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How do you elevate childbearing by advocating abortion?
Ms. Michelman	Mr. Rankin
Bringing another child into the world would have destroyed Ms. Michelman's ability to keep her family together, to provide security, nurturance, and care to her children. Her born children commanded a more extraordinary moral responsibility than the tiny fetus. She feels she made the most moral decision by choosing abortion.	For ten years Ms. Michelman has defended the right to abortion through her work at NARAL. In so doing she has built her life around an act of destruction. When others destroy us, do we respond with destruction? Are we basing ourselves on hope or on fear? The choice of abortion has terrible ramifications at many levels in society.

When does life begin?
Ms. Michelman	Mr. Rankin
She has an absolute uncertainty about when life begins. It depends on how you define life. She does believe that the moral weight of a fetus increases as time goes on. There are a multiplicity of religious views: at birth, at viability, at conception. There is a continuum along which life proceeds. The law defines it as when a person is born. Questions about life and the morality of abortion get more difficult as the pregnancy increases in time. Therefore women must have early access to pregnancy termination. No one should ever deny access to an abortion a woman may need.	Life begins at conception. When a sperm and an egg unite, they form a one-celled zygote which is genetically unique and fully human. Every person begins life as a one-celled zygote in his or her mother's fallopian tubes, and that's how we get here. The only difference between the zygote and who a person is today is stage of development. There has been consensus among the knowledge elite on this question. The American Medical Association (AMA) in 1859 acknowledged that a sperm and an egg unite and conceive a human life. In 1959, the AMA renounced its position but had no new scientific evidence against conception as the start of human life.

Abortion is defended because it protects those who have already been born. Isn't this argument utilitarian?
Ms. Michelman	Mr. Rankin
The fact that a woman can get pregnant does not mean she should be forced to be pregnant and be involved in child bearing against her will. There are various situations where we decide life should be taken, as in war. There are miscarriages that end pregnancy naturally. The only difference between a miscarriage and an abortion is that the woman is the agent, because she has made a moral decision that childbearing is not right for her at this moment. The fact that a woman can get pregnant from age 11 to over 50 does not mean that she should be a slave to that biological condition. Birth control is not perfect and couples face failure of their birth control. To bring a child deliberately into the world is responsible decision making. To terminate a pregnancy you cannot continue is also responsible, deliberate decision making.	The argument is utilitarian. Will we define human life according to a doctrine of achievement or a doctrine of dependency? None of us ever become independent beings who achieve "post-viability"; we require the planetary ecosphere as our larger womb. If we're going to have an honest society based on democratically informed choice, we've got to define our terms. The reason that black people were denied humanity before the Civil War was because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled they were three-fifths persons for voting representation and for white plantation owners, but not for the protection of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Do we believe enough in democratic process that says you have to define life, liberty, and property, otherwise you have no law?

What about rape? Shouldn't a woman have the right to expel from her body the violence with which she has been treated?
Ms. Michelman	Mr. Rankin
Throughout history women have been subjugated through sex and reproduction. Rev. Rankin uses nice words, talks fast, uses a lot of theology. But the outcome of his view is that women will be forced to bear children against their will. Support for subjugation of women. No matter how it is cloaked, even religion, it's wrong. Women should not be forced to have no control over their lives.	1.Does the abortion restore to the woman the broken remains of the image of God? No, it deepens the fracture. 2.Does the abortion unrape the woman? 3.We are all the product of rape in our ancestral lineages. 4.The child is innocent and loved by God. 5.God wants us to choose the best, but he will not force us. 6.Where there is a flicker of hope, God's love nurtures life.

How can you say you are not bringing religion into this debate?
Ms. Michelman	Mr. Rankin
"You keep saying you're not bringing in religion. You are bringing in religion. Because it is your religion that defines when life begins. I don't subscribe to your view about when life begins. And I don't think you have the right to define for me what my act should be regarding my personal, physical, moral, ethical family life. I do not want any woman to have to subscribe to your views."	The U.S. Constitution grants freedom of thought, speech, religion, press, and participation in the political process. He is an up-front, open-agenda, evangelical Christian. He does not want one inch more freedom to articulate his perspective than he first gives to others to articulate their own perspective. We do not enjoy the right to liberty and property until we first define life. Until the definition is clear, we can discriminate against anyone and there is no law or civil order. What is the biological definition of life -- not soul, not personhood, not religious philosophy -- upon which all Americans with their personal religious perspectives can vote? If we had a consensus that life begins at conception, is that not due process? He would never impose himself apart from democratic process. He may win or he may lose in that process. Ms. Michelman is saying that as a citizen he does not have the freedom to win.

The pro-choice movement has used rhetoric which is equally as damaging as rhetoric of the pro-life movement. Does the pro-choice movement have a responsibility to modify its language and attitude towards pro-lifers?
Ms. Michelman	Mr. Rankin
She appreciates and accepts the challenge to the pro-choice community. Pro-choice people should contribute to the civility of this debate just as anti-choice people should. She tries very hard not to contribute to the rhetoric. It's not helpful and she does not like calling people names. But people who believe they are absolutely right, who have no respect for other views, should not rule the day. Rev. Rankin would like laws that forbid women to choose to terminate their pregnancies. It would rob women of their fundamental moral choice.	The whole phrase 'anti-choice' is rhetoric. He opposes abusive actions and offensive rhetoric from either side. Ms. Michelman argues that pro-life Christians have the right to persuade people to choose life, but they do not have the freedom to participate in the political process, win a consensus and pass laws protecting the unborn. She dehumanizes Christians at that point by restricting them to a religious ghetto. That is a subtle form of rhetoric.

Rev. Rankin, how are you stopping violence against women when you support positions that endanger women's lives? Aren't you ignoring the plight of women who died from back alley abortions?
Ms. Michelman	Mr. Rankin
	The number of women who died in back alley abortions was grossly exaggerated. But one woman dying from an illegal abortion is too many. They chose the abortion trying to destroy the unborn life. And that's a double travesty. A dirty secret is that women die from legal abortions, but there are no laws requiring the statistical manifestation of it. Women continue to die today, and far more unborn. Eighty percent of the back alley abortions were done by doctors on the lam. A lot of doctors today who perform abortions can't practice good medicine elsewhere. It's a travesty when a woman dies and when an unborn child dies. He will not actively participate in any death and will labor everywhere to empower women to choose to keep their unborn children and make it legal to protect the unborn. Male chauvinism is the driving force behind the death of the woman in the back alleys, behind the death of the woman in legal abortion, and behind the death of the unborn.

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[Contents | About the Debate | Summary of Views | Dialogue | Questions from the Audience]