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Welcome to the Family Beacon, your source for news and commentary on life, family, and religious freedom in Minnesota and beyond! 

• Watch or listen to this week's podcast! 
• Blog: The Pro-Life Movement Will Never Compromise on Abortion
• The Federalist: Science Says What’s Really Compassionate Is Encouraging People With Gender Dysphoria To Love Their Real Bodies
• November 12-13: Clarity Student Apologetics Conference

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The Pro-Life Movement Will Never Compromise on Abortion

In response the Dobbs v. Jackson, the upcoming Supreme Court case challenging Roe v. Wade, Dr. Jon Shields of Claremont McKenna is arguing that the case should serve as a catalyst for the pro-life movement to compromise with the abortion movement. Pointing to research that shows a large number of abortionists dislike and even refuse to practice late second-trimester and third trimester abortions when an unborn child “becomes more recognizably human,” along with the fact that most Americans support restrictions on later abortions, Shields argues that pro-lifers and abortion proponents should reach a compromise. “Since pro-choice and pro-life philosophers respect the reasonableness of their intellectual foes, perhaps they, too, have rational grounds to accept a liberal compromise on abortion,” he concludes.  

What Shields fails to grasp is that there is no room for a “compromise” in which pro-lifers are expected to be fine with baby-killing. This is not a question of “reasonableness.” Abortion, at any stage, is radical by its very nature because abortion takes an innocent human life—there is nothing “reasonable” about advocating for or accepting this practice.

The compromise that Shields proposes could be described as the Abortion Doctor Compromise — as Shields relates, most abortion doctors positively refuse to perform late-term abortions because they personally find them horrific, but will end the lives of 12-week-old babies all day every day. So in Shields’s compromise, the slightly less radical wing of the abortion lobby will accept restrictions on the forms of abortion that they already find too horrific to practice and defend while asking that pro-lifers accept these restrictions and absolutely nothing more. Those advocating for this so-called “compromise” would not change their position at all, they would simply demand that pro-lifers accept their terms. Doesn’t sound like much of a compromise.

Furthermore, pro-lifers cannot compromise on abortion. Abortion ends a human life and because of that, there is no point in an unborn child’s development where abortion is acceptable. Science has shown that life begins at conception. Because of that, the right to life also begins at conception. A “compromise” in which only some babies are allowed to be killed is not acceptable. This does not mean that pro-lifers cannot support life-saving laws that do not end all abortions—to the contrary, we should work to save as many lives as possible until we have made abortion illegal and unthinkable. But we cannot accept a compromise in which babies are still murdered in the womb on a daily basis and then stop fighting.

Science Says What’s Really Compassionate Is Encouraging People With Gender Dysphoria To Love Their Real Bodies

Via The Federalist

At the center of the transgenderism fight is the debate about how best to help those who suffer from gender dysphoria or guide those merely caught up in the craze, especially children. The loudest narrative from the left says acceptance equals kindness, but new research on so-called “detransition” reveals that the conservative stance against social playacting and medical intervention is actually the compassionate one.

In debates about trans treatment, the left invariably plays the “suicide” and “discrimination” cards. When pushing for surgical and chemical castration (commonly called “gender transition” or “gender-reassignment surgery”) or capitulation to false pronouns, leftists typically claim that if doctors, parents, teachers, and strangers don’t let Nick change to Nicole, he will kill himself. On the other hand, if Nicole “detransitions” back to Nick, they explain it away by claiming the causes are transphobia and discrimination.

A new study authored by Lisa Littman shows this just isn’t accurate. She researched 100 people who said they had experienced gender dysphoria, underwent social changes or medical interventions to “transition,” and then subsequently “detransitioned” back to their real sex.

Although reasons for detransition varied, only 23 percent reported it was because they had experienced discrimination. Nearly half (49 percent) reported fears about complications from medical interventions as a reason, with 38 percent realizing their so-called dysphoria was actually the result of a particular trauma, abuse, or other mental health issues. Forty-two percent said the transition didn’t improve their mental health, with 36 percent saying it actually made their mental health worse.

A whopping 60 percent, however, detransitioned because they realized they were actually more comfortable living in their “natal sex.” In other words, the majority of detransitioners recognized that denying biological realities didn’t make them more content.

Reality Student Apologetics Conference - Minneapolis - November 12-13

We see it every day. Gender confusion, racial turmoil, and human inequality. It’s a disorder of ideas. It’s chaos.

That’s why this year we’re bringing an ancient truth to speak into the world we live in. We’re bringing clarity to make sense of the confusion.

Don’t miss this conference as we show how Christianity can move our culture from chaos to clarity.

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