Last time, we discussed the reason why you cannot be “pro-life except for rape and incest.”

This is because, if you believe that circumstances of conception can be more significant than the innate value of the baby’s life, then you really do not value the baby’s life according to its true nature. Life is an inestimably valuable gift from God.

If any life can be devalued because of external circumstances, then all life is only circumstantially valuable.

That’s not pro-life, that’s anti-life.

So much for the philosophy behind my point. Now, what’s a good way to show this to someone in a real conversation?

Realize this: When someone says that life can be devalued because of external circumstances, we must show him that he really doesn’t believe his own assumption—at least not for any other stage of human life. So, here’s a power question you can ask anyone who’s “pro-life” except for rape, incest, poverty, or other similar external circumstances: “Would you do that, for this reason, to a two-year-old?”

Here’s a sample dialogue:

Professed pro-lifer: “I’m against abortion overall, except for the cases of rape and incest. In the case of rape especially, that’s a horrible thing that happened to the mother. It’s not her fault. She shouldn’t have to continually be reminded of that by someone forcing her to go through with the pregnancy.”

[Please note: It’s always a good idea, at the beginning of a conversation like this, to check whether this person has had rape or incest personally affect him or his family. Make sure you proceed with appropriate sensitivity.]

You: “Thank you for sharing your view with me; and I see that you think abortion is more understandable in an extreme circumstance like this. First off, I know both you and I can agree that rape is a horrible, violent crime, and I believe that God hates it and will bring His judgment on it one day. But I do have a question for you about abortion in the case of rape.

“Let’s say that, tragically, a woman was raped and conceived because of it. However, she bravely decided to keep her baby, and she gave birth nine months later. She loved her baby very much and was very glad he was alive. However, the baby grew older over time, and as babies get older, they start to resemble their parents a little more. At around two years old, the toddler really started to take on more of the features of his father, the rapist. The boy’s mother couldn’t look at her son’s face anymore without being reminded of that horrible day.

“Would it be okay for her to take a kitchen knife and stab her toddler to death so she wouldn’t have to put up with the trauma anymore?”

At this point, the answer should become clear to everyone: Absolutely not.

As tragic as it is that a mother would be reminded of her abuser in the face of her child, the mother cannot simply kill her two-year-old so she can forget and heal.

Notice how this is a more fleshed-out version of the basic question, “Would you do that, for this reason, to a two-year-old?”

The clear answer is, “No, we do not do that, for this reason, to two-year-olds. We do not kill them even if they remind us of horrible things that have happened to us in the past.”

I’m indebted to Christian apologist Greg Koukl for this maneuver, which he artfully dubs “Trotting out the Toddler.”

If you hear a possible justification for abortion, just ask if it would be any different for a toddler. So many pro-abortion arguments completely fall apart when you realize that we would never think of doing the same thing to a human outside the womb.

Honestly, when I first started working in pro-life ministry, I thought that defending the pro-life stance was going to be so much more complicated than it actually is. I pretty quickly realized that I really only needed about 2 or 3 arguments to counter the wide variety of pro-abortion rhetoric—and “Trotting out the Toddler” was one of them.

Once I learned it, I suddenly found that I could refute a diverse spectrum of justifications for abortion, all by simply bringing in the two-year-old. Mothers wouldn’t be allowed to kill toddlers who were conceived in rape, incest, impoverished circumstances, or with severe birth defects or diseases, or because their needs are interfering with college studies or careers.

Accordingly, mothers shouldn’t be allowed to kill first-trimester babies for those reasons, either.

I’ve used this basic question multiple times in conversations with people about abortion—it really gets a person to think about the core assumption he’s making. He may not acknowledge this assumption at first, but this question sure has a way of exposing it. Let’s continue our imaginary conversation:

You: “. . . Would you do that, for this reason, to a two-year-old?”

Professed pro-lifer: “Oh, no, definitely not. But that’s different.”

This is the very kind of dismissive response I’ve received when asking this question.

But look deeper—”That’s different” really just means, “They, the unborn, are different.”

The only way to salvage their point is to claim that, for some reason, the preborn are less valuable than the post-born. There’s a huge issue with this, however.

It’s supremely obvious that the unborn are “different” than toddlers in many ways, but no one can identify any difference between the preborn and toddlers that actually affects their innate worth.

Next time, we’ll look at four unsuccessful ways people may try to pull this off.