Trotting the Toddler onto a Slippery Slope in a Culture of Death

Author: John Stonestreet and Dr. Timothy D. Padgett

In the 1990’s, advocates of abortion often described it as a regrettable necessity that must be kept “safe, legal, and rare.” Not anymore. Today, women are encouraged to “shout” about their abortions, advocacy is treated as heroic, and abortions are provided by mail. 

The arguments for “safe, legal, and rare” abortion were often focused on the physical and mental health of the mother. Similar arguments have been made in reaction to the trial of Lindsay Clancey. Many have defended her “choice” to kill her kids as understandable, perhaps even excusable or justified, because of her mental state. 

The reaction to Clancey is much different than it was to Susan Smith in 1994. After falsely reporting that her car had been stolen by a man with her two small children inside, Smith admitted that her kids were dead. She had strapped them into car seats, drove into a lake, and left them to drown.  

Back then, there was no question that Smith was guilty and deserved punishment. Questions about mental health, level of support, or medications were not part of the national discussion. There was no suggestion that any of those kinds of difficulties made her crimes anything less than a horrible evil, much less justifiable.  

Today, there is far more understanding of the mental distress young mothers can experience, and the kind of support they need. We should never dismiss all that we have learned about such things. However, the public discourse surrounding the Clancey trial should alarm all of us. The very same reasoning used for decades to justify the killing of preborn children, has been used to “explain” and even justify the horrible killing of these born children.  

An argument often employed by pro-lifers is nicknamed “trot out the toddler.” When someone claims that an abortion is justified because of a particular set of circumstances, ask whether those circumstances also justify the taking of the life of a toddler. After all, there are no substantial differences, as pro-life apologist Scott Klusendorf has argued, between the person I was as an embryo or preborn child and the person I am now. The only differences can be remembered using the acronym S.L.E.D.: Size, level of development, environment, and degree of dependency. Neither what size I am, nor where I am, changes what I am. And every person is always developing and is always dependent, to some degree, on others. None of these factors alters someone’s value, much less justifies killing a person, whether in the womb or out.  

It is worth noting, as a mark in time of where our culture of death has now devolved, that in reaction to the Lindsay Clancey story, the other side has been trotting out the toddler. Essentially, the claim has been that if mental health struggles legitimize abortion, it should also shape how we think of similar struggles and pressures on women with born children.  

This is not to suggest that we live in a society on the verge of legalizing infanticide. However, it is to suggest the slope is slippery. Arguments long used to explain the choice for an abortion have now been used to explain the horrible choice to kill a child outside of the womb. 

John Paul II warned that the West was becoming a “culture of death.” Abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia would, he predicted, return us “to a state of barbarism.” Mother Theresa also claimed abortion provided irrefutable evidence that we were a “culture of violence”: 

I feel one thing I want to share with you all, the greatest destroyer of peace today is the cry of the innocent unborn child. For if a mother can murder her own child in her own womb, what is left for you and for me to kill each other? 

Similarly, Francis Schaeffer challenged the Church: 

If we do not take a stand here and now, we certainly cannot lay any claim to being the salt of the earth in our generation. We are neither preserving moral values and the dignity of the individual nor showing compassion for our fellow human beings. 

Cultures are dynamic, not static. They are either evolving or devolving. The Clancey trial and the reactions to it may, in the end, turn out to be a horrible, but otherwise insignificant part of our history. Or it could be more evidence that cultural slopes are indeed slippery, and ideas normalized by a society can push them in terrible directions.  

Abortion has already poisoned our society in so many ways. We ought not be surprised when what has been planted and watered for so long continues to bear fruit.