Posted on 06/23/2017 5:40:55 PM PDT by Incorrigible
Mountain View, Calif., Jun 22, 2017
A pro-life activist walks into Google’s headquarters and delivers a speech so compelling that within 24 hours, the online video of it surpassed a similar speech given by the head of Planned Parenthood.
It may sound like the start to a far-fetched joke, but on April 20th, pro-life speaker and activist Stephanie Gray did just that.
Gray was the co-founder of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform and served as its executive director for several years before starting the ministry which she now runs, Love Unleashes Life.
She spoke in April as a part of the Talks at Google series, a program that brings a variety of speakers to the company’s headquarters to discuss their work. Gray has participated in more than 800 talks and debates on abortion.
Gray’s talk centered around the idea that there are three qualities that lead us to call someone “inspiring:” They place others ahead of themselves, have “perspective” on their sufferings and situation in life, and do the right thing even in difficult situations. She linked these criteria to the process of dialoguing with others about abortion, emphasizing question asking.
She began by contrasting two stories, that of the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia in Italy in 2012 and the “Miracle on the Hudson” emergency plane landing in 2009. In the first story, she explained, the captain had jumped ship along with the rest of the crew. In the second, the pilot, Captain Chesley Sullenberger, had been the last off the flooding vessel, ensuring his passengers all exited safely.
In comparing the two stories, she noted that Sullenberger was lauded as a hero, and the captain of the Concordia internationally shamed.
“If you agree that it was correct for the pilot to put the passengers ahead of himself, to prioritize the needs of his dependents,” she said, “then wouldn’t it follow, that when it comes to the topic of abortion and an unplanned pregnancy, that a pregnant woman ought to prioritize the needs of her dependent?”
However, she noted that the comparison was only valid “depending on, indeed, whether embryos and fetuses are human beings, like the passengers on the airplane.”
To determine whether or not a fetus is a human being, Gray displayed an image of a human fetus and posed the question, “What are her parents?” It would logically follow that two human parents’ offspring must be the same species, she said.
Despite the ambiguity around the origin point of human life when it comes to abortion, she said, in discussing other topics “we have great clarity.” For example, an IVF specialist or dog breeder would agree that the life they attempt to create begins at fertilization.
Taking a look at what qualifies as “personhood,” Gray considered the terms used by pro-infanticide philosopher Peter Singer, that a person is a being which is “rational, conscious, and self-aware.” She contrasted a human embryo with an amoeba: the embryo lacks these qualities “because of how old she is,” where the amoeba lacks them “because of what it is.”
“Should personhood be grounded in how old we are, or should personhood be grounded in what we are?” she asked.
“The quality of age shouldn’t be the basis for which someone has personhood status,” she answered, noting that the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes the rights of “all members of the human family.”
She then addressed the question of the fetus’ dependence, arguing that the fetus’ greater dependent status as a weaker entity than a baby entitles it to greater, not less, protection. She related this to the story of a friend’s husband who, faced with the choice between rescuing a mother or her baby first from the roof of a sinking car, made the “obvious” choice to take the baby.
“Since you believe that we should prioritize weaker and more vulnerable people ahead of stronger people, then shouldn’t we actually prioritize the needs of the pre-born child?” she said.
She recalled meeting a Rwandan genocide survivor who, seeing a picture of a child killed in the conflict next to an aborted fetus, pointed to the image of the fetus and said, “That’s worse, because at least my family could try to run away.”
Considering the concept of perspective, she posed another question: “How can we change our perspective in an unplanned, crisis situation?” She recalled dialoguing with a college student whose stepmother had an abortion upon learning her baby was expected to die at birth. Responding with a thought experiment involving a terminal cancer diagnosis, she answered the student, “Why would we cut short the already short time we have left? Instead, wouldn’t we want to savor every moment of every day of the next 20 weeks (of the pregnancy)?”
Moving to her final criterion for what makes a person inspirational – “do the right thing” – she listed a number of circumstances that make pregnancy hard and often lead to abortion, including poverty or rape. But when we look at parents raising an already-born child in the same circumstances, she said, we can see that we ought to have the same attitude towards carrying an unborn child as towards parenting a child in the same situation.
Gray closed with a number of stories from people she knows personally, including a woman who was raped and had a child at age 12, a woman who cared for her baby daughter with respiratory issues, and a woman who regretted her own abortion and ended up counseling another woman to carry her baby to term.
“They’re inspiring because they put others ahead of themselves, because they had perspective, and because they did the right thing, even when it was hard,” she said of all the stories she had told throughout the talk. “And that’s the challenge that I leave all of you with today.”
In a question-and-answer session after her talk, she recommended that audience members seek to start dialogue on the difficult topic of abortion with open-ended questions, and to “seek to understand where (another) person is coming from.” She also used the analogy of a person choosing rape to address the thought that pro-life views cannot be “forced on” pregnant women, saying that just as it is illegal to make the choice to rape someone, it ought to be illegal to choose to end the life of a fetus.
Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards also gave a Talk at Google, in a video published March 7. Gray’s talk, published June 19, had surpassed Richards in views within 24 hours of being uploaded.
great post
As Christians, we have come to believe that a very important person will rise up and fight our battles for us. In some instances, that may actually happen, as Trump has proven.
No my fellow Christians, here is a person who rose up to speak truth.
God is ready to work through any of us. If He’ll work through Donald Trump, He’ll work through you and I.
God has called us to save the unborn...
I think Donald Trump is doing his best to do that very thing.
Agreed - this is a bookmark keeper.
I have been saying it for years:
When was the last time two human mated and gave birth to... a giraffe?
A child may be born with a genetic defect, and some may argue that prospect is grounds for abortion (I categorically reject that assertion), but what results will still be a defect-laden human.
The critical argument made is that the dependent must be protected, even at great risk.
I would go further: The natural course in this fallen world is forward (not the communist sense): The elder paves the way, and guards the way, for the younger.
In a dangerous pregnancy, the Christian is not entitled to use a doctor’s opinion (Nota Bene: opinion!) as an excuse to commit murder on a preborn child. To do so denies God’s prerogative and God’s agency.
Many times a patient has survived after expert doctor’s gave the patient no chance of survival.
They call them miracles. Whether or not such a one really is a miracle is not the point; that point is that human doctor’s do not know the future, no matter how arrogant they are.
Bkmrk.
Very cool, thanks for posting this.
Bkmrk.
I’ve watched a few minutes of the video. Worth watchng. I’ll view it later.
This is the sort of thing I love to see as I think it’s orders of magnitude more effective than politics.
It sounds like she found the right way to present the arguments. Great news.
SLED test
Size,
Level of Development,
Environment,
Degree of Dependency
Great post
thanks for the article
for later
I agree.
An associate of mine who is adamant about women having “control over their own bodies”, and is repulsed by talk of Right to Life talk, was vulnerable to one suggestion I lofted.
Let’s agree we’re not attempting to tell women what they have to do. At the same time lets work together to reduce the numbers of abortions taking place.
There is something wrong with a society that willfully kills over one million unborn each year.
They actually agreed with this.
If we make it non-threatening, we just may be able to get suggestion from them how to reduce numbers in a way that is comfortable for them.
It’s sad we would have to approach it that way, but anything that moves us toward zero is a good thing
This was an hour well spent. Such a great, logical, motivational speaker. I suspect she has saved many lives by encouraging others to choose life.
A few facts and a video it sells itself. I would guess they downplayed the religious aspect and focused on what was really happening during the procedure.
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