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Book Review
In truth: An honest approach to abortion
Reviewed by Andrew Junker, The Catholic Sun
February 7, 2008
Difficult, murky and complicated are words often used to frame the abortion debate. But many times people use these words to complicate abortion so as not to confront what it really is.
At least that’s what Peter Kreeft argues in his book “Three Approaches to Abortion: A thoughtful and compassionate guide to today’s most controversial issue.”
“I shall try to prove here not only that it was wrong to legalize abortion, but that it was clearly wrong; not only that it was criminal to decriminalize abortion, but that Mother Teresa was exactly on target (as usual) when she said, ‘If abortion isn’t wrong, then nothing is wrong,’” Kreeft writes at the start of his book.
Throughout, he manages to refocus the issue of abortion through a lens of moral clarity that is never sanctimonious or rancorous. It’s just sane.
He begins the book — which he said he wrote for pro-choicers — with a purely rational argument for why abortion should be outlawed.
It moves from the simple, seemingly uncontroversial premise that “we all know what an apple is” to the final argument against abortion in fifteen steps. It sounds gimmicky at first, but Kreeft — professor that he is — writes convincingly, with a good-natured and reasonable tone.
By making the “apple argument,” he’s distilling a few hundred years of philosophical discussion — after a page and a half of arguing against skepticism as a philosophy, he writes, “Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant are wrong on this issue; and Socrates, Aristotle, and Aquinas are right.” — but that too is partly the point.
It’s commonsense to see that abortion is wrong and should be illegal, Kreeft writes. It’s the “chattering classes” — defined as “philosophers, scholars, ‘experts,’ media mavens” et al. — that obfuscate the issue with endless arguments over semantics or outright canards.
Kreeft shows this problem more fully in the last and probably most effective part of the book. Making a reasoned, logical, dispassionate argument in favor or against something is well and good. But it hardly ever occurs in reality, especially when discussing such a controversial issue as abortion.
That’s why he ends with a dialogue he wrote between a pro-lifer and a pro-choicer. The conversation portrays a realistic discussion and includes the pitfall both sides are prone to: a reliance on emotionalism or feeling instead of reason.
As the conversation proceeds, the pro-choice character hits a list of every conceivable argument for the legalization of abortion, which Kreeft’s pro-life character answers and refutes.
Thankfully, the pro-choice character isn’t a strawman, but an intelligent and in many ways sympathetic person, which makes the whole dialogue more convincing.
The rest of the book contains a list of personal reasons pro-lifers fight for life, why they feel compelled to pray in front of abortion clinics or answer phones at a crisis pregnancy center. It’s the subjective counterpart to Kreeft’s logical argument against abortion.
Taken as a whole, Kreeft hopes the book will show a pro-choice supporter why the other half of the country believes what it does. It’s also helpful for pro-lifers interested in knowing more about the fight for life that can only be waged effectively through words and reasoned arguments.
But the book is probably best for a third group of people: pro-lifers who have friends or family members who are pro-choice.
Those close relationships often render it impossible to reason civilly with each other. Kreeft can act as a proxy, making arguments and appealing to your brother or sister’s good sense. Best of all, he’s incapable of bringing up past hurts or sleights from years gone by that would derail the conversation.
It’s true that there are many fronts in the pro-life fight. Many work tirelessly to effect legal change. Others provide help to women who find themselves in a crisis pregnancy. Still, others pray unceasingly for an end to abortion.
But there is another front, one that may be the most difficult: convincing people that abortion should be an unthinkable act. This front tries to change the hearts and minds of Americans who have heard little but pro-choice cant for the past 40 years.
Although this effort often proves difficult, Kreeft writes, pro-lifers shouldn’t despair.
“It is my hope that this book will help to make a little progress in this direction, the direction of peace not through force but through enlightenment — that is, through truth,” Kreeft writes. “Any other peace is perilous, for a peace not based on truth is not true peace.”
Andrew Junker is a staff writer for The Catholic Sun. Comments are welcome. Send e-mail to letters@catholicsun.org.
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