Charlie Kirk SHREDS Pro-Abortion Logic | Debate Teacher Reacts

This is one of the cleanest, fastest takedowns of pro-choice arguments I've ever seen. Watch this.

It's simply about the fact that if you feel like that's what you need to do with your body, then that's what you do. Cause I could also

Well, hold on, hold on a second. If it's not your DNA, how is it your body?

Charlie Kirk takes less than two minutes to dismantle this young lady's arguments. And he's using a playbook that I want to point out to you because you can do exactly what Kirk is doing here and have the same success.

Cross-Examination and the SLED Test

So let's get right into it. Welcome back to Wise Disciple. My name is Nate and I'm helping you become the effective Christian that you are meant to be. Before I jumped into this ministry full-time, I was a pastor and a debate teacher.

And it's from that intersection of experience that I make these kinds of videos. Make sure to like, sub, and share this one around, but only if it blesses you. And I pray it does.

I just really want to know why you feel that abortion should be illegal.

Do you think murder should be illegal?

Okay.

I'm going to let this play out, but Kirk has just done three things right here. He's made three moves in terms of debate in one question. And we'll get into that in a moment.

Murder is illegal.

So you think it should be, do you think it should be illegal?

I just feel like there's a big difference between like a living, breathing human and then a fetus that is inside of another human's body.

Fair enough.

What is the difference?

The difference is a fetus is inside of the body. You know what I'm saying? Like it can't live on its own.

Got it. So let's go through a couple questions there. Why does somebody's location determine their moral worth?

This is the sled test.

Okay.

If you want to get into defending the lives of the unborn, you need to know the sled test.

All right.

SLED is an acronym for size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency.

All right.

These four pieces of criteria are used all the time by pro-choice advocates to justify ending the lives of the unborn. And the goal of utilizing SLED, the sled test, is to determine the logic of each of these criteria.

And the whole point is to walk through each of these pieces. So for example, is size a factor in determining personhood? So the fact that a fetus is smaller than a two-year-old, does that mean it's okay to end its life?

Absolutely not. Is level of development a factor in determining personhood? You know, in other words, is someone not a human because their mind or their body is not fully developed yet? Absolutely not.

Is environment, you know, in this case, location a determinative factor of personhood? So the fact that a baby is outside of the womb, you should not end its life, but then you take the same baby and discover it's somehow in the womb, all of a sudden now it's not a person?

This is exactly what Kirk is asking this young lady right now.

It doesn't, but it's simply about the fact that if you feel like that's what you need to do with your body, then that's what you do. Because I could also

Well, hold on, hold on a second. If it's not your DNA, how is it your body?

She's done.

What?

What?

Thank you, come again, right? Put a fork in her, she's done. There's just no recovery from this, you know? It's interesting because with the least amount of effort, I mean, what was, was that like three total questions, right, that he asked?

Kirk hit checkmate. Now, is this going to do very much to persuade this young lady, to convince people like this young lady since emotions are all wrapped up in these kinds of discussions? No, probably not.

Certainly not in the moment, right? But what you pray for is that she thinks about what just happened, you know? Because in what, a minute and 40 seconds, she's just become the logical equivalent of Wile E. Coyote, running off the cliff and still doesn't know there's no ground under her.

You know what I mean?

It is your DNA, it's a part of you, it's growing in you, it's connected to you by an umbilical cord, it is a part of you.

One second, it's attached.

A part.

It's attached, hold on a second. It's attached, not a part.

Sinking.

No, it's actually not. A part, by definition, means it remains permanent.

Oh, okay.

Right? Oh, okay. So an attachment is something that is temporary. And so it's not, you are not your mom's DNA, you're not your dad's DNA, you are new deoxyribonucleic acid. So shouldn't we say that if it's not your DNA, it's not your choice?

I mean, you could say that, but I mean, really, this is.

Could you say that? Kirk can say that, right? I certainly would say that. Christians would say that. Would you say that? That's the question. And again, I mean, notice the squirming out of the logical consequences of what Kirk is showing her.

Right?

She just doesn't want to admit it.

Reframing Abortion as Murder and Human Personhood

I just don't understand how you can use religion to back up your point of.

I haven't used it once. She brought up religion. I'm happy to use a non-religious line of questioning. We all agree murder is wrong.

Okay.

We all agree that it's a human homo sapien.

Do you agree that the death penalty is wrong?

Keeps changing the subject. Notice, she keeps changing the subject too. Like, so Kirk is trying to keep her on track, but she keeps changing the subject. At the moment that she's being intellectually pinned, she changes the subject to get out of acknowledging the weakness of her logic.

Okay.

This is why I'm just walking through this video with you to point out what's happening here in real time. And this is, I take it, because I've had these experiences myself with people. This is exactly what happens.

This is the typical scenario when you try to engage someone who's on the other side of this issue from you as a Christian.

Well, no, I'm actually in support of the death penalty because people do something that justifies that, but that's a separate issue because the baby in utero did not go

So what about the people who could possibly be proved innocent who have been awaiting their death sentence?

Fair enough.

That's a good argument, but it's separate, right? So there's been about 31 exonerations of post-tumorless people that have been exonerated of the death penalty. We're talking about a baby that did nothing wrong except exist in utero.

And there's about 1 .5 million of them that just get discarded every year. So we agree murder is wrong. We agree it's a homo sapien, meaning it's a human being. Therefore, murder is the forcible termination of a homo sapien.

Therefore, shouldn't abortion be wrong and illegal?

Debate Strategy: Cross-Examination, Reframing, and the Garden Path

So let's talk a little bit about strategy because this is what I wanted to highlight for you. I have no doubt many of you find yourselves in situations similar to what's happening in this video.

Right?

You have friends, you have coworkers, even family members who believe, like this young lady, in ending the lives of the unborn. So what do you do? I think Kirk is a really good model of what you do. Now notice, he received the question and then he immediately flipped it around to ask her a question.

Okay, immediately he started cross-examining her. And not because he's performing some kind of rhetorical trick or he's dodging the original question that she's asking. It's because the assumptions that shape the premise of her challenge are flawed.

And so instead of just saying, hey, you're wrong, right, which is, you know, what sometimes we do when we get, and then we get emotional and then things take a turn for the worse, right? That's almost never productive.

What Kirk did was he implicitly was asking her to walk alongside him to the answer to the question as he guides her with key cross-examination questions.

Right?

So that's the first thing he does. He immediately cross-examines her, but he also immediately reframes the discussion. So remember, initially she asked about the A word, right? So, okay, I got to tiptoe around the word.

He immediately changes it to murder, right? And this is part of it. The position of the pro-life individual is that we are against ending the life of an innocent child unjustifiably.

Okay?

That's why Kirk uses the word murder. That's what it is by textbook definition. And so if what this young lady advocates for is ending the life of an innocent child, then the first question is sort of the question under the question must be, what is the unborn?

Is it a human being or not? You with me? These are the fundamental philosophical questions that must be answered in order for conversations like this to be productive. And so that's why Kirk reframed the discussion, you know?

So immediately cross-examines her, immediately also reframes the discussion to something that will help her to get to some of those flawed presuppositions that she's bringing to the table. And then finally, he was setting a garden path for her.

Setting a garden path is a very precise debate move that refers to asking a series of what appear to be benign questions in order to, at the very end, drop a knockout question at the end. This is meant to be kind of an uppercut, you know, a knockout punch, right?

Intellectually speaking. But Kirk ended up actually following her when she changed the subject. So we really didn't get to see what whatever that end question was going to be, the humdinger question, right?

But these are all things that you should do when you are faced in a similar situation, right? Ask leading questions, frame the discussion around the two key pro-life issues,.

Right?

That the position that I articulated a moment ago, and then get your opponent to agree with you as much as possible. Because if they follow you down this garden path, it will be very difficult for them to intellectually deny the final step on that path when it leads to the protection of the unborn, okay?

I still feel like it really, like, okay, for example.

But to prove to me why, use an ABC logical equation, right? So tell me under what standard, therefore, therefore, very simple, right? You're in college, you guys do this all the time, right?

I hope so.

So use an ABC, right? Aristotelian logic, whatever you want to use. Use an ABC sequence for me.

Not I feel

My reasoning why I believe that abortion should be legal is because of instances like rape and incest. But I already know that your belief on that because you've already stated that if your daughter were to be raped at 10 years old, you would make her give birth to a baby.

Well, the baby would be delivered. And let me tell you why. And so, but first of all, let me try to find common ground. If I say we will make rape and incest abortions legal and get rid of all the other abortions, would you agree with that?

Can you repeat that? I'm so sorry.

If I say that we will allow abortions to continue for rape and incest life of the mother, but all other abortions should be illegal, which is 99 .4 of the time, then we make those 99 of abortions illegal.

This is a great question. This is a great question. And it's designed to sidestep the emotionally charged fringe situations that people like this young lady seek to employ in order to justify ending the lives of the unborn.

So if we can acknowledge that these fringe examples, okay, and forgive me, because I have to speak about these carefully on YouTube, but you know what I'm talking about, right? If we can acknowledge that these are awful and never should have happened, can we get back on track focusing on the main reason why these procedures take place?

99 .4 of the time, which actually has nothing to do with these fringe examples.

Yeah, see, I don't believe that abortion should be used as a form of birth control.

So 99 of the time it is. That's all that we're debating in the country right now. So Charlie Kirk's position is a very fringe minority. People are talking about still exceptions. So we should get rid of 99 of abortions.

Yes, but at the same time

So you're actually not that pro-choice actually.

But I am, because I feel like there's no way to kind of divide the basis of like what abortion is being used as birth control and what abortion is being used

Oh, it's totally easy actually. I mean, so you could tell through a DNA test if it's an incest baby, you could tell if it's rape because they have to file a police report, and you could tell life of the mother based on an OBGYN analysis.

So that's a very Okay, so if it's that easy, then why have we not done that?

Oh, because the American people don't support it because abortion is popularly supported as a form of birth control. That's why. So your position is actually a very rational one, and I respect you for it.

99 of all abortions are done just because people want the baby gone. 99%. That's not Charlie Kirk's numbers. That's the Guttmacher Institute, which was funded by Planned Parenthood.

Okay.

So do you feel as though like people who are victims of rape and incest, do you think that they should be able to get an abortion?

So just so we can agree on the 99%, then I'm gonna try to win you over on the other percent.

Now, Kirk knows something that most people don't think about in situations like this, and that is he's not so much speaking to this young lady, he's speaking to everyone watching, right? He's speaking to the people over the shoulder of the young lady, or watching this video, you know, with us, who are flies on the wall and may not ever articulate their support of this young lady's position, but are also open to changing their minds, you know?

That's why he's continuing to engage her, because if it was just them two alone, nobody else around, there's good reason at this point to just say, hey, why don't you just go away now and think about what just happened, right?

Because again, she has completely missed the fact that he just dismantled all of her arguments and she's got nothing left to hit him with. I mean, she's gonna try and she's gonna, you know, go the route of the exceptions now in certain key cases, but that's not gonna end well for her either.

Got it. So we're good on the 99? Get rid of those abortions?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, cool. Somebody in this audience was conceived in rape. Can you tell me who?

No.

No, no.

Why?

I thought that they're less human.

I never, those words never came out of my mouth.

No, I know, but the insinuation of allowing rape for abortion is that they're not as human, therefore they should be murdered.

No, that's not the, it's more about the mental toll that it would take on the mother to have that baby.

Oh, I totally acknowledge the mental toll, but shouldn't the human being conceived in rape still get human rights?

Yes, but it should be more up to the mother who has to carry the baby and who has to push it.

Well, hold on, let's play that out. So even though the mom has to push it, do you still have a right to terminate somebody? Can you take away human rights if your life's gonna get difficult to somebody else?

If somebody else is making your life difficult, can you take away their human rights?

No, but at the same time, that's where the question comes in, that it should be up between the person, like the patient and their doctor.

But why, by what standard is that? Okay, for example, if a single mom has two kids and all of a sudden she loses her job and one of the kids is super annoying and has a learning disability, should she be able to murder that kid?

Because it's an inconvenience to her.

No.

We're back to the SLED test again. Okay, only this time we're on the last letter of the acronym, right? Degree of Dependency. So notice what Kirk is doing, right? Essentially armed with two complementary philosophical positions and, or contentions, and the SLED test, he's dismantling everything thrown at him.

And you can do this too. This isn't a lot, right? Like, by the way, I'm gonna share some links in the notes for you to go deeper into this particular subject. And I strongly encourage you to avail yourself of this information because it's vital that we engage others on behalf of the unborn.

Amen?

But, you know, if you're watching this and you're thinking to yourself, wow, Charlie Kirk is great, man. I hope he engages everybody. No, you can do this too. We all can do this.

All right.

And hopefully that's your takeaway. All right, this is a good place to stop, but this is a great video to watch, right? Not because, you know, we're applauding and dunking on, you know, this young lady who was taken with this position.

You know, we should pray for her. We should pray for people like her that they change their minds. You know, we can bring her over to the other side and we can stand shoulder to shoulder with her and we can continue to engage others on behalf of the unborn.

Amen?

Charlie Kirk, he's a beast, you know, and he is an exemplar for us in terms of engaging these kinds of disagreements. So I'm very grateful to Kirk and for the video, all right? Hey, if you want to learn more about the fundamentals of argument and persuasion, I want you to check out my debate masterclass, all right?

This is where I will teach you a lot about how to deconstruct arguments in real time. I'll teach you about, you know, my philosophy of winning, but this is not necessarily for people who want to get on the debate stage.

It certainly is, but if you don't want to, you can just learn how to handle yourself in real conversations, okay? For all of this and more, go to wisedisciple .org forward slash masterclass and sign up today.

Hey friends, I'm gonna return soon with more videos, but in the meantime, I'll say, bye for now.