Law – you and God himself have an obligation to continue preaching the Law to them as a curb. You may not ever convince them that their thinking is wrong and you may not change their mind. Nevertheless, you still have an obligation to speak to them as long as you can, as best you can, about God’s Law so that possibly, even though you can not lead them to repentance, you can get them to stop considering the sin of which they were going to commit.

Now, what do we mean by that? See, I’ve got my curb on the floor here. Here’s the curb, here’s the boulevard, and anyone that has a 15-year-old going to driver’s education knows what a curb is. It’s that part of the street that keeps you from paying for reseeding all those lawns that he would jump on because he didn’t quite figure what the radius of the steering wheel was when he turned it. That’s what God’s Law does. God’s Law is a curb. People, even those who do not respect God’s Law, even atheists observe certain moral principles. In their consciences, atheists still hear the Law of God through their natural knowledge as pointed out in Romans chapters one and two. Through their natural knowledge of God, to their conscience or to the actual preaching of God’s Law, God continues to preach the laws prepared for them. He threatens them with punishment and reminds them of their earthly repercussions.

Let me give you an example: This woman came in saying, “there is nothing wrong with me getting an abortion, because a fetus is not life, and therefore it is not murder.” Maybe you can’t convince her that a fetus is a life, but you can tell her that many women convinced themselves that the fetus was not life and had an abortion. But they lived with a nightmare – real nightmare – of seeing their baby, bloody beside them in bed. Tell them about the horror and pain of conscience they felt for taking a life even though they were convinced at the time that the fetus was not life. That may not get these people to respect God’s Law, or to change their mind about whether or not this is murder. But the Law will still serve as a curb to keep them from committing that horrible sin. And even though you are not able to save this person’s soul, because you cannot lead them to sorrow for their sins, you still serve God by speaking the Law to them.

Number 1: By keeping them from committing this terrible sin and hurting society.

Number 2: By preserving Life and the child itself and maybe leading the child to baptism and, by the preaching of God’s Word become a child of God.

B. God’s law is a mirror.

If you remember in your catechism class you studied the verse from Romans chapter 3 – “Through the law we become conscious of sin” (Romans 3:20). From St. James you read, “Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like” (James 1:23-24). He said, if you don’t respond to the Law you won’t see what you have done wrong when you hear someone talking Law to you. You are like this guy who gets up in the morning, looks into the mirror, sees all this stuff all over his face, sees his hair going in every direction and goes out the door saying “I’m good looking!”

The Law is a mirror. It points out people’s sins. It shows them that they have done wrong, thought wrong and that they have intended wrong. And there are a lot of people that you see like that. They are up in the air. They considered abortion only because so many people have said that it is alright and maybe a girlfriend had suggested it They talk to you for a little while and they can see how terrible this thing was even to think about. Then you are speaking to somebody using Law as a Mirror – to show them their sins. It doesn’t bring them to faith, but it serves to show them that they are wrong or that they have done wrong.

Now we don’t want the Law to accomplish in people what it accomplished in Judas. Judas also looked into the Law and saw that he was a terrible sinner. In despair, he committed self-murder. So when you are speaking the Law to somebody and it is obvious that this person is sad and discouraged because of their sins, it is very important that you quickly offer the cross of Christ and comfort with as much eagerness, maybe more, then you did your presentation of the Law in the first place.

C. God’s law is a guide.

This use of the Law applies to the people who are believers in Jesus Christ, but who, because of the weakness of faith, have actually considered the terrible idea of murdering their own child. They are not unbelievers. They are not people who have never felt sorrow for their sins. They are not people who do not know Jesus. They are people who because of their spiritual weakness or their distance from Christ in His church and His message in the Bible, have lapsed into some terrible thinking. Now when you talk to those people you do not preach the Law to them as a curb: “You dirty sinner, you better watch out for all those repercussions, you are going to have a guilty conscience, you are killing your baby.” You do not use the Law for them as a mirror. They come in half suspecting what they are contemplating is wrong. But you may still preach the Law to them as a rule.

In many “clean-cut” communities, abortions continue to take place. Some people’s hearts are just as dark as any other place. Many young women who have abortions list themselves as religious.

This is a very sad thing that we have to deal with in our conscience and in our lives. We somewhat miss the importance of this when we label abortion a phenomenon because then it’s a “thing,” isn’t it? Abortion is just a horrible, horrible personal thing and we have to tell people, in whatever way we can, and do anything we can to keep them from committing this sin – for the sake of their own consciences and their own salvation, and for the sake of the children whose lives which they bear. Now if you have one of these fine Lutheran girls or a girl from another Christian denomination, who obviously knows Jesus as her Savior, but at the same time is caught in a terrible moment of weakness in her faith, you speak the Law to her as the rule. Somebody who has received a tremendous gift is always looking for a way to please the giver – to say thank you to the one who has given it to him.

Let me give you an example: Grandma is always rather strict when you are around her house and she always gives you jobs to do – bringing in the wood, cleaning out her flower bed, painting the backside of the garage – yet you come into the house and you make plans to raid the cookie jar and she slaps your fingers. Grandma seems like a grouchy old lady whose laws you don’t respect or especially like obeying. But then comes Christmas. After a long summer and fall, and doing a million things for Grandma – she buys you an expensive boombox. All of a sudden. Grandma is the most wonderful person in the world and you see all those wonderful things that you did before and you forget the fact that you got your fingers slapped reaching into the cookie jar. The next time you go to Grandma’s place. You don’t wait until she tells you what to do. You ask Grandma, what is there to do?

In a very crude sense, this is also the way the Bible pictures our salvation for us. By nature, we do not do things for God willingly. All of God’s Law seems crude, hard and without reward. And then God blesses us. He gives us life in Jesus Christ He answers our prayers. He gives us physical blessings. He promises that we are going to heaven. He helps us through our troubles. He helps us raise our families according to his direction and his words. We are going to start looking around for ways to say “Thank you.” “How can I say ‘thank you’ to you, O God?” All of a sudden they want to know what will make God happy. They look back into that same Law and read the Ten Commandments. It becomes a guidebook – a matter of happiness. This is how I make God happy. This is how I can say “Thank you.”

That is the way in which you speak and communicate the Law to somebody in counseling who has a heart for Christ, but who has a great weakness of faith. You speak not to condemn them or curb them. They are not horrible atheist unbelievers. They are not humanistic thinking people that have to have this big wall stuck there or they are not going to do the right thing. You talk to them on a different wavelength, don’t you? This is the way they can say “thank you” God. “Jesus is my Savior.” “He did sacrifice for me.” They were looking for ways to say “thank you” to him. This is one great way that they return this gift of life that he has given them.

IV. Consideration for the one being counseling will help us decide what avenue to take in our approach.

THE EXCUSES

Avenues of Approach:

Before you can approach somebody, you must know where they live. Christian counseling is similar to getting into a car. Before you go anywhere you have to know where the person lives, get the street address, and then you figure out how to get there.

There are many counselors who get inspired to go to somebody’s house, but they get into the car and take off before they find out where the person lives. You have to ask them personal questions. Do they have a spiritual background? If they have a spiritual background and you find out that they grew up in a Bible-believing church you might have to quote some Bible passages, because they will respect Bible passages. If you find out they have never been to church, have had no connection with a church, think that all churches and preachers are bloodsucking money suckers, then you don’t want to quote any chapters or verses to them. That doesn’t mean we do not want to speak the Bible, for everything on the table is in line with the Bible. We don’t change our message, but we do change our approach.

We are trying to accomplish love your neighbor! This person who is considering getting rid of her baby – love her enough to find out where she lives. When you find out where she lives, then you can start coming to her house. As you can see in looking at the table, there are different streets (avenues) to approach on.

Watch for “the excuse.” The natural conscience of man tells him that murder is wrong. So anyone who is contemplating a murder has to think up an excuse to commit that murder. These are the most common excuses given for getting rid of babies.

1. The fetus is not life. “Why do you kill it if it is not life?”
2. The woman has a right to do what she wants with her own body. “Who cares what the father thinks? Who cares what God thinks? Who cares what the baby thinks? I’m going to do what I want to with my own body.”
3. Job, money, lifestyle. “My job demands that I be here full-time, and I’m on my way up, and I will lose my place if I take off time to have this baby (3 months of pregnancy leave). I won’t be able to develop my job – if I have to take care of a sputtering, whimpering kid at home, changing pants. My job demands that I get rid of this baby.” This materialism is the Nth degree. We are seeing more and more that are unafraid to come right out and state these reasons.
4. Shame and embarrassment. The woman who is not married and is pregnant has enough on her conscience. She has enough to embarrass her personally. People are going to find out about it. She wouldn’t listen to her family, her friends, her pastor – who all told her not to live with a man until she was married. She wouldn’t listen to them – she was smarter – now she is pregnant And she cannot bear to have people tell her “I told you so.” It is bad enough on her to have it on her conscience, without having to have her carry it right out in front of her and advertise her foolishness and her sin. That is terribly degrading. Everyone asks her, “what does your husband think about this,” and she has to explain a million times over that she doesn’t have a husband. She has to explain that as soon as the guy found out that she was pregnant he ran off. We all like to hide our sins. We have plenty of our own, so when we talk to people like this don’t curse them as being worse than you are. I don’t like to have you know what my sins are either and you certainly don’t want me to know what your sins are. We hide them. We are ashamed of them. Remember Adam and Eve? What did they do when they suddenly found out they were naked? Well, that’s the way a pregnant lady feels when she is not married. And there is no place to hide.
5. It is unfair – I was raped. Women rarely get pregnant from the rape. Less than 1% of all abortions are performed for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. We must now deal with “date rape.” We have to be compassionate. We have to have genuine, legitimate empathy with these pregnant women.
6. Unwanted child. It is always complicated by other things such as poverty. If these women had the money, they wouldn’t come into our centers. It is complicated. It is complicated by money problems, alienation, separation from their families, separation from their churches and separation from their friends. There just isn’t anyone left. They feel unwanted. Now they have a baby. It is not surprising that their baby is unwanted by them.
7. It’s okay. it’s legal! “The government approves, everybody does it – why shouldn’t they do it? Who is going to say it is wrong?”
8. Deformity. “I just had an ultrasound of my baby,” she tells you, “and it is definitely going to be deformed. My boyfriend is a heroin addict. Obviously the genes themselves are mutated and we can see that the baby is going to be deformed. It certainly is not fair to me that I should bear such a child into this world.”
9. The husband, not wife, want the abortion. “I really don’t want the abortion, but my boyfriend says I have to. He doesn’t want the kid. My boyfriend doesn’t want to pay for it.” “My husband doesn’t want any more children.” There is always someone else to blame, look back to Adam and Eve in the garden. Adam said, “The woman you gave me did it.” The woman said, “It was the snake in the garden.”

If one avenue doesn’t work try something else. Find out where these people are coming from. Find out what is best going to work on their hearts. Find out what is best going to accomplish God’s purpose of convincing them of their sins and saving that baby’s life. Maybe even get them to the point where you can share Jesus Christ with them. It isn’t that the first one is vital and the others are not vital. They are all vital! If they have a Christian background they may respect the Bible passages you have quoted for them. If they come from an unchurched background you are not going to quote Bible passages for them, for they will despise you like pigs do not respect the value of a pearl (Jesus said that – Matthew 7:6). You approach them in different ways.

Running down the list of Bible passages, there are those which contradict all of these excuses:

1. The fetus is not life. The Bible says life exists at conception. “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5). “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5).

2. The woman has a right over her own body. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own” (I Corinthians 6:19). The Bible says specifically that the Christian does not belong to himself. He does not have that right over his own body.

3. Job, money, lifestyle. “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33). “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12).

4. Shame, embarrassment. “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).

5. Unfair, rape. God’s final justice is what the Christian trusts in. We have to suffer many things within this life. For the believer in Christ, it becomes a chastisement by the means of which our faith is drawn closer to him. You can’t explain this to someone who is not a believer. So don’t even try this Bible passage, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.” A woman who has been raped but is not a Christian, will not understand that kind of love and justice from God. She will be too impatient. “I want something done and I want it done now! The man is gone, who can find him? I’m innocent — somebody has to suffer!! Somebody has to die for this injustice done to me. It has to be the baby!” God says, “Vengeance is Mine! I will repay you, saith the Lord.”

6. Unwanted child. “God is love.” “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy” (1 Peter 1:8). “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20). How can we say that we love God when we have not seen Him? We don’t love our fellow man whom we have seen. You can’t love that thing sticking right out in front of you. How in the world can you love a God that you can’t see at all?

7. It’s okay. it’s legal, the government approves. When faced with a conflict between what the government said and what God said, Peter was quick to assert, “For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20).

8. Deformity. Romans 8:28 – “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (John 9:3). That is the story about Jesus and his disciples when they came across the man who was blind. And the disciple said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man [before he was born – at conception] or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” Jesus healed the blind man and he became a fantastic witness for the Lord.

9. Man/Husband Want Abortion. Ezekiel 18:4 says, “The soul who sins is the one who will die.” Not only will the husband be held accountable for wanting his wife to have the abortion, but she is the one who has to go in, she is the one who goes in and makes the final decision. She is the one who has to sign the paper. “Yes, I agree to kill my baby.” And she is also the one who will answer to God on the day of judgment and that is what you must tell her.

If they do not listen to Bible passages, then you have to work on their own Conscience. Ask them, “Is this what you believed as you were growing up?” Ask them, “Is this what your parents taught you?” Ask them, “Is this what you would do for somebody else?” If they say “Yes”, then you have to go back to what the Bible says.

If the Bible and Conscience reasons aren’t working, try Parallel: “Put yourself in this position. Are your moral laws consistent? In other words, you are going to kill this baby, is this consistent with the way you live your life? Are you for killing?” Moral and ethical values are consistently applied to life. You can’t say, “Well, I’m against murder, but I’m going to murder my baby.”

Golden Rule – “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” “Would you like to have someone exercise their right over your body without your consent – meaning that your life would be terminated?” This is Jesus’ Golden Rule and even those who are not Christians say they believe in it. And by the way, get people to respond! Set them up for this. Before you start laying things on them, ask them, “Do you respect the Bible? Do you have conscious feelings about this? How were you raised? What moral principals do you believe in?” Ask them, “Do you believe in the Golden Rule?” When they bring up their excuses for their abortion lay that self-accepted rule back upon their conscience. “You said that you believed in the Golden Rule. Is that what you are practicing here? Are you doing to your baby what you would want to be done to you?”

Repercussion is a very good point, especially for those whose consciences are weak. Tell them about the repercussion. Even if they don’t agree that abortion is murder, you tell them about those women who have the nightmares, about bloody babies, and about their responsibility for killing. Some mothers may say, “The fetus is not life,” and “Everybody is doing it.” Ask them, “Do you know what your life is going to be like in a year from now if you go through with this abortion? Is this really a solution? Is killing ever a solution? Think of the repercussions!”

Talk about the positive repercussions. Ask them, “What is your life going to be like in one year if you get the abortion? Do you know for sure what it is going to be like? On the other hand, you do know what it will be like if you go through with the pregnancy. You will be holding a 3-month-old baby, with no guilt, no nightmares. What will your life be like 5 years from now? What if you find Mr. Right? You are going to have to tell Mr. Right that you have aborted a baby. Otherwise, your marriage will not be honest, and it can be subject to annulment. Are you prepared to tell your future spouse? Don’t you want to get married sometime? Are you prepared to tell him? Are you prepared to live a life of secrecy of abortion if you don’t tell him?” That can shake up a few atheists and partying immoral souls if they are forced to think about it.

Don’t tell them what will happen in five years. You give them a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. Put ABORTION on one side and NO ABORTION on the other side. Now, ask them to speculate. What will happen in five years with abortion? What will be the repercussions?

Do murder balance. That means – every excuse they give you, you balance against murder. “Sure that’s a good excuse. Sure your job/occupation is important. But does that justify murder? Would you justify a bank robber for shooting somebody because somebody stood in the way of his getting what he wanted? Maybe your excuse has some validity, but does it have more validity than the aspect of outright murder?” And you go right down the list here. “Sure, it’s unfair you were raped, but will justice be served if you commit murder?” Use the word murder, not killing. Killing isn’t always wrong. Murder is the unjust killing of the innocent.

Specific reasons. Attack the logic of the argument itself. “The fetus is not life – if it is not life, then why kill it?” Your goal is to show the inconsistency or the foolishness of the logic they are using to set aside God’s moral law. A woman has a right over her own body, but our rights must never interfere with the rights of others. I can swing my arms freely as I want to unless I’m a foot-and-a-half from another person. It’s within my rights to swing and stretch. I must stop where my rights would interfere with his right not to get knocked in the jaw. Now we laugh at that, but it is foolish that our courts have even suggested that the right of a woman over her own body could possibly include the right to inflict some kind of hurt upon someone else’s body. These so-called “logical” excuses are not really very logical or consistent.