‘What’s Your Favorite Type of Abortion?’ How to Win the Abortion Debate

Last week, U.S. Republican Rep. Brandon Gill (TX- 26) made headlines for asking an abortion advocate, “What’s your favorite type of abortion?”

The witness, despite 25 years of professional experience in abortion policy as a “nationally recognized expert in U.S. reproductive rights laws” at American University, could not answer the question. All she mustered was several iterations of the same reply: “I am an advocate of reproductive healthcare.”

More than that, she grew visibly uncomfortable as Congressman Gill described the details of several abortion procedures. He spared no details about what a baby experiences during an abortion — dismemberment, brain hemorrhaging, crushed skulls, all of it. When the witness could not look him in the eye with a reply, he hit the nail on the head: “I wouldn’t want to talk about this if I were you either, because abortion is barbaric and evil.” 

This exchange, now approaching 10 million views on X, is the blueprint for winning the abortion debate: truth-telling, no matter how hard the truth is. For decades, abortion advocates have sanitized the gruesome reality of abortion with attractive euphemisms like “reproductive healthcare,” “bodily autonomy,” “freedom,” and “choice.” But when faced with the truth, it becomes clear that pro-abortion rhetoric is nothing more than a game of semantics.

Abortion is not “reproductive healthcare.” In the first trimester, it is the days-long starvation of an unborn human of his or her oxygen and nutrients. Once deceased, his or her body is flushed down the toilet or shower drain.

Abortion is not “bodily autonomy.” In the second trimester, a strong suction is inserted into the womb to tear an unborn human apart limb by limb through a catheter. The unborn baby can feel pain and can be seen via ultrasound flinching away from the suction.

Abortion is not a “choice.” Later in the second trimester, it is a pair of sharp forceps slowly dismembering a pain-capable baby limb by limb, organ by organ, until the skull is crushed and removed in several pieces.

Abortion is not “freedom.” In the third trimester, it is poison-induced cardiac arrest and a three-day-long stillbirth.

Abortion is not “healthcare.” It is the violent killing of a human being.

Each of these is hard to articulate, but that is exactly why we need to say it out loud. If we put abortion proponents on the spot and force them to defend the disgusting reality of abortion, their rhetorical castles of sand come tumbling down. The brutality of abortion begs the brutal truth to be told. The brutal truth is indefensible.

But every once in a while, you will meet someone who defends the indefensible by shrugging off the humanity of the unborn with another set of pro-abortion phrases: “clump of cells,” “parasite,” “not a human yet,” etc. But the logic of these shallow defenses falls apart quickly.

U.S. Democrat Rep. Shri Thanedar (MI-13) came out of the woodwork with a repulsive reply to Congressman Gill’s line of questioning.

“My favorite kind of abortion is the kind that’s safe, legal, accessible, and none of your damn business to regulate,” Thanedar said. “And no amount of fearmongering by describing what goes on to a half-ounce fetus with no consciousness, self-awareness, or feeling of pain is going to change that.”

Alarming as it may be from a sitting member of Congress, this statement is a predictable dehumanization that can be dismantled with truth, too. Human life begins at conception — consciousness, size, location, level of dependency, self-awareness, disability status, and pain threshold are not conditions that determine a person’s value.

If human value was determined by these arbitrary biomarkers, it would follow that it is acceptable to murder not only a newborn (for a dependency on his or her parents to live) but also a dementia patient (for a lack of self-awareness), a sleeping adult (for a lack of consciousness), or even a teenager under anesthesia getting his or her wisdom teeth removed (for a lack of consciousness, an inability to feel pain, and a lack of self-awareness).

The value of human life is not determined by any physical characteristic — there is only the self-evident sanctity of each unique human being from the moment of conception due to the worth endowed in every man, woman, and child by the Creator. As such, abortion is always nothing less than the killing of a defenseless human created in the image of God.

The euphemism “reproductive healthcare” has a death toll of 65 million babies killed and counting in the United States alone. It is time for us to press the euphemism, like Congressman Gill, against the reality of abortion. Start asking the question any time you encounter a “reproductive care advocate”: “What is your favorite type of abortion?”

Hannah Lape is Legislative Strategist for Concerned Women for America, the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization, dedicated to promoting Biblical values and Constitutional principles in public policy. On X: @CWforA

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