Recently, popular conservative podcaster and host of “Relatable,” Allie Beth Stuckey, joined Jubilee for the second time to debate Monte Mader, a popular progressive commentator. The hot-topic “Faceoff” debate addressed Christian values and garnered over half a million views in just two weeks. A major topic during the debate was abortion and Christianity.

Key Takeaways:

• Monte Mader and Allie Beth Stuckey debated the notion that Christians can support abortion.

• Stuckey argued that children in the womb are human beings and persons worthy of protection based on both the Bible and science.

• Abortion is the direct and intentional killing of a preborn child.

• Just because a preborn human being requires a uterus and placenta to survive and is in an early life stage, doesn’t mean that she isn't a person worthy of protection.

The Details:

During the debate, Stuckey argued that Christians must oppose abortion, and Mader claimed otherwise.

Claim: Some churchmen throughout history didn’t recognize that abortion anytime after fertilization is wrong, therefore Christians can accept abortion.

Response: Regardless of the errors some Christians have held throughout the centuries, the fact stands that it is always wrong to take an innocent human life, including in the womb.

Mader began her counter against Stuckey's claim that Christians must oppose abortion by referencing different Christian individuals and institutions that either supported abortion or suggested that life does not begin at fertilization. 

She referred to writings from St. Augustine, who questioned whether human life exists before sensation or feeling. (Mader may have meant to refer instead to St. Thomas Aquinas, who speculated that an embryo is infused with a human soul at “quickening,” as Mader used that specific term).

Pivoting to the Evangelical movement, Mader referenced a 1968 debate hosted by Christianity Today during which a group of 25 theologians decided that abortion should be allowed, at least in some cases. She also noted that the Southern Baptist Convention and the Dallas Theological Seminary have accepted abortion in the past. It wasn’t until the late 1970s that Evangelicals began to oppose abortion prominently, Mader pointed out.

Stuckey responded by telling Mader: “I’m saying everything…you just described is wrong. Again, this is not a salvific argument. This is about what is right and what is wrong.”

She went on to explain that churchmen have been wrong on a number of issues throughout history. Modern science clearly shows that human life begins at fertilization, and it is always wrong to take an innocent human life. Christians should therefore oppose abortion, she explained. However, it is not necessary to have Christian faith to understand that it is wrong to end the lives of preborn children. Science shows it to be so.

An analysis of the writings of St. Augustine on preborn life from ETWN clarifies Stuckey's point that the reality of preborn human life, as known through science, demands the protection of the preborn, despite the mistaken notions of church leaders in the past:

“St. Augustine, one of our most revered Fathers, lived and wrote almost 1,500 years ago; he did not see the world around him with a scientific perspective as we know it today; as with early writers of this and later periods, his concern was the nature of the immortal soul and the human being; he approached this question primarily from the perspective of theology and philosophy…no doubt St. Augustine would have marveled at a uterine ultrasound and what it reveals about a human in the womb.”

Claim: Preborn babies are not persons because they don’t have consciousness, autonomy, or personality. Abortion is acceptable because preborn babies aren’t full persons.

Response: At the moment of fertilization, a new human being comes into existence. Just because the human being requires a uterus and placenta to survive and is in an early life stage, doesn’t mean that she isn't a person worthy of protection.

Several times during the debate, Mader brought up the issue of “personhood” and the preborn. She claimed that a preborn baby isn’t a person, a status she implied is attributed only to people who are conscious, autonomous, and able to express their personality.

Stuckey pointed out that arbitrarily designating some human beings as persons, and not others, based on their location, consciousness, and dependence is problematic. These criteria for personhood are never applied to humans outside the womb.

“You don’t justify the murder of someone based on their dependence upon someone else or their dependence upon a machine. You don’t justify the murder of someone because of their age or because of their size. But these are all the reasons given when it comes to the justification of killing babies inside the womb,” said Stuckey.

Historically, when powerful people have decided that other human beings were not fully human persons, injustice ensued. In the past, and still today in some cultures and parts of the world, women, slaves, and people of persecuted religions are considered less than human, and the results are horrifically unjust.

Claim: It is inaccurate and unbiblical to call abortion “killing a baby.”

Response: It is a scientific, incontrovertible fact that when a woman is pregnant with a living baby, she is carrying a living human being. After abortion or miscarriage, the human being is dead. Abortion is the intentional killing of a living human being; its result is a dead baby.

In response to Stuckey's definition of abortion as “killing babies inside the womb," Mader claimed “it’s not a baby." She argued that Stuckey's definition was inaccurate and merely “emotionally compelling.” Because a baby inside the womb is called an “embryo” and a “fetus,” it is not really a baby, Mader claimed.

Stuckey pointed out that “fetus” is just the Latin word for “small child,” and the terms Mader used are just words denoting stages of human life, like the words, “toddler” or “teenager.”

“First of all, fetus is Latin for small child, and so we can get into the semantics of it. It’s all a human being. I mean, just because we call a child a ‘toddler’ or we call a child a ‘baby’ doesn’t mean that it’s not a child. Doesn’t mean that it’s not human. Adolescent, teen, these are all designations that we use for different stages of life," said Stuckey.

No one questions whether a pregnant woman is pregnant with a human being, Stuckey pointed out.

“At the end of the day it is a human being. That’s not scientifically contested. It's not a dolphin. It's not a summer squash. It's always a human being. Whether or not it's alive is also not contested. If it's not alive then, okay, you've miscarried. That's different. But if you've got a living human inside of you, that is what it is," she said.

Mader conceded that she thought there could be an “absolutely solid argument [against abortions] after viability," however she seemed to justify abortions late in pregnancy by claiming they happen less often than first trimester abortions.

Stuckey pointed out: “Viability is an extremely arbitrary standard for whether or not a person should be murdered.”

The Bible shows that God cares even about the “unformed substance” of the child in the womb, and that God knits us together in our mother’s womb, Stuckey pointed out, citing Psalm 139. The Bible clearly shows that Christians should hold human life sacred at every stage of its existence.

Claim: The Bible says that life begins at first breath, therefore the Bible doesn’t support the fact that a human life exists at fertilization.

Response: Biblical texts can be interpreted both literally and poetically. Just because the Bible doesn’t explicitly say that life begins at fertilization doesn’t mean that the Scriptures do not support the scientific fact that life begins at fertilization.

Mader argued that the Bible teaches that life begins, not at conception, but at first breath, alluding to how life is associated with the “breath of life” in Genesis and Ezekial. She insinuated that there is no support in the Bible for the fact that life begins at the moment of fertilization. Mader denied that Psalm 139, which tells of God knitting the human beings together in the womb should be taken into account, however.

Stuckey pointed out the irony in the fact that Mader took some parts of the Bible literally to argue against life beginning at conception, while arguing that the Psalm 139 was only poetic when referring to God forming the child in the womb.

Stuckey responded that the Bible is often poetic in its language, however, it shows a respect for human life from its very beginnings in the womb. This Biblical view of the sacredness of human life in all its stages is consistent with the scientific fact that a new human life is formed at the instance of fertilization.

In Psalm 139, David alludes to the principle that all human beings are made in the image of God from the scientifically proven beginning of life, Stuckey said:

“I think that he is speaking to the principle that we are made with dignity by a God who sees us and knows us and loves us. It is that principle that I am wedding with the scientific reality that we are human from the moment of conception. When I wed those two things together, I do not see a  justification for killing a baby inside the womb."

Stuckey acknowledged that some things in the Bible, including violence done to human life, are incomprehensible. However, the principle of the sacredness of human life is consistently upheld in Scripture, and Christians must recognize that. Now, more than ever before in history, modern science shows that this principle is the morally safe one to stand on.

The Bottom Line:

Throughout the debate, Stuckey consistently stood on the scientific fact that human life begins at fertilization, while showing that the Bible also strongly supports the sacredness of human life at all stages. These principles, derived both from science and Scripture, compel Christians to oppose abortion. Mader, though seemingly articulate and well-versed, constantly shifted her arguments and approaches throughout the debate, trying to find a way to justify the killing of children in the womb from a Christian perspective. As the debate demonstrates, arguments for abortion continually falter upon the shifting sand of euphemisms, injustices, and lies. The pro-life stand is always firmly rooted on the rock of Biblical and scientific truth.