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In print | Published April 10, 2008

Last night a lecture hosted by Swarthmore Students Supporting Life entitled “Only One Question” by Greg Koukl, the founder of Stand To Reason, an organization that seeks to train Christians in the intelligent defense of Christian values, explored the controversial issue of abortion.

The fundamental question on which Koukl’s argument was based on asked “What is the unborn?” According to Koukl, before one argues whether one should kill an entity, one must first ask the question of what it is that one is killing.

“What is the unborn?” Koukl asked. “If the unborn is not a human being, no justification for abortion is necessary … If an unborn is a human being, no justification, it seems to me, is adequate … This is a question that, I think, has been largely ignored.”

Koukl used the example of an African woman and her child suffering from AIDS on the front cover of a Time Magazine article to argue for the truthfulness that images can carry in making decisions about emotionally heavy issues by making these issues substantial to the deciders.

“Time Magazine understands the impact of truthful images that communicate the truth about issues,” he said. “What time is doing is taking the issues of AIDS and taking it out of the abstract and making it concrete … and showing you what’s at stake.”

A similar method was applied at the lecture, wherein Koukl showed two videos – one of a nine-week gestation baby waking up in the womb and another of a dilation and evacuation abortion, along with several images of dismembered heads, hands, and feet of several embryos that had been aborted at different stages of fetal development.

“It’s not longer academic when we talk about abortion. We are talking about both of those graphic images that you saw. We are talking about real human beings,” he said.

According to Koukl, the SLED test, a four-point test that defines the essential differences between the unborn and toddlers, is arbitrary to use in the justification of killing the unborn, when born humans who differ upon the same bases are protected from being valued upon these differences.

The acronym SLED stands for the size of the unborn, the level of development it is in, the environment it is in, and the degree of dependency it has on its mother.

Koukl provided examples to frame his argument, equating the implications of abortion to those of ethnic cleansing and racism. He argues that placing values on human beings according to these factors can become problematic.

Koukl answered questions from the audience ranging from his opinions on the differences between miscarriage and abortion, whether abortions are valid in the case of rape and whether he supported the use of contraception.

“Neither size nor level of development, nor environment nor degree of dependency has anything to do with the value of any human being, therefore it cannot be used to disqualify the value of a human being. And precious human beings are being killed because they can’t defend themselves,” he said.

Erik Smith ‘10, secretary of Swarthmore Students Supporting Life, attended the lecture and also had dinner with Koukl previous to the lecture. "I thought he was a very eloquent speaker, very intelligent and informed, and has been speaking about this for a very long time … Overall, I thought he made very good arguments … The only thing I’m disappointed about is that we couldn’t get more people there," he said.

The lecture was sponsored by the Student Activities Committee, Forum for Free Speech and the Houston Fund.

By Rosario Paz

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