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Bailey Thompson<\/strong> | News Editor<\/span><\/p>\n WOU Students for Life Club welcomed Jim Schultz, a pastor and Ph.D. candidate, to speak on Feb. 22 before a group of community members, opening a scientific and philosophical conversation about abortion on Western\u2019s campus.<\/span><\/p>\n Addressing a number of pro-life arguments and offering a time for questions, Schultz shared a presentation titled \u201cMaking the Case for Life on Hostile Turf\u201d that was designed to equip individuals to engage in civil discourse at a time when a number of people are quick to dismiss pro-life arguments. <\/span><\/p>\n Before beginning any sort of conversation about the legality and morality of abortion, however, Schultz emphasized that it is important that people on either side of the debate have a full understanding of the science of the unborn and the process of having an abortion.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhen the abortion issue gets brought up, pro-choice people don\u2019t usually want to talk about \u2018what is the unborn\u2019 and \u2018what happens to the unborn during an abortion\u2019 as much as they want to talk about privacy, women\u2019s equality, reproductive rights, reproductive health,\u201d said Schultz. \u201cThose are the euphemistic terms used to take us off the scent of … what happens to the unborn during an abortion. We are saying that that is the primary issue and those other issues, although important in themselves, can\u2019t rise to the level where it makes it okay to kill an innocent person.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Schultz also emphasized the belief that, ultimately, the majority of arguments that are made in favor of abortion are grounded in the belief that a fetus is not a human person. Using what he referred to as the \u201ctrot out the toddler\u201d test, Schultz shared that arguments such as \u201canti-choicers want to force poor women to bring another child into the world\u201d and \u201cabortion allows women freedom to pursue careers\u201d would not seem logical if it was being offered as justification for killing a two-year-old. As he described it, very few people would morally support the killing of a child just because they are living in poverty or interfering with their mother\u2019s career opportunities.<\/span><\/p>\n From this point, Schultz said that it is necessary for a pro-life individual to provide evidence for the personhood of the unborn. To this end, Schultz presented a number of quotes from leading, secular embryology textbooks that affirmed this notion.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote,\u201d wrote T.W. Sadler in \u201cLangman\u2019s Medical Embryology\u201d, one of the works cited by Schultz<\/span>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Schultz also offered a number of quotes of those who practice abortion, conceding that abortion intentionally kills living human beings.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don\u2019t know that abortion is killing,\u201d stated former Planned Parenthood president Faye Wattleton in a MS Magazine article titled \u201cSpeaking Frankly\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n If these things can be established, then Schultz concluded that \u201cthere is no essential difference between the embryo you once were and the adult you are today that justifies killing you at that earlier stage of development. Differences of size, level of development, environment and degree of dependency are not good reasons for saying you could be killed then but not now.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n However, Schultz repeatedly emphasized one thing: there is never a good reason not to be loving and gracious to people when you talk with them about abortion. Whether someone has had an abortion or holds a strong contrary opinion, it is better to approach the situation in a way that is loving people, not judging them.<\/span><\/p>\n If students would like to learn more about the WOU Students for Life, they can contact the club\u2019s president, Gemma Cowan, at gcowan15@wou.edu<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n