JFA Certification Assignments

JFA Certification Assignments and Projects help those actively enrolled in the JFA Certification program fulfill their "Mind in Community" commitment to spend at least 2 hours per month growing intellectually together. Those currently trusted to MENTOR (or CO-LEAD with a mentor) at JFA seminars and outreaches (meaning, those who have achieved or are working to achieve Certification Level 2, MENTOR) are REQUIRED to do certain assignments and projects as a portion of the "Mind in Community" time. For others receiving this email who are regular/irregular JFA volunteers, but who aren't currently actively working on mentoring others, all assignments and projects are optional. If you don't know which camp you fall in, please contact your JFA Mentor or Steve Wagner for clarification.

Previous “About JFA Certification Weekly Updates”:

JFA sends an update each week to the JFA Certification community (usually Thursday or Friday). The update encourages all of us to spend time in each of three categories. "Mind in Community" is focused on fostering a culture of active intellectual engagement among our people. We want to grow intellectually together through 30-minute assignments, longer projects, and "office hours" conference calls. "Dialogue Practice" helps us master and maintain the skill of creating dialogue with those who disagree. It includes Feet Work and Repeat Work. "Mentoring & Speaking" helps us master the skill of teaching others to dialogue with those who disagree. It includes preparing to act as mentors and speakers at JFA's ADD Seminars and Outreaches.

Previous “About JFA Certification Weekly Updates”:

In the interest of promoting a culture of active intellectual engagement at JFA, Steve Wagner sends an assignment to JFA Certification folks every Friday to be due one week later on the next Friday. The assignments are carefully planned so they should take you 30 minutes or less (sometimes a bit more for slower readers). Want to know what assignment Steve will send you next week?

Assignments By Certification Level

Note: These assignments are required to achieve or maintain certification status at the specified level.

Level I: Dialogue Artist

Set 1 (Basic):

Assignment #5: Don't Be Like Me
Project #18: It’s Her Body (Assignments 180-183)
Project #21: JFA Stories (Assignments #198-203)
Assignment #140: Gestation=LMP?
Assignment #10: O'Rahilly and Müller - Memorize This.
Assignment #12: Common Ground with Gallup
Project #2: Common Ground Without Compromise (Assignment #'s 20-31)
Project #19: What Is the Unborn? (Assignments #186-91)
Project #20: What Is Abortion? (Assignments 192-197)

Set 2 (More Advanced):

Assignment #2: Should We Define the Beginning by the End?
Assignment #3: Is the Embryo Constructed? (Richard Stith’s “Construction, Development, and Revelopment”)
Assignment #4: Is Condic Wrong?
Assignment #6: Condic Revisited: What's Failing - An Organ or the Organism?
Assignment #119: Proper Environment, Adequate Nutrition, and HeLa Cells
Project #10: When Is Abortion Legal in Your State? (Assignment #'s 120-123)
Assignment #184: The Moral Turn (Hadley Arkes)
Assignment #185: Another Pro-Life Victory? (Hadley Arkes)
Assignment #95: Imposing or Proposing? (“The Women of Roe v. Wade” by Mary Ann Glendon)
Project #4: Scott Klusendorf’s “The Case for Life” (Assignment #'s 60-93)

Level II: Mentor

All assignments listed above under “Level I: Dialogue Artist”
Assignment #2: Should We Define the Beginning by the End?
Assignment #3: Is the Embryo Constructed? (Richard Stith’s “Construction, Development, and Revelopment”)
Assignment #4: Is Condic Wrong?
Assignment #13: Why Do Some People Act? (An Assignment Using the Original Jet Magazine Articles about Emmett Till)
Assignment #7: Punish Women?
Assignment #8: Punish Women? (Part II: Refining Your Response)
Assignment #9: A Little Quiz
Assignment #11: Ambassadors, Essential Skills, and Other Key Terms (Assignment #9 Recap)

Level IV: Teacher

All assignments listed above under “Level I: Dialogue Artist” and “Level II: Mentor”
Assignment #1: What Percentage of Spina Bifida Kids Are Aborted?
Assignment #4: Is Condic Wrong?
Assignment #6: Condic Revisited: What's Failing - An Organ or the Organism?
Assignment #10: O'Rahilly and Muller - Memorize This.
Assignment #13: Why Do Some People Act? (An Assignment Using the Original Jet Magazine Articles about Emmett Till)

Internship Fall 2021

See Separate List

Assignments By Topic

Topic 1: Three Essential Skills

Assignments 276
Assignment 277

Topic 2: Images

Topic 3a: One Central Question

Topic 3b: Biology

Assignment #2: Should We Define the Beginning by the End?
Assignment #3: Is the Embryo Constructed?
Assignment #4: Is Condic Wrong?
Assignment #6: Condic Revisited: What's Failing - An Organ or the Organism?
Assignment #10: O'Rahilly and Muller - Memorize This.
Assignment #150: Ten Seconds
Assignment #151: “Facing the Unborn” by Richard Stith

Topic 4: Advanced Philosophical Arguments (Personhood)

Project #1 (Assignments #14-19): Mary Anne Warren

Parts I-II (14-15): Read the Article and Identify the Main Point and the Main Argument
Parts III-IV (16-17): Analyze the Argument as a Syllogism
Part V (18): Offer an Alternative View
Part VI (19): Put the Argument, Its Flaws, and Your Alternative in Dialogue Form

Topic 5: Question of Rape

Topic 6: Bodily Rights

Assignment #94: A Conversation on Bodily Rights (Trent Horn)
Project 14: The Right to Refuse in the Case of Rape
Project #5 (Assignments 96-99): Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion” (The Violinist)
Project #6 (Assignments 100-103): Rich Poupard’s “Suffer the Violinist”
Project #7 (Assignments 104-107): Tony George’s “Good Samaritan on Life Support”

Topic 6: Skepticism, Relativism, Forcing Beliefs, and “I’m Personally Opposed…”

Assignment 44: Moral Relativism (4 Pages from Interactive Guide)
Assignment 95: Imposing or Proposing?

Topic 9: Genocide

Topic 10: Educational Philosophy

Assignment 211: When Do We Learn It?

Certification Resource and Reading Lists

JFA’s Explore Resources Portal

“Extending Your Learning” Web Page: Many resources for many topics can be found on this page. Check it first.
What Is the Unborn?
What Is Abortion?

For All Pro-Choice and Pro-Life Readers

Stephen Wagner, Common Ground Without Compromise: 25 Questions to Create Dialogue on Abortion (Stand to Reason Press, 2008)

For All Readers: Defenses of the Pro-Life Position

Advanced Defenses of the Pro-Life Position

Christopher Kaczor, The Ethics of Abortion: Women's Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice (New York: Routledge, 2011)
Russell DiSilvestro, Human Capacities and Moral Status
Hadley Arkes, Natural Rights and the Right to Choose (New York: Cambridge, 2002)
Francis Beckwith, Defending Life: The Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007)
Patrick Lee, Abortion and Unborn Human Life, 2nd ed. (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2010)
Don Marquis, “Why Abortion Is Immoral,” Journal of Philosophy 1989; 86:183–202

https://www.abort73.com/abortion/a_future_lost/

Abortion Rights: For and Against by Kate Greaseley and Christopher Kaczor (2017)

Advanced Defenses of the Pro-Choice Position

David Boonin, A Defense of Abortion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
Mary Anne Warren, “On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion,” The Monist (57:1)
Judith Jarvis Thomson, “A Defense of Abortion,” Philosophy & Public Affairs (Vol. 1, No. 1; Fall 1971)
Judith Jarvis Thomson, “Abortion,” Boston Review (Summer 1995)
Abortion Rights: For and Against by Kate Greaseley and Christopher Kaczor (2017)
Arguments about Abortion: Personhood, Morality, and Law by Kate Greasley (2017)

For All Readers: Related Topics

Advanced: Related Topics

Assignment #1: What Percentage of Spina Bifida Kids Are Aborted?

Read Steve Wagner's email (below) and the first portion of his spina bifida post (minimally, read the portion up until the listing of the studies). These readings should take only 10 minutes. Then, summarize in 1-2 sentences the significance of the material (5 minutes). Send your summary to your Certification Reader.

Originally Assigned: Friday, 7/1/2011 Originally Due: Friday, 7/8/2011

______________________________________________________

Steve's Email to Certification Participants re: Spina Bifida

Folks,

As some of you are aware, we have traditionally told people in our ADD seminars that 50% of unborn children diagnosed with spina bifida in the womb are "terminated" or killed by abortion. (We typically cover this in the "Facing Abortion" presentation at the beginning of the JFA seminar, and some people mention it when they are giving tours of the Exhibit.)

I recently mentioned this figure in my newsletter. I thought I had looked closely enough at the studies beforehand to be confident, but when I went back to create a written piece (blog post) to defend the idea, I found that the studies were not as conclusive as I had thought. Please read my blog post (at least the excerpt pasted in the postscript below).

Until we have more conclusive evidence, please modify how you talk about this with volunteers or others at JFA events. This is especially important if you're just glossing over the topic, as in the "Facing Abortion" presentation. Either omit the spina bifida comment or say, "Some unborn children diagnosed with spina bifida in the womb are killed by abortion." This is incontrovertibly true, and still makes the point that it is because of the disability diagnosis that some kids are so unwanted that they get killed.

In conversations on campus or during Q & A, if you have time to be more detailed and you've taken the time to familiarize yourself with the studies through my post, then feel free to say more. For example, there are two recent European studies that feature higher than 50% spina bifida "termination rates," but for reasons I've put in my post, I'm not sure you can necessarily conclude that the US is similar. If you share this information, you need to qualify it.

Feel free also to discuss my analysis or other studies you might know about in the comments section at https://hbmm.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/what-percentage-of-spina-bifida-kids-are-aborted.

Remember: Whether or not we know the precise percentage doesn't change the fact that we know some people are killing their kids for this reason. And the question for all of us to consider is, "How should we treat unwanted kids with disabilities?" David Lee put it this way in a recent email to me: "The numbers are relatively important, but the fact that it is legal to kill a child because they have a disability should be the alarming fact and focus."

Stephen Wagner

Read the post here.

Assignment #2: Should We Define the Beginning by the End?

Read Maureen Condic's "Life: Defining the Beginning by the End" (~15 minutes) and pick out one paragraph from the article that was particularly helpful to you as a JFA mentor. Copy and paste the paragraph into an email reply to this assignment email. Then, summarize why it was helpful to you in 1-2 sentences (10 min). (Send the reply to your Certification Reader.)

Originally Assigned: Friday, 7/8/2011

Originally Due: Friday, 7/15/2011

Link to article: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/05/life-defining-the-beginning-by-the-end

Assignment #3: Is the Embryo Constructed? (Richard Stith’s “Construction, Development, and Revelopment”)

Read Richard Stith's article, Construction, Development, and Revelopment. (It should take you 20 minutes if you're a fast reader and something like 60 minutes if you're slower.)

Copy and paste a paragraph or sentence (or summarize an idea in your own words) and describe how you think it will help you bring clarity to your mentor group during the "Biology" section of the seminar. One thing you might do is name a confusion or objection you've encountered in the seminar and show how the Stith material would help you respond (10 min).

Reply to this assignment email. (Send your reply to your Certification Reader.)

Originally Assigned: Friday, 7/15/2011

Originally Due: Friday, 7/22/2011

Links

Article: http://www.uffl.org/vol17/STITH07.pdf
Another version for comparison: www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2006/11/stith-arguing-with-pro-choicer

Assignment #4: Is Condic Wrong?

Recall Assignment #2, centered on Maureen Condic's "Life: Defining the Beginning by the End".

Re-read the following section again, taking note of the bolded statements:

Death occurs when the body ceases to act in a coordinated manner to support the continued healthy function of all bodily organs. Cellular life may continue for some time following the loss of integrated bodily function, but once the ability to act in a coordinated manner has been lost, “life” cannot be restored to a corpse—no matter how “alive” the cells composing the body may yet be.

It is often asserted that the relevant feature of brain death is not the loss of integrated bodily function, but rather the loss of higher-order brain activities, including consciousness. However, this view does not reflect the current legal understanding of death. The inadequacy of equating death with the loss of cognitive function can be seen by considering the difference between brain death and “persistent vegetative state” or irreversible coma. Individuals who have entered a persistent vegetative state due to injury or disease have lost all higher brain functions and are incapable of consciousness. Nonetheless, integrated bodily function is maintained in these patients due to the continued activity of lower-order brain centers. Although such patients are clearly in a lamentable medical state, they are also clearly alive; converting such patients into corpses requires some form of euthanasia.

Despite considerable pressure from the medical community to define persistent vegetative state as a type of brain death (a definition that would both expand the pool of organ donors and eliminate the high medical costs associated with maintaining people in this condition), the courts have repeatedly refused to support persistent vegetative state as a legal definition of death. People whose bodies continue to function in an integrated manner are legally and medically alive, despite their limited (or absent) mental function. Regardless of how one may view the desirability of maintaining patients in a persistent vegetative state (this being an entirely distinct moral and legal question), there is unanimous agreement that such patients are not yet corpses. Even those who advocate the withdrawal of food and water from patients in persistent vegetative state couch their position in terms of the “right to die,” fully acknowledging that such patients are indeed “alive.” While the issues surrounding persistent vegetative state are both myriad and complex, the import of this condition for understanding the relationship between mental function and death is clear: the loss of integrated bodily function, not the loss of higher mental ability, is the defining legal characteristic of death.

What does the nature of death tell us about the nature of human life? The medical and legal definition of death draws a clear distinction between living cells and living organisms. Organisms are living beings composed of parts that have separate but mutually dependent functions. While organisms are made of living cells, living cells themselves do not necessarily constitute an organism. The critical difference between a collection of cells and a living organism is the ability of an organism to act in a coordinated manner for the continued health and maintenance of the body as a whole. It is precisely this ability that breaks down at the moment of death, however death might occur. Dead bodies may have plenty of live cells, but their cells no longer function together in a coordinated manner. We can take living organs and cells from dead people for transplant to patients without a breach of ethics precisely because corpses are no longer living human beings. Human life is defined by the ability to function as an integrated whole—not by the mere presence of living human cells.

Then interact with this comment from one of our certification participants (call him "Jim"):

Sadly, the writer lost my interest at this point. If the last quote [bolded statement] is true, then people on dialysis are dead. They do not have a body that acts in a coordinated manner to function as an integrated whole. They are missing a critical component in that process, and would soon die without continued intervention. But we know beyond any doubt that they are not dead, which is precisely why they are on dialysis. This is one of I'm sure many situations where a person is conscious and obviously alive, but dead by her definition.

Explain why you either agree or disagree with Jim. Another one of our other participants wanted to flesh out more precisely what "integrated bodily function" or "integrated whole" means. You might want to touch on this in your response. (If you are Jim, defend your statement against potential objections that you think may be brought against your statement.)

One paragraph is sufficient, but you can write more if you wish. (Re-reading and commenting should take you approximately 10-30 minutes.)

Reply to this assignment email. (Send your reply to your Certification Reader.)

Originally Assigned: Friday, 7/22/2011

Originally Due: Friday, 7/29/2011

Link to article: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/05/life-defining-the-beginning-by-the-end

Assignment #5: Don't Be Like Me

Summary: Read Steve's October 2003 newsletter and write your own bad or good listening story.
Originally Assigned: Friday, 7/29/2011
Originally Due: Friday, 8/5/2011

Recall the "Listening" part of the "Three Essential Skills" section of the ADD Seminar. In it I (Steve) sometimes say, "Don't be like me" and proceed to tell a story from CU Boulder. For this week's assignment, read the newsletter where I originally wrote the story (October 2003). It includes the "Don't be like me" story* as well as a "Be like this instead" story. This should take you 5-10 minutes.

Now, consider your own interactions. Have you ever experienced failing miserably at listening and watching the conversation fall apart? Have you experienced being amazed at the impact of your good listening (or someone else's)?

Script a story of either type briefly as if you were sharing it in a newsletter, with an audience, or with an ADD Seminar mentor group. You should write 1-2 paragraphs. Be dramatic. Use enough detail to help your listeners experience the scene. Help them feel what you felt.

(Send your reply to your Certification Reader.)

* See a picture of the "Don't Be Like This" Interaction in my November 2003 newsletter. I'm pretty sure the woman discussing genocide on the first page is the woman with whom I was talking.

** Yes, if you're giving the Three Essential Skills section in an ADD Seminar, you should probably tell your own story, rather than mine. That's one of the main purposes of this assignment.

Links for Assignment #5:

Link to October 2003 Newsletter: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3WLT_ZYWYiYdVdVcDF3ejN4bHM/edit
Link to November 2003 Newsletter: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3WLT_ZYWYiYaktGemlNTHltcU0/edit

Note about Assignments 2-4:

We will be recapping and extending Assignments 2-4 (about the unborn as an organism) in a practical way with next week's assignment (#6), so try to have them completed before then. I'll also attempt to tie a bow on some of the loose ends in the discussion (Assignment #4 especially), but you'll have to wait until next week for that!

Assignment #6: Condic Revisited: What's Failing - An Organ or the Organism?

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All (2011)

For this assignment, read the following and reply that you have read it. Feel free also to interact with this material in your reply, but that is not required for this assignment.

Recall Assignment #2 & Assignment #4, centered on Maureen Condic's "Life: Defining the Beginning by the End". "Jim" objected based on the dialysis case. In the excerpt of Jim's comments that I included in the assignment, Jim reasoned essentially the following.

Condic's definition of an organism is a body that acts in a coordinated manner to function as an integrated whole. (Note her statements: "Death occurs when the body ceases to act in a coordinated manner to support the continued healthy function of all bodily organs. ... Human life is defined by the ability to function as an integrated whole—not by the mere presence of living human cells.")
The person on dialysis doesn't have a body that acts in a coordinated manner to function as an integrated whole.
The person on dialysis is obviously a living human organism.
Therefore, Condic's definition of an organism is flawed.

Jim's argument here is valid. In other words, there is no problem with the structure. If Premises 1, 2, and 3 are true, then the Conclusion (4) must be true.

Although one might quibble with Jim's Premise 1 here, I think the main problem is Premise 2. When Jim claims that the person with a failed kidney (who needs dialysis) doesn't have a body that acts in a coordinated manner to function as an integrated whole, he is assuming that this italicized phrase means "a body that acts in a coordinated manner to function as an integrated whole with all parts contributing to the whole in a healthy way." But why make this assumption? Why should I believe that to have integration of the parts of the body, a person must have health in all of those parts?

Sure, if your kidney fails and you also fail to get a kidney-function substitute (dialysis), then your blood will become toxic and then at some point your brain will shut down...and then you would no longer have a body that acts in a coordinated manner to function as an integrated whole. But the state of lacking a good kidney in itself is not the same as lacking the integration of all the body parts for the good of the whole. In other words, if the brain is functional, it can still integrate all of the body parts, even if some of those parts have lost function. Condic is focusing on that integration. She is not saying anything about the health of any of those particular parts except for one: the part that accomplishes the integration. (At most stages of development, this is the brain, and prior to the time when the brain begins performing that function, this is some other part.)

I think if one is not careful, it's easy to misread this sentence of Condic's:

Death occurs when the body ceases to act in a coordinated manner to support the continued healthy function of all bodily organs.

Condic is not saying that death occurs when any of the bodily organs ceases to be healthy or that the health of every organ is necessary for being alive or being an organism. Condic is saying that it is precisely the point at which the one bodily organ that coordinates the function of all the other organs (the brain) ceases to perform the coordinating function itself that the organism is dead. It's the coordinating function that's the focus here rather than the health of the organs that is facilitated by that coordination. And, that coordinating function is present in the embryo from the beginning, even though early on the brain is not performing that function.

One of our JFA Certification participants, Annelle Stevenson, gets the research award this week for unearthing two other helpful articles by Maureen Condic. The first is a blog post, and the second is more scholarly. I recommend that you review them and/or keep them in your files:

(Send your reply to your Certification Reader that you have read the piece above. Feel free also to interact with this material in your reply, but that is not required for this assignment.)

Originally Assigned: Friday, 8/12/2011

Originally Due: Friday, 8/19/2011

Link to article: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/05/life-defining-the-beginning-by-the-end

Assignment #7: Punish Women?

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All (2011)

Read Rebecca Haschke's "Don't Be Like This" story:

I'm on Auraria's campus (Spring 2011) and manning the Volunteer Information table which is near the exhibit. Since it's the information table, many people come up to me with questions and opinions...even those who are not volunteers. A female student walks up to me, explains that she loves what we are doing, and starts sharing with me why pro-choice people are wrong.

A few minutes later another young woman approaches me, joins our conversation and sharply directs this question at me, "So how would you punish women if abortion is made illegal?"

Before I could even open my mouth, the first young woman I was talking to began to answer for me. Very upset and talking at lightening speed she blurted, "That question is irrelevant!" She then gave an in-depth and long explanation as to why the unborn was a human being, refusing to stop and let the pro-choice woman ask a question until she was done with her explanation.

Annoyed that I didn't answer, the pro-choice woman asked me a question again. Without pause the pro-life student had another lengthy response that should have taken a full 3 minutes to say at a conversational speed but instead took about 30 seconds. All the while I was trying to join the conversation to try to bring it to a conversational tone. I never succeeded because the pro-life woman continued to talk over me and cut me off.

After a couple more rounds of snappy responses and ignoring the pro-choice woman's questions, the pro-choice woman was upset enough that she just walked away.

Now, put yourself in Becca's shoes. First, make a suggestion for how you would gain control of this conversation.

Then, assuming you've succeeded in putting yourself back in the driver's seat, answer the woman's question. Put your response as succinctly as possible so the woman can respond. Then map how you think the conversation would continue (for a few exchanges).

This assignment should take you about 10-30 minutes. (Send your reply to your Certification Reader.)

Extra Credit: Include a link to any articles you think are helpful on this question. (FYI - Assignment #8 will give you some material to read to help you critique and refine your response to this question.)

Originally Assigned: Friday, 8/19/2011 Originally Due: Friday, 8/26/2011

Assignment #8: Punish Women? (Part II: Refining Your Response)

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All

(Note: Before doing Assignment #8, do Assignment #7.)

NEW FACEBOOK GROUP FOR CERTIFICATION DISCUSSION

The people who have turned in Assignment #7 have generated some good ideas. Because of this, I thought about sending their responses to you in this assignment. The problem with that idea is that no one created his/her response thinking it would be made public on the internet (I link the Assignments, as you can see with "Assignment #7 above, so that they are easier to share and use for mentoring). Because of this, I think it's time for us to utilize a Facebook group for the purpose of facilitating internal discussions on these sorts of matters. Please accept the invitation you should have received before receiving this assignment (or, maybe in the new format, you don't have to accept the invitation!). If you don't have Facebook, please email me.

If you feel so inclined, please feel free to post your response to Assignment #7 to the new JFA Certification Facebook group. There is a "Doc" created for this purpose. As we discuss, keep in mind that there is a difference between the ideas of Certification participants and the official JFA approach to a question (what we'd expect our mentors to say in seminars and outreaches). Certainly, there will be a range of what's acceptable for seminars and outreaches, and I'll try to clarify the boundaries as we monitor the discussion at the Facebook group.

ASSIGNMENT #8

For the present Assignment #8, I will share five posts I have written on this topic. Please read all five, including the linked articles/video (I've placed the links in the list below for easy access). This is not to imply that my posts are definitive. You should evaluate them as you would anything else and interact with them. At this point, though, you can consider the general approach I've taken in these posts as appropriate when answering the "How should women be punished if abortion is made illegal?" question at a JFA seminar or outreach. (Note: I'm referring here to the posts themselves, NOT to the comment threads under the posts. The comment threads are not required reading and should not be taken to be a model.)

Pro-Lifers Squirm at the Punishment Question...but Why? (8/7/07) (~2.5 min.)

This post refers to this post by Anna Quindlen (~4.5 min.)

Quindlen's post refers to this video (~6.5 min.)

Pro-Lifers Squirm...but Why? Part II (8/9/07) (~1 min.)
Pro-Lifers Squirm...but Why? Part III (8/11/07) (~3 min.)

This post refers to this post by Ericka Anderson (~5 min.)

Pro-Lifers Squirm...but Why? Part IV (8/14/07) (~0 min.)

This post refers to this post by Greg Koukl (~1.5 min.)

6/2021 Update:

Pro-Lifers Squirm at the Punishment Question...but Why? Part V (8/27/2011) (~3 min.)

After you read/watch these posts, do one of the following to complete Assignment #8:

Write a 1-2 paragraph reflection on what you've read/seen.
Create a sample dialogue in which you interact with a person on campus about this question.
Create an outline list of 3-5 strategies or approaches that you can use to structure your thinking as you answer this question and/or teach to people you're mentoring.

To complete Assignment #8, send your work to your Certification Reader.

This assignment should take you between 35 and 60 minutes (~27 min. of reading and 8-33 min. of writing). This is why the allotted time for the assignment is two weeks instead of one.

Originally Assigned: Friday, 8/27/2011

Originally Due: Friday, 9/9/2011

Assignment #9: A Little Quiz

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All (2011)

NOTE: This assignment is now obsolete. Please see Steve Wagner before completing.

This assignment should take you less than thirty minutes. Some may be able to do it in less than ten.

The link below will take you to a form. Fill out the form to complete this assignment.

Multiple submissions of the form are welcome.

Click here to take the quiz now.

Originally Assigned: Friday, 10/6/2011

Originally Due: Friday, 10/14/2011

Assignment #10: O'Rahilly and Müller - Memorize This.

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All

Originally Assigned in 2011

When defending some aspect of the pro-life position, it's important to make an argument rather than simply appeal to authority. In other words, you need to give reasons for your conclusion that explain why it's reasonable rather than simply cite an authority who states your conclusion. I've found it to be helpful, however, to have a statement from a recognized authority on hand to help people take my argument seriously.

Sometimes, I make the argument first, and then I appeal to authority if necessary. Another approach is to start with the authority as a point of common ground, then make my argument.

You can find one example of this "authority-then-argument" approach throughout the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. For each question he considers, he first lists objections to his view ("it seems that..."). Next, he states a recognized authority (common ground), which for him was many times Scripture ("on the contrary, ______ says _____"). Then he makes his argument, which gives independent reasons for taking the statement from authority (or an elaboration of it) seriously ("I answer that...”). Finally, he speaks directly to the objections, in light of the argument he has made. (This is a good model of systematically thinking through an issue.)

Whether we use statements-from-authority before or after making our argument, we need always to be growing in command of the relevant literature so that we will have statements-from-authority ready.

This is especially true when dealing with those who are skeptical about whether or not the unborn is a living, human organism. Following is my one of my favorite statements-from-authority from a widely-recognized authority on embryology. Don't rely on it to make your whole argument (you need to be ready to reason with the person that the unborn is living, human, and a whole organism, as we do in the Biology section of Abortion: From Debate to Dialogue), but don't be without it either.

Although life is a continuous process, fertilization (which, incidentally, is not a "moment") is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte.

-- Ronan O'Rahilly and Fabiola Müller, Human Embryology & Teratology, 3rd ed. (New York: Wiley-Liss, 2001), p. 8

Because O'Rahilly and Muller state clearly that the unborn is an organism in a concise sentence, this sound bite is better than others in the scientific literature for use in our work. It's a gem.

Your assignment is to memorize this sentence and to demonstrate that you know it by making a voice recording from memory. You can call your Certification Reader during business hours and share it with him/her, you can leave a message, or you can record something on your phone or computer and send it to your Certification Reader.

Note 1: This will be especially helpful to you both in teaching the "Biology" section of the Abortion: From Debate to Dialogue seminar (we quote this in that section) and in your conversations on campus. You should memorize the above version, but in many cases, you'll want to use a reduced version like the following:

Although life is a continuous process, fertilization...is a critical landmark because...a new, genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte.

Note 2: If you've never read a single page from O'Rahilly and Müller's book, I suggest going to a medical library or accessing the book on www.amazon.com. You can read a few pages in the preview function there. Make sure you're looking at the Third Edition. I suggest starting with Pages 8, 32, and 33.

This assignment should take you about 15-30 minutes.

Originally Assigned: Friday, 10/10/2011

Originally Due: Friday, 10/21/2011

Assignment #11: Ambassadors, Essential Skills, and Other Key Terms (Assignment #9 "A Little Quiz" Recap)

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All

Part I: Quiz Answers

Request access to the answers to Assignment #9: A Little Quiz. You can see all of the responses received. My name (Steve Wagner) is listed next to my responses (row 2). I removed the names of everyone but myself since none of you filled the form out with the idea that the answers would be shared.

I've noted instances in which I felt diversity of wording is okay (green). I've also noted answers on which we all need to have unity (red) and answers that I found especially helpful or interesting (blue). The doc also contains my comments; you can see them by running your mouse over the cell in which a small triangle appears in the upper-right corner.

The assignment is to read Steve Wagner's responses and compare them to your own (let Steve know if you can't find your responses).

Feel free to share comments or thoughts directly on this document. Let me know if you have trouble doing this.

Part II: The JFA Website

The JFA Website communicates the core of the JFA Training Certification Program. It explains the following:

Many of my answers in the quiz correspond to the website. Read each of the three above pages of the website for this assignment. In terms of fulfilling the assignment, don't worry about clicking on links. Just read the verbage on the page.

Above and Beyond: Choose one element of one page that you find particularly helpful. Share it with a friend. Ask your friend to comment. Invite your friend to join you for more training at an upcoming training event where you will be present.

This assignment should take you about 20-30 minutes.

Reply that you have read the above (Parts I and II) to your Certification Reader.

Originally Assigned: Monday, 10/24/2011

Originally Due: Friday, 10/28/2011

Assignment #12: Common Ground with Gallup

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All

Originally Assigned on 11/11/2011

Assignment

Review Gallup's summary of its abortion polling (both Page 1 and Page 2). Select five opinions which you can use to find common ground with pro-choice advocates on campus. Choose only opinions with more than 60% support of those polled. At least one of the opinions should be one you haven't used in conversation before.

To complete the assignment, write the findings as statements with precise percentages and any qualifiers that make the finding specific (e.g. "In June 2011, 86% of people polled by Gallup believe abortion should not be legal in the third trimester.").

This assignment has two purposes: (1) Learning to be careful, precise, and accurate when handling with statistics, and (2) Strengthening our ability to find common ground.

Above and Beyond: Question 11 in Common Ground Without Compromise contains a discussion of polling data and common ground. Common Ground Without Compromise also contains many other items of common ground for conversation. You can find other polls on abortion at www.pollingreport.com/abortion.htm.

This assignment should take you about 10-30 minutes.

Links for this assignment:

Gallup Page 1: http://www.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx#1
Gallup Page 2: http://www.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx#2

Assignment #13: Why Do Some People Act? (An Assignment Using the Original Jet Magazine Articles about Emmett Till)

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All

Originally Assigned on 1/4/2012

The following issues of Jet Magazine were recently added to Google Books for free viewing.

To complete the assignment, first read the selected pages from each issue. (To view, click on the cover image.) As a courtesy, I'll give you the warning no reader of Jet received before opening the Sep. 15 issue. Warning: This magazine contains very graphic pictures of the results of racist violence. While you are free to avoid viewing the pictures, we encourage you to proceed and view them, because the pictures clarify the facts about racism and segregation in a way that words never can.

Now, imagine you are reading about this incident in 1955. Maybe you are in Metropolitan Chicago. Maybe you're in Arkansas or New York or Georgia or California. Maybe you're black. Maybe you're white. Surely some readers said: "I've got to go down there and do something to help" and at the first opportunity started participating in the activities of the civil rights movement. Surely others said, "That's too bad" and did nothing for years. Both of these types of readers viewed the same material.

It's the same, of course, with abortion pictures, whether in the JFA Exhibit or Exhibit Brochure or some other medium. Some viewers respond with decisive action to try to help change hearts and minds. Others feel bad but do nothing.

In a paragraph or two, explore your thoughts on this question: When confronted with the graphic reality of injustice, what causes some people to act and others to sit idly by?

This assignment has four purposes: (1) Give you details to enrich your telling of the Emmett Till story, (2) Help you to be accurate when telling the Emmett Till story, (3) Give you familiarity with the resource of Google's online archives of Jet Magazine, and (4) Cause you to reflect on what causes people to act when confronted with graphic illustrations of injustice.

Total Time: 30 minutes. (Reading the relevant pages in both issues should take 5-7 minutes. Responding in writing should take about 20 minutes.)

Links for this assignment:

Jet (Sep. 8, 1955): http://books.google.com/books?id=ubEDAAAAMBAJ&num=13&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1
Jet (Sep. 15, 1955): http://books.google.com/books?id=57EDAAAAMBAJ&num=13&source=gbs_all_issues_r&cad=1

Project #1: Mary Anne Warren (Assignment #’s 14-19)

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All

Originally Assigned 2/9/2012

Overview of Project #1

The purpose of this project is to study one of the most anthologized articles in support of the moral and legal right to an abortion: Mary Anne Warren's On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion (1973).

The purpose of this project is two-fold. First, we want to take seriously one strand of very common pro-choice argument (albeit in a more sophisticated form than we usually hear it on campus). Second, we want to learn to interact with sophisticated philosophical literature.

This project will give you some steps to follow in evaluating any persuasive piece, whether you find it in the philosophical literature or the Huffington Post, First Things, etc. We all need practice identifying, understanding, and evaluating the arguments presented, but we also need practice in the commonly forgotten step for philosophers: crafting responses that will be useful in dialogue with pro-choice advocates. In other words, we want to do some Seat Work here, but we don't want to lose sight of the point of Seat Work, which is Feet Work (or Repeat Work).

Assignments #14-15: Read the Article and Identify the Main Point and the Main Argument

Read the whole article and identify Warren's main conclusion and the main argument for that conclusion. Summarize these in one paragraph and only one paragraph. Add the paragraph to the Facebook discussion group to complete the assignment. Facebook automatically sends me an email when anything is posted, so I'll know to give you credit.

Suggested Time: 60 minutes. I strongly suggest you do both of these parts in one sitting. (Note, picking out the most important conclusion and argument in an article like this may seem like it should be easy, but I submit that limiting how much you can write is a better test than most on whether you've really nailed the main point.)

Assignments #16-17: Analyze the Argument as a Syllogism

(III) Now, take the argument you identified in Part II and try to put it in the form of a syllogism so that it is easier to analyze its structure (step 1) and whether or not the premises are true (step 2). If an argument's structure is bad (the premises don't lead to the conclusion), then we say it is invalid. If any one premise of the argument is false, we say it is unsound. Try to do this in under 30 minutes.

(IV) Determine where you think the argument goes wrong, and summarize your finding in no more than two paragraphs. This should take you about 30 minutes.

(Note: See Is the Argument Sound, Valid, or Something Else? to understand JFA's convention regarding the use of the terms sound and valid.)

Suggested Time: 60 minutes.

Assignment 18: Offer an Alternative View

Respond to the argument and flaw you identified in Parts II and IV by offering an alternative. Write your alternative view in 2-4 paragraphs, or sketch it in outline form. The focus here should be more on the quality of your ideas than on creating pristine prose. The prose or precise way you might share this as an assignment can come later. The thinking and ideas themselves should be the focus.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes.

Assignment 19: Put the Argument, Its Flaws, and Your Alternative in Dialogue Form

Now, take all that you've learned through Parts I-V and create a dialogue that illustrates how you might use these ideas in a conversation with someone on campus who is expressing a view similar to Mary Anne Warren's view.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes.

Links for Project #1:

Mary Anne Warren, "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion," The Monist, Vol. 57, No. 4, 1973. (Part II reprinted, with postscript, in The Problem of Abortion, 1984, Joel Feinberg, ed., Belmont: Wadsworth) http://www.amber-hinds.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/warren-moralandlegalstatusofabortion.pdf

Originally Assigned: 2/9/2012

Project #2: Common Ground Without Compromise (Assignment #'s 20-31)

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All (2012)

Overview of Project #2

The purpose of this project is to show the ability to find common ground by engaging others in dialogue (or preparing to do so) using the questions and discussion presented in my book, Common Ground Without Compromise. (Get the book free at www.commongroundbook.com).

Assignments 20-22 (Introduction/Ch. 1, Ch. 2, and Ch. 3)

Read each of chapters 1-3 (including the Introduction) of Common Ground Without Compromise. To complete this assignment, do one of the following:

While reading (or after), select a “Reflect” question (or more than one) and write a response (suggested).
Call a fellow Certification participant and discuss the chapter.
Contact Steve Wagner or your assigned Certification mentor to schedule an “Office Hours” meeting so you can raise a question or comment about the topic of the chapter.
Based on what you read in this section, write an “Imitate” dialogue (like those in the ADD Seminar) which you can use to prepare for a real conversation on campus or to help you teach others.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes per chapter

Assignments 23-30 (Chapters 4-11)

Read each of chapters 4-11 of Common Ground Without Compromise. To complete this assignment, do one of the following:

Do one of the “Create a Conversation” activities at the end of the chapter (suggested).
While reading (or after), select a “Reflect” question (or more than one) and write a response.
Call a fellow Certification participant and discuss the chapter.
Contact Steve Wagner or your assigned Certification mentor to schedule an “Office Hours” meeting so you can raise a question or comment about the topic of the chapter.
Based on what you read in this section, write an “Imitate” dialogue (like those in the ADD Seminar) which you can use to prepare for a real conversation on campus or to help you teach others.

Suggested Time: 30-60 minutes per chapter.

Assignment 31 (Chapter 12)

Read Chapter 12 of Common Ground Without Compromise. To complete this assignment, do one of the following:

While reading (or after), select a “Reflect” question (or more than one) and write a response.
Alternative assignment: Summarize the Common Ground book for a friend and ask for his or her perspective on it (suggested).
Call a fellow Certification participant and discuss the chapter.
Contact Steve Wagner or your assigned Certification mentor to schedule an “Office Hours” meeting so you can raise a question or comment about the topic of the chapter.
Based on what you read in this section, write an “Imitate” dialogue (like those in the ADD Seminar) which you can use to prepare for a real conversation on campus or to help you teach others.

Suggested Time: 30-60 minutes.

Links for Project #2:

Stephen Wagner, Common Ground Without Compromise (Signal Hill, CA: Stand to Reason Press, 2008) Find links to purchase or get the eBook for free at www.commongroundbook.com.
You can find the following online resources at Stand to Reason (the book’s publisher).

Endnotes: All of the endnotes from Common Ground Without Compromise in one document (with hyperlinks when possible) to aid you in studying the material for yourself. Includes updates since the January 2008 edition. Some of these were updated again for the 2011 eBook edition.
Index

The following resources are available by emailing Steve Wagner.

Take Your Pulse: This worksheet gives you room to reflect on each of the 25 questions in Common Ground Without Compromise.
Reflection Questions (with room to write): There are over 100 reflection questions in Common Ground Without Compromise. This document gives you all of the questions with room to reflect.

Originally Assigned: 2/9/2012

JFA Certification Project #3 (30-Minute Assignment #'s 32-59): ADD IG

By Stephen Wagner

Note: Some of the page numbers for articles referenced here are out of date. Contact Steve Wagner for updated page number information.

Overview of Project #3

The Abortion: From Debate to Dialogue program has two core documents, Trainer Guide (v4.0) and The Interactive Guide. The goal of this assignment is to help you develop a working knowledge of The Interactive Guide so that you can make use of the material in your own conversations and in your mentoring of JFA volunteers.

For each assignment, do both of the following in one sitting:

Read all of the pages assigned.
Write a short paragraph summarizing one main tool or takeaway that you want to use in your mentoring of JFA volunteers. You can highlight a section to which you want to point volunteers, a philosophical example you want to memorize and encourage your volunteers to memorize, or an answer to a question you think they will encounter on campus.
Submit your short paragraph to Steve Wagner or your JFA Certification Mentor via email.

Assignment 32 (Orientation)

pp. 1-8, 27-32

Assignment 33 (Ambassadors, Three Essential Skills)

pp. 9-11, 64-66

Assignment 34 (Making the Pro-Life Case - Overview)

pp. 73-80, 86-88

Assignment 35 (Only One Question)

pp. 12-13, 81-85

Assignment 36 (Biology)

pp. 14-15, pp. 89-91

Assignment 37 (Philosophy)

pp. 16-19, pp. 92-94

Assignment 38 (The Question of Rape)

pp. 22-26, 106

Assignment 39 (Bodily Rights)

Activity 5: “My Body, My Choice” (pp. 20-22)

“My Body, My Choice”: Introduction (pp. 95-96)

Assignment 40 (Bodily Rights, continued)

“My Body, My Choice”: The “Sovereign Zone” Argument (pp. 97-99)

“My Body, My Choice”: The “Right to Refuse” Argument (pp. 99-102)

Assignment 41 (Bodily Rights, continued)

“My Body, My Choice”: What About Rape? (and Further Study) (pp. 103-105)

Assignment 42 (Life of the Mother)

pp. 108-109

Assignment 43 (Graphic Pictures, Graphic Pictures in Public)

pp. 37-46, 110-112

Assignment 44 (Moral Relativism)

pp. 157-160

Assignment 45 (Abortion for Deformity)

pp. 160-162

Assignment 46 (Back-Alley Abortion)

p. 109

pp. 163-166 (Summer 2012 version - email Steve)

Assignment 47 (Logic)

pp. 67-72

Assignment 48 (Outreach Dialogue Tools)

pp. 47-60, 167-168

Assignment 49 (Genocide)

pp. 173-177 (Summer 2012 version - email Steve)

Assignment 50 (Genocide, continued)

pp. 177-181 (Summer 2012 version - email Steve)

Assignment 51 (Ad Hominem)

pp. 169-172 (Summer 2012 version - email Steve)

Assignment 52 (Stem Cell Research)

pp. 179-181

Assignment 53 (Bible)

pp. 185-187 (Summer 2012 version - email Steve)

Assignment 54 (Philosophy - Advanced: Threshold Argument)

pp. 190-194 (Summer 2012 version - email Steve)

Assignment 55 (Philosophy - Advanced: Infanticide, Interests)

pp. 195-201 (Summer 2012 version - email Steve)

Assignment 56 (Facts, I)

pp. 116-120

Assignment 57 (Facts, II)

pp. 121-133

Assignment 58 (Facts, III)

pp. 134-144

Assignment 59 (Web Resources, Handouts)

www.jfaweb.org

www.debate2dialogue.org

What Are the Facts? sheet (www.jfaweb.org/Facts)

Individual Repeat Work Form (www.jfaweb.org/Repeat_Work_Form)

www.jfablogs.blogspot.com

www.jfaweb.org/Outreach_Links

Suggested Time: 30 minutes per assignment

Originally Assigned: 3/29/2012

Project #4: Scott Klusendorf’s “The Case for Life” (Assignment #'s 60-93)

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All

Originally Assigned in 2012

Overview of Project #4

Scott Klusendorf’s The Case for Life is the best pro-life apologetics book aimed at the layperson. Scott brings to every page the same story-driven and concise style that he’s mastered on the speaking platform. The book will both help you to think more clearly and to put those thoughts into words in conversation. You will not only learn to defend the unborn from this book, you’ll enjoy yourself while you do.

This is not meant to be a blanket endorsement of everything you’ll read in the book, however, and you should read critically. Both fiercely confident and humble, Scott would agree that you should test his ideas.

To complete any assignment, choose one or more of the following options:

Sketch the argument of the chapter in a short outline. Your sketch should include both sides of arguments when presented.
Choose one (or more) takeaway(s) from the chapter. What one sentence or idea do you want to make sure to remember for your mentoring of volunteers or for dialogue with pro-choice advocates. Why is this sentence or idea significant to you?
Create a short dialogue based on one takeaway from the chapter. How would you put the idea into practice in a real conversation?
Based on the information in the chapter, create a question a pro-choice advocate might ask you in a conversation, on open mic, during an interview by a campus reporter, or on Facebook. Create a short answer.

While reading (or after), select a “Review Question” (or more than one) and write a response.
Call a fellow Certification participant and discuss the chapter. Summarize the discussion in written form to complete the assignment.
Raise a question or comment about the topic of the chapter in one of our “Office Hours” Conference Calls during an open forum Q & A. Summarize the discussion in written form to complete the assignment.
Based on what you read in this section, write an “Imitate” dialogue (like those in the ADD Seminar) which you can use to prepare for a real conversation on campus or to help you teach others.

Assignment List

Assignment 60 (Preface, Introduction)
Assignments 61-62 (Ch. 1, pp. 19-34, 15 pages): What’s the Issue?
Assignments 63-64 (Ch. 2, pp. 35-47, 13 pages): What Is the Unborn?
Assignments 65-67 (Ch. 3, pp. 49-69, 21 pages): What Makes Humans Valuable?
Assignments 68-70 (Ch. 4, pp. 71-88, 18 pages): Is ESCR Morally Complex?
Assignment 71 (Ch. 5, pp. 91-100, 10 pages): Can You Name My Claim?
Assignment 72 (Ch. 6, pp. 101-110, 10 pages): Is Moral Neutrality Possible?
Assignments 73-76 (Ch. 7, pp. 111-133, 23 pages): Does God Matter? Or Am I Just Matter?
Assignments 77-78 (Ch. 8, pp. 135-145, 11 pages): Does the Bible Justify Abortion?
Assignment 79 (Ch. 9, pp. 149-156, 8 pages): Asking the Right Questions
Assignment 80 (Ch. 10, pp. 157-160, 4 pages): The Coat Hanger Objection
Assignment 81 (Ch. 11, pp. 161-166, 6 pages): The Tolerance Objection
Assignment 82 (Ch. 12, pp. 167-171, 5 pages): “Pro-Lifers Should Broaden Their Focus”
Assignment 83 (Ch. 13, pp. 173-176, 4 pages): The Hard Cases Objection (Rape)
Assignment 84 (Ch. 14, pp. 177-183, 7 pages): The “I Don’t Like You” Objection
Assignment 85-88 (Ch. 15, pp. 185-201, 17 pages): The Bodily Autonomy Objection
Assignment 89-90 (Ch. 16, pp. 205-216, 12 pages): Equip to Engage
Assignment 91 (Ch. 17, pp. 217-224, 8 pages): Healed and Equipped
Assignment 92 (Ch. 18, pp. 225-231, 7 pages): Here We Stand
Assignment 93 (Ch. 19, pp. 233-243, 11 pages): Can We Win?

Suggested Time: 30 minutes per chapter

Links for Project #4:

Scott Klusendorf, The Case for Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2009). See www.caseforlife.com for material related to the book and links to purchase.
See www.prolifetraining.com to learn more about Scott Klusendorf’s Life Training Institute (highly recommended)

Originally Assigned: 3/28/2012

Assignment #94: A Conversation on Bodily Rights (Trent Horn)

By Stephen Wagner, Justice For All

Read the dialogue between Trent and a student at the University of Northern Colorado. Then write a short paragraph answering this question: “What can we learn about the E and D from the SLED Test from Trent’s dialogue?”

Suggested Time: 30 minutes or less

Links for Assignment #94:

Trent Horn, “Teaching Bodily Rights,” JFA Guide for Trainers. Email Steve Wagner for the latest version.

Originally Assigned: 3/29/2012

Assignment #95: Imposing or Proposing? (“The Women of Roe v. Wade” by Mary Ann Glendon)

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All

Originally Assigned in 2012

In Mary Ann Glendon’s “The Women of Roe v. Wade,” you’ll not only get some good history, you’ll also find two paragraphs giving a helpful response to the charge that pro-lifers are imposing their views on others:

I have to admit that, back in the 1970s, I was rather uncritical of such phrases. I remember asking the former dean of Boston College, a Jesuit priest, “Father, what do you think about this abortion issue?” He said, “Well you see, Mary Ann, it’s very simple. According to Vatican II, abortion is ‘an unspeakable moral crime.’ But in a pluralistic democracy, we can’t impose our moral views on other people.” “Oh,” I said, “OK.”

I know this story doesn’t reflect any credit on me, but I mention it to show that many of us just didn’t focus on the issue all that closely. I know now that I should have questioned the word “impose.” But it took some time before growing numbers of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews stepped forward to point out that when people advance their moral viewpoints in the public square, they are not imposing anything on anyone. They are proposing. That’s what citizens do in a democracy—we propose, we give reasons, we vote. It’s a very strange doctrine that would silence only religiously grounded moral viewpoints. And it’s very unhealthy for democracy when the courts—without clear constitutional warrant—deprive citizens of the opportunity to have a say in setting the conditions under which we live, work, and raise our children.

Read the whole article. Then, consider the following: When someone says, “I can’t impose my views on someone else,” or “I can’t force my views on someone else,” the person might mean one of two things (or possibly some other third option):

“It’s wrong for me to tell people my moral beliefs about what they should believe or do.”
“It’s wrong for us to use the law to force other people to do things they don’t want to do or restrict them from doing what they want to do.”

Imagine you are in a conversation with someone who says, “I can’t impose my views,” and you determine, using the Three Essential Skills, that the person means “1” above. Would Mary Ann Glendon’s response be helpful? What if the person means “2” above? Would Mary Ann Glendon’s response be helpful?

Now, read Stephen Wagner’s Common Ground Without Compromise, page 15 (printed edition; read page 22 in the eBook edition).

To complete the assignment, discuss how these insights of Mary Ann Glendon and Stephen Wagner would affect a conversation you are having with someone who says, “I can’t impose my view on someone else.”

Alternate Assignment:

Write a dialogue showing that you can identify the different possible meanings associated with the sentence, “I can’t impose my view,” and show through the dialogue how you would navigate the discussion and respond.

Links for Assignment #95:

Mary Ann Glendon, “The Women of Roe v. Wade,” First Things, June/July 2003: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/06/the-women-of-roe-v-wade
Stephen Wagner, “I’m Not Imposing Anything on Anyone,” STR Blog, August 21, 2005: http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2005/08/im_not_imposing_1.html
Stephen Wagner, Common Ground Without Compromise (Signal Hill, CA: Stand to Reason Press, 2008) Find links to purchase or get the eBook for free at www.commongroundbook.com.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes (This one may take you longer than 30 minutes.)

Project #5: Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion” (The Violinist) [Assignment #’s 96-99]

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All

Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion” is perhaps the most famous essay in applied ethics in the last half century. The story of a small violinist hooked up to another person to help the violinist stay alive has captured the imaginations of many students of the abortion debate. Indeed, this essay is very commonly assigned in entry-level philosophy and ethics courses.

To complete the project, read the article and write two paragraphs:

Summarize Thomson’s main argument. In other words, make her case.
Offer a sketch of a response to her main argument.

Alternative:

To complete this project, conference with another JFA mentor (one-to-one or on an Office Hours Conference Call) about Thomson’s main argument (i.e. make her case) and brainstorm a response to her main argument.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes per assignment (2 hours total)

Links for Project #5:

Judith Jarvis Thomson, “A Defense of Abortion,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1971): http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/Phil160,Fall02/thomson.htm

Originally Assigned: 3/29/2012

Project #6: Rich Poupard’s “Suffer the Violinist” (Assignments #100-103)

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All

In “Suffer the Violinist,” Rich Poupard (AKA Serge) of the Life Training Institute responds to Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “Violinist Argument.”

To complete the assignment, read the article and write two paragraphs:

Summarize the pro-choice argument to which Rich Poupard is responding
Summarize the most important aspects of his response.

Alternative:

To complete the assignment, conference with another JFA mentor (one-to-one or on an Office Hours Conference Call) about the 1-3 points in Mr. Poupard’s article that you want to remember for use during conversations on campus or in mentoring your volunteers.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes per assignment (2 hours total)

Links for Project #6:

Rich Poupard, “Suffer the Violinist,” Christian Research Journal, Vol 30, No. 4 (2007): https://www.equip.org/article/suffer-the-violinist-why-the-pro-abortion-argument-from-bodily-autonomy-fails/

Originally Assigned: 3/29/2012

Project #7: Tony George’s “Good Samaritan on Life Support” (JFA Certification Assignments #104-107)

By Stephen Wagner, Justice For All

In “Good Samaritan on Life Support,” 2009-2010 JFA Intern Tony George responds to Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “Violinist Argument,” which is also called the “Good Samaritan Argument.”

To complete the assignment, read the article and write two paragraphs:

Summarize the pro-choice argument to which Mr. George is responding
Summarize the most important aspects of his response.

Alternative:

To complete the assignment, conference with another JFA mentor (one-to-one or on an Office Hours Conference Call) about the 1-3 points in Mr. George’s article that you want to remember for use during conversations on campus or in mentoring your volunteers.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes per assignment (2 hours total)

Links for Project #7:

Tony George, “Good Samaritan on Life Support,” Justice For All, Inc. (2009): http://doc.jfaweb.org/Training/George_Anthony_GSonLifeSupport.pdf

Originally Assigned: 3/29/2012

Assignment #108: “On the Reading of Old Books” (C.S. Lewis)

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All

Originally Assigned: 3/30/2012

C.S. Lewis wrote the short essay, “On the Reading of Old Books,” as an introduction to a translation of St. Athanasius’s De Incarnatione Verbi Dei. Read the essay and note the following items in a short response of 1-2 paragraphs:

What is Lewis’s practical advice about how many old books you should read for every new one?
What is lurking behind any disagreement among contemporaries?
Why are non-specialists especially in need old books?
How will this essay change your reading habits?

Alternative:

To complete the assignment, conference with another JFA mentor (one-to-one or on an Office Hours Conference Call) about the questions above.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes

Links for Assignment #108:

C.S. Lewis, “On the Reading of Old Books,” Introduction to St. Athanasius, De Incarnatione Verbi Dei (Translated by Penelope Lawson) http://www.westernorthodox.com/lewis
Hear the Lewis essay read to you here:

Part 1 of 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UIl-eY3Rpk
Part 2 of 2: http://youtu.be/vrqIegwmsC0

Items referenced in the essay:

St. Athanasius, De Incarnatione http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/history/ath-inc.htm
St. Athanasius, De Incarnatione http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2802.htm
Joseph Butler: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Butler
See especially Fifteen Sermons Preached at Rolls Chapel or On Human Nature and other Sermons (same material, different names)

Project #8: Q & A Set 1 (Life of the Mother, Birth Control, Back Alley Abortion) [Assignment #’s 109-113]

By Stephen Wagner, Justice For All

The following assignments are for mentors and facilitators. Imagine you are being asked this question during an ADD seminar or at a JFA outreach. How would you respond?

Assignment #109: Q&A Study - “What about abortion when the woman’s life is in danger?” (Part I - General response)
Assignment #110: Q&A Study - “What about abortion when the woman’s life is in danger?” (Part II - Specific Cases)
Assignment #111: Q&A Study - “What’s JFA’s position on the morning-after pill?”
Assignment #112: Q&A Study - “What’s JFA’s position on birth control?”
Assignment #113: Q&A Study - “Should abortion be legal so that women don’t die in the back alleys from unsafe abortions?”

To complete each assignment, write two responses for pro-life audiences:

Short (Less than 1 minute - What would you say if pressed for time during a seminar. For example, in a seminar.)
Longer (2-5 minutes - What you would say if you have more time. e.g. with someone you’re mentoring on campus or during a break in the seminar.)

For extra credit or an extra challenge, write a dialogue of how you would respond to the question if it were asked of you while you were facilitating the open mic at a JFA campus outreach.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes per assignment (2.5 hours total)

Links for Project #8:

Originally Assigned: 5/8/2012

Project #9: Q & A Set 2 (Bible, Dialogue, Graphic Pics, Fetal Anomaly) [30-Minute Assignment #’s 114-118]

By Stephen Wagner, Justice For All

The following assignments are for mentors and facilitators. Imagine you are being asked this question during an ADD seminar or at a JFA outreach. How would you respond?

Assignment #114: Q&A Study - “I’ve heard that the Bible doesn’t mention the word abortion. Is that true? And if so, do you think the Bible speaks to the issue at all?”
Assignment #115: Q&A Study - “Does dialogue really work? Doesn’t this approach take too long to convince someone who is pro-choice? Why not just get to the point.”
Assignment #116: Q&A Study - “The use of the graphic pictures only creates a barrier between you and the people you are trying to reach. These pictures are offensive. You are making women feel guilty and possibly making them suicidal. Shouldn't you use a more loving approach?”
Assignment #117: Q&A Study - “How do we know these abortion pictures are real? Everyone uses photoshop these days.”
Assignment #118: Q&A Study - “I’m against abortion except in situations of fetal anomaly or where the child is going to die soon after birth. I don’t see the point in expecting the parents to give birth to the child just to watch it suffer and die.”

To complete each assignment, write two responses for pro-life audiences:

Short (Less than 1 minute - What would you say if pressed for time during a seminar. For example, in a seminar.)
Longer (2-5 minutes - What you would say if you have more time. e.g. with someone you’re mentoring on campus or during a break in the seminar.)

For extra credit or an extra challenge, write a dialogue of how you would respond to the question if it were asked of you while you were facilitating the open mic at a JFA campus outreach.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes per assignment (2.5 hours total)

Links for Project #9:

Originally Assigned: 5/8/2012

Assignment #119: Proper Environment, Adequate Nutrition, and HeLa Cells

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All

Originally Assigned in 2012

Suggested Time: 30 Minutes

Note the following quote from Version 2.7 of the ADD Interactive Guide:

3. The unborn is a whole organism.

...
From conception, needs only a proper environment and adequate nutrition, just like adults.

Also, note the following quote from Version 2.74 of the JFA Guide for Trainers:

Now, think critically about these statements for a moment. The unborn only needs environment and nutrition in order to survive and develop himself, as we do. Does that fact, and that fact alone, make the unborn an organism?

Skim the Prologue of Rebecca Skloot’s book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown, 2010), at http://rebeccaskloot.com/the-immortal-life/excerpt. Then read the first paragraph of the article on HeLa cells at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hela_cells.

Here’s my question: If the implication of the statements in our training material above is correct, and all that is needed (the sufficient condition) to be an organism is “needing only a proper environment and adequate nutrition to continue to live,” then it should be painfully obvious that HeLa cells, and every cell culture in petri dishes around the world for that matter, are organisms. They only need “proper environment and adequate nutrition” to live and develop, after all.

So, either we should adjust our definition of organism to include HeLa cells or we should stop saying that something is an organism if all it needs to continue to develop itself is proper environment and adequate nutrition. Because HeLa cells are clearly not an organism(s), the latter is the route we should take. We should simply adjust how we are explaining this particular argument for the idea that the unborn is an organism.

Fortunately, not much revision is needed to make the Guide for Trainers excerpt (from the Biology script) acceptable. My revisions are in red:

d) So, from the beginning, we have a whole organism on a self-directed path of development. All he needs is a proper environment and adequate nutrition to continue to develop himself. That’s all you and I need to develop ourselves. So, If you and I are organisms, and all that was added to us from the time of fertilization until now was a proper environment and adequate nutrition, then we must have been organisms at the time of fertilization, too.

Or:

d) So, from the beginning, we have a whole organism on a self-directed path of development. If you and I are organisms, and all that was added to us from the time of fertilization until now was a proper environment and adequate nutrition, then we must have been organisms at the time of fertilization, too.

Not much needs to be revised in the Interactive Guide excerpt either. Here’s the adjusted version:

3. The unborn is a whole organism.

...
If adults are organisms, and all that was added to them from fertilization was a proper environment and adequate nutrition, then the unborn at fertilization must have been an organism as well.

Note the three-phrase structure of the argument now:

If you are an organism now...
And if all that has been added to you from the time of fertilization until now was proper environment and adequate nutrition...
Then you (and every other human) must have been an organism at fertilization.

Fortunately, this corrective has already been included in the current version of Activity 3: Imitate, Part III (...Organism) on page 15 of the Interactive Guide, v. 2.7:

L: Well, do you agree that you and I are organisms, and that from the time we were embryos at fertilization, all that has been added to us is adequate nutrition and a proper environment? (Point to pictures on JFA Brochure, p. 3.)

C: I’m not sure I understand your point.

L: After fertilization, there was no injection of DNA or essential material, so if you and I are organisms now, wouldn’t the embryo at fertilization also have to be an organism – a living human organism?

To complete this assignment, find another JFA mentor (or call the JFA office to talk to a mentor) and explain how “proper environment and adequate nutrition” relate to the status of the unborn as an organism and report to Steve Wagner that you have done this. This activity should take you less than ten minutes.

Project #10: When Is Abortion Legal in Your State? (Assignment #'s 120-123)

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All

Originally Assigned in 2013

Assignment #120:

Read Guttmacher Institute’s “State Policies on Later Abortions” and summarize your understanding of when abortion is legal in the US. In addition, summarize the restrictions on abortion across the US. If you disagree with the Guttmacher characterization in any way, also note your disagreement.

Note: Some states are not listed in the “State Policies on Later Abortions” doc. New Mexico is an example. It is unclear what the significance of this is, but at least one clinic provides abortions in New Mexico during the third trimester.

Assignment #121:

Using what you read and learned in Assignment #120, summarize your understanding of when abortion is legal in your home state. In addition, summarize the restrictions on abortion in your state. If you disagree with the Guttmacher characterization in any way, also note your disagreement.

Assignment #122

Create a short dialogue between you and a pro-choice advocate on the Yes side of the “Should Abortion Remain Legal?” the poll table. Start the dialogue with “Do you think abortion should be legal through all nine months?” The pro-choice advocate responds, “It isn’t, right?” Then explain your summaries in Assignments #120 and #121 in dialogue form in a way that is helpful to the average student on campus. Keep it simple, but avoid being simplistic.

Assignment #123

Future discussion of this question reserved for this assignment.

Links:

Guttmacher’s Web Page on Later Abortion Restrictions: https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/state-policies-later-abortions
Guttmacher’s Fact Sheet on Later Abortion Restrictions: http://www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/spibs/spib_PLTA.pdf
Guttmacher’s State-By-State webpage: http://www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/sfaa.html
See also Assignment #58 (Facts III), which refers to pages 136-138 of the Interactive Guide (“Is Abortion Legal Through All Nine Months for Any Reason?”, including excerpts from Supreme Court documents).

Suggested Time: 30 minutes per assignment (2 hours total)

Project #11: What Has SCOTUS Said About Abortion (Assignment #'s 124-131)

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All (updated with Assign. 130 on 6/12/2021)

For each of the following assignments, read the abstract of the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) opinion and skim the entire opinion, including the dissents. Then write a one-sentence summary of the significance of the opinion.

The abstract is the first section of the opinion, until the sentence “________ delivered the opinion of the Court.”

For some help, see also Assignment #58 (Facts III), which refers to pages 136-138 of the Interactive Guide (“Is Abortion Legal Through All Nine Months for Any Reason?”, including excerpts from Supreme Court documents).

Assignment #124: Roe v. Wade (1973)

Assignment #125: Doe v. Bolton (1973)

Assignment #126: Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989)

Assignment #127: Casey v. Planned Parenthood (1992)

Assignment #128: Stenberg v. Carhart (2000)

Assignment #129: Gonzales v. Carhart (2007)

Assignment #130: Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri v. Danforth (1976)

Assignment #131:

Future discussion of this series reserved for this assignment.

Links:

Related Assignments and Links

Guttmacher’s Fact Sheet on Later Abortion Restrictions: http://www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/spibs/spib_PLTA.pdf
Guttmacher’s State-By-State webpage: http://www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/sfaa.html
See also Project #10

Suggested Time: 30 minutes per assignment (4 hours total)

[About JFA Certification Weekly Updates: JFA sends an update each week to the JFA Certification community (usually Thursday or Friday). The update encourages all of us to spend time in each of three categories. "Mind in Community" is focused on fostering a culture of active intellectual engagement among our people. We want to grow intellectually together through 30-minute assignments, longer projects, and "office hours" conference calls. "Dialogue Practice" helps us master and maintain the skill of creating dialogue with those who disagree. It includes Feet Work and Repeat Work. "Mentoring & Speaking" helps us master the skill of teaching others to dialogue with those who disagree. It includes preparing to act as mentors and speakers at JFA's ADD Seminars and Outreaches.]

Project #12: Does the Bible Say Abortion Is Okay? (Assignment #'s 132-135)

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All

Project #12 (Assignments #132-134)

Greg Koukl’s “What Exodus 21:22 Says about Abortion”: https://www.str.org/w/what-exodus-21-22-says-about-abortion

Project #13: CPC’s and Graphic Visuals (Assignment #’s 136-139)

By Stephen Wagner, Executive Director, Justice For All

“Should Crisis Pregnancy Centers Use Graphic Visuals?” by Scott Klusendorf.

Links to Documents in this Assignment and Related Links:

http://www.priestsforlife.org/resources/abortionimages/graphcpc.pdf

Suggested Time: 30 minutes per assignment (2 hours total)

Assignment #140: Gestation=LMP?

By Stephen Wagner, Director of Training, Justice For All

Originally Assigned in 2013

Obstetricians and midwives usually date a pregnancy from a woman’s last menstrual period (LMP). Embryologists date the age of the unborn from fertilization. When fertilization happens, it’s approximately two weeks after LMP, so if a woman’s pregnancy is dated to be 11 weeks [LMP], she has a baby in her womb that is approximately 9 weeks old [post-fertilization].

“Gestation” is a term that’s used by both of these communities. Usually the term “gestation” means “LMP,” but there are those (pro-life advocates among them) who sometimes use “gestation” to mean post-fertilization. It is common, for example, to hear people talking about the “gestation of a child” as if “gestation” were synonymous with the age of the child. O’Rahilly and Müller describe the challenges of these different dating systems generally and the problem with the term “gestation” in particular (emphasis in the original):

Pregnancy is frequently suggested by the absence of one or more menstrual periods. In obstetrics, use is usually made of the first day of the last menstrual period (LMP), on the assumption that fertilization occurred two weeks later. It is further assumed that birth is likely to occur some 280 days after the LMP. The predictive accuracy of the LMP in estimating the time of birth can involve an error of at least ±3 weeks. Irregularities in menstruation and ovulation as well as inaccurate recall and reporting are key factors in the lack of reliability. Reference to menstrual days or menstrual weeks (i.e. the length of time from day 1 of the last menstrual period) is useful clinically, but the term menstrual “age” is incorrect (Fig. 8-2). The confusing terms “gestational age” and “gestational weeks” should be discarded. They either are not defined or are used indiscriminately both for menstrual weeks and for postfertilization age. Moreover, gestation, which means pregnancy, is variously defined as beginning at the LMP, at fertilization, or at implantation.

[The discussion that follows regarding the definitions of pre-term, post-term, and perinatal, as well as the actual duration of the prenatal period, is very helpful. It is copied below under “Links and Additional Notes” for your benefit.]

— Ronan O'Rahilly and Fabiola Müller, Human Embryology & Teratology, 3rd ed. (New York: Wiley-Liss, 2001), pp. 88-92

My view is that the term “gestation” by itself fares no better than “gestational age” or “gestational weeks” and all of them should be discarded for the same reasons. Following are JFA’s conventions regarding age references:

Always use post-fertilization ages when discussing or showing the unborn, whether in the embryonic or fetal periods. All JFA pictures, whether of the results of abortion or of prenatal development are aged or dated from fertilization.
Make explicit the type of age being referred to whenever possible (e.g. “four weeks post-fertilization” or “four weeks after fertilization”).
Never use the term “gestation” when referring to the age of the unborn or to the duration of a pregnancy.
Even though the medical community generally refers to abortion ages in LMP terms, we date our abortion pictures from fertilization both to maintain consistency with our prenatal photos and to encourage people to give more consideration to the human being who is killed by the abortion.

Show Your Work:

To complete this assignment, describe the common medical meanings of the terms LMP, post-fertilization, gestation, and restate in your own words how you’ll use these terms in the future. Show your learning in one of the following ways:

Create a google doc and share it with Steve Wagner and Catherine Wurts.
Discuss this with another member of the Certification community and send a report on your conversation by email to Steve Wagner and Catherine Wurts.

Additional Activities:

Write a short sample dialogue in which a pro-choice advocate is asking about the ages of the pictures on the JFA Exhibit and you are describing what the ages mean.
Read the additional material in the section below.

Links and Additional Information:

On JFA’s What Are the Facts? sheet, there are two helpful notes related to this assignment

“What do the ages on the Exhibit pictures mean?” clarifies the difference between LMP and post-fertilization ages as they relate to the Justice For All Exhibit.
“When in Pregnancy Are Abortions Performed?” allows viewers to compare Exhibit picture ages to the percentage of abortions performed at those post-fertilization ages.

An example of another confusing use of age terms in the abortion debate is found in Steve Wagner’s Common Ground Without Compromise (endnote 94):

Confusingly, Hern uses “fetal age” to mean “age from last menstrual period” in this section of his book. In contrast, the medical community typically uses fetal age to mean the actual age of the fetus, which is approximately two weeks younger than the date of the last menstrual period. I have used the term “post-fertilization” here to clearly denote the actual age of the fetus. See “Talking Points on D&E” in Abortion: From Debate to Dialogue - The Interactive Guide (pp. 134-135) for other descriptions of D&E procedures provided by the abortion doctors who perform them. [See Warren Hern, Abortion Practice (Philadelphia: J. Lippincott, 1990), pp. 153-154.]

O’Rahilly and Müller’s discussion of ages (that follows the above paragraph) is also helpful:

Estimation of prenatal age is fundamental to the study of fetal growth. The average duration of prenatal life from ovulation to parturition is about 264-270 days, or 38-38 ½ weeks. The range is believed to be 250-285 days. So-called prolonged pregnancy (more than 275 postovulatory days) is caused mostly by delayed ovulation. Clinically, age is estimated from menstrual history, ultrasonic measurements, and morphology, and physical estimation of the newborn.

Preterm Infants are those born early (prematurely), which is commonly considered to be at fewer than 37 (some use 38) completed weeks from the first day of the last menstual period. This would correspond approximately to an age of 35 (or 36) weeks. Such infants may be either small for age or of appropriate size for age. The “preterm” infant is born before functional maturation has been reached in those physiological systems (respiratory, digestive, etc.) that are essential for extra-uterine survival. Unfinished fetal and neonatal tasks, such as pulmonary, vascular, renal, and cutaneous maturation, render an infant vulnerable. A major cause of death is the respiratory distress syndrome, which arises before type 2 alveolar cells are mature enough to produce adequate surfactant.

An infant born at “term” is frequently considered to be from 37 to fewer than 42 completed postmenstrual weeks, i.e., an age from 35 to less than 40 weeks. The notion “post-term” is often used to refer to 42 completed postmenstrual weeks or more, i.e., an age of about 40 weeks or more. The perinatal period can be considered to extend from 28 postmenstrual (an age of 26) weeks (i.e., trimester 3) to 1 week after term. At birth, the human infant is relatively immature. The neonatal period comprises the first four weeks after birth.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes

Project #14: JFA’s Response to the “Right to Refuse in the Case of Rape” (RRR) Argument (Assignment #’s 141-150)

By Stephen Wagner, Justice For All

Assignment #141-142: Read the JFA Paper

Writing on behalf of the JFA Philosophy Team, Stephen Wagner published a paper on 4/13/2013 on the Life Report blog. See www.jfaweb.org/DFG to download the paper. For each of these two assignments, read the paper and summarize the main points in one paragraph.

Assignment #143: Understand the Right to Refuse Argument

Distinguish the “Right to Refuse” argument from the “Sovereign Zone” argument. Why is the Right to Refuse argument stronger?

Assignment #144: Previous Responses to the Right to Refuse Argument

Summarize previous approaches to the Right to Refuse Argument and note briefly the liabilities in relying on them to dismantle the argument.

Assignment #145: Summarize the De Facto Guardian Idea

Summarize the main argument made by Stephen Wagner and the JFA Philosophy Team. In other words, make the basic case against the Right to Refuse argument. Note especially the definition of a De Facto Guardian and sketch where the obligations of a De Facto Guardian originate.

Assignment #146: Interact with the De Facto Guardian Idea

Do you think the De Facto Guardian response is a good one? Why or why not?

Assignment #147: How Would You Use or Teach the De Facto Guardian Idea?

Explore how you would use the De Facto Guardian idea in a seminar or outreach event. For this assignment, either write a sample dialogue that would guide you in an on-campus discussion or create a teaching sequence for a mentor group.

Assignment #148: Discuss the De Facto Guardian Idea

Post a reply in the discussion at www.jfaweb.org/DFG, discuss your ideas with another JFA mentor, or start a conversation with a pro-choice advocate and explore the de facto guardian idea together. To complete this assignment, report on your conversation in two or more paragraphs. What did you learn? Did the conversation yield new insights, questions, or concerns?

Links for This Project:

Stephen Wagner (on beahlf of the JFA Philosophy Team), “De Facto Guardian and Abortion: A Response to the Strongest Violinist,” 4/13/2013, published at jfaweb.org and posted at the Life Report Blog. See www.jfaweb.org/DFG to download the paper and interact.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes per assignment (4 hours total)

Originally Assigned: 5/8/2013

Assignment #149: Down Syndrome and Abortion

By Stephen Wagner, Executive Director, Justice For All

Read Steve Wagner’s blog post, “Human or Statistic? Do We Know What Percentage of Down Syndrome Kids Are Killed by Abortion?”

In addition, read the abstract of the Natoli study and skim the rest of the study.

Respond to the post (and the Natoli study) in one of three ways:

In one paragraph, summarize the best available data on the question of how many unborn children diagnosed with Down syndrome in the womb are subsequently aborted. Note whether or not we can know if Down syndrome was the sole reason for the abortion.
Respond to the phenomenon of prenatal diagnosis followed by abortion in cases where Down syndrome is diagnosed.
Create a sample dialogue in which you use what you learned in this assignment in a conversation with a pro-choice student on campus. Make sure to find common ground at least once.

Originally Assigned Due August 15, 2015

Suggested Time: 30 minutes

Assignment #150: Ten Seconds

By Stephen Wagner, Executive Director, Justice For All

Read Steve Wagner’s blog post, “Can Ten Seconds Change Minds?” Although the links to other things are helpful, you’re not required by this assignment to read all that is contained in those links. You do, however, need to know where to find this post for future reference (with volunteers you’re mentoring, etc): www.jfaweb.org/10-seconds.

Respond to the post in one of three ways:

Share in the comments your reflection on how you’ve seen the “10-Second Pro-Life Apologist” help conversations with pro-choice advocates or the pro-life advocates navigating those conversations. Or, share what it has meant to you as a trainer or as an advocate navigating conversations.
Interact with Steve via email about his comment that the 10-Second Pro-Life Apologist has its limitations. What do you think?
Share the post (including the July letter) with a friend and interact with him/her about it.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes

Assignment #151: “Facing the Unborn” by Richard Stith

By Stephen Wagner, Executive Director, Justice For All

Read Richard Stith’s short article “Facing the Unborn” from First Things.

Respond to the article in one of these four ways:

Summarize the strategies Stith mentions for instilling a picture of the unborn as a real human being in the mind of our hearer. Which do you think will be most helpful to you as a person creating dialogue on abortion? Why?
Have you had an experience in dialogue in which you felt that one of the problems was the fact that it was hard for the person you were talking to to envision the unborn as a real human? Were you able to overcome this? How?
Has Stith’s article sparked any new ideas about how to help people overcome their inability to see an embryo as a real human?
Share the article with a friend who is pro-choice or whose views on abortion are unknown to you. Interact with him/her about it.

Send an email with notes on your completion of this assignment to Steve and Catherine.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes

Project #15: Richard Stith on Construction and Development [Kennedy Institute of Ethics] (Assignments #152-163)

By Stephen Wagner, Executive Director, Justice For All

Read Richard Stith’s "Construction vs. Development: Polarizing Models of Human Gestation” (Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, Volume 24, Issue 4, Dec. 2014, pp. 345-384).

Respond to the

Assignments #152-157 (3 hours): Read Richard Stith’s article, summarizing the main points in short sentences or paragraphs.
Assignments #158-159 (1 hour): Respond to two of the main points you summarized.
Assignments #160-161 (1 hour): Use the material to prepare to interact with a pro-choice advocate (create a sample dialogue)
Assignments #162-163 (1 hour): Start a conversation about the article with a friend using a version of the sound bite from JFA’s “Learn at Home” guide (Step 4) and interact with a friend:

“I’m troubled by the fact that good conversations about abortion are rare. It seems to only be hurtful to people. I’ve been working recently on understanding an interesting article that Richard Stith wrote, in which he shares some of the reasons he thinks pro-life and pro-choice people are on different pages. Would you be willing to sit and chat with me for 15 minutes or more and help me think through what he is saying? I’d be interested in hearing if you think he’s correct. My commitment to you throughout the conversation would be that I will ask questions with an open heart, listen to understand, and find common ground when possible.”

Suggested Time: 5 hours

Assignment #164: #MindBlown (Rebecca Haschke’s November 2015 Newsletter)

By Stephen Wagner, Executive Director, Justice For All

Read Rebecca Haschke’s November 2015 newsletter, “#MindBlown”.

Reflect and Respond in Writing

Reflect on a conversation you’ve had with a Christian who has made essentially the same argument that Brian made.
Summarize Rebecca’s conversational strategy.
Note the point Rebecca makes about discouragement in her penultimate paragraph (that just means “second to last” folks). What conclusions can you draw from Rebecca’s conversation and her reflection on it?
Note anything else about the letter that is noteworthy or meaningful to you personally.

Send your response to Steve Wagner, Catherine Wurts, and Rebecca Haschke.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes

Project #16: Learn at Home (Assignments #165-169)

By Stephen Wagner, Executive Director, Justice For All

Imagine that you know nothing about JFA and you just came across this Facebook post by Spencer Stewart (September 30, 2015):

My students and I had another great experience at the Justice For All training and KU outreach. These people really know what they are doing, training us to have healthy, productive conversations about the issue of abortion. Because of the skills they teach, I was able to lead the best and fullest conversation I've ever had with a pro-choice college student.

Everybody should check out their "Learn at Home" materials: www.jfaweb.org/learn-at-home

Go to the page, and complete the Learn at Home program with a friend, family member, or supporter. Note that this includes these steps:

30 minutes: Exercise 1 and 2
30 minutes: Exercise 3 and 4
60 minutes: Arranging and engaging in the conversation with a pro-choice person.

Alternative (updated 5/25/2021): Use the conversation starters on the Love3 Notes page to engage a friend in conversation.

30 minutes: Debriefing the experience with your friend, family member, or supporter.

Report on your experience.

Suggested Time: 150 minutes

Assignment #170: Explore JFA Resources

By Stephen Wagner, Executive Director, Justice For All

Spend 20 minutes browsing the revised “Explore Resources” page at the JFA website so that you know what is there and can recommend these resources to people.

Suggested Time: 20 minutes

Assignment #171: More State Abortion Facts

By Stephen Wagner, Executive Director, Justice For All

There are some links to state abortion facts on our "More Facts" page:

www.jfaweb.org/more-facts

One of them to which I want to draw your attention is the following:

www.instagram.com/explore/tags/stateabortionfacts/

Please take a few minutes to peruse this page, and to note how many abortions take place each day, especially in the various states in which we work. Also, note this page as a good graphical representation of this information that might be helpful to supporters or friends.

Suggested Time: 5 minutes

Assignment #172: The Placenta

Originally Assigned 10/3/2022. Originally Due 11/1/2022. Est. time: <30 minutes

Review the following passages from Moore and Persaud, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 8th Edition (2008: Saunders/Elsevier):

Quoted from Page 111:

The placenta is the primary site of nutrient and gas exchange between the mother and fetus. The placenta is a fetomaternal organ that has two components:

A fetal part that develops from the chorionic sac
A maternal part that is derived from the endometrium

The placenta and umbilical cord form a transport system for substances passing between the mother and fetus.Nutrients and oxygen pass from the maternal blood through the placenta to the fetal blood, and waste materials and carbon dioxide pass from the fetal blood through the placenta to the maternal blood. The placenta and fetal membranes perform the following functions and activities: protection, nutrition, respiration, excretion, and hormone production. Shortly after birth, the placenta and fetal membranes are expelled from the uterus as the afterbirth.

This chapter of the Moore and Persaud book has excellent illustrations. Much recommended.

To complete this assignment, discuss the quote above with another JFA community member, explaining the structure of the placenta and any significance you see for the dialogue about abortion. Note, for example, the DNA content of the various cells of the placental organ. If the placenta is an organ of someone’s body, of whose body is it?

Assignment #173: Molar Pregnancy (Hydatidiform Mole)

Originally Assigned 10/3/2022. Originally Due 11/1/2022. Est. time: <30 minutes

Review the following documents to better understand what a molar pregnancy is, including the complete and incomplete molar pregnancies. To complete this assignment, discuss with another JFA community member, explaining to each other what a molar pregnancy is and how it might affect dialogue related to the life and health of the mother.

Assignment #174: Robin Koerner, Paradigms, and Persuasion (Part I)

By Stephen Wagner, Executive Director, Justice For All

Listen to Tom Woods’s interview of Robin Koerner on Episode 693 of the podcast The Tom Woods Show: Ep. 693 The Art of Political Persuasion: Winning Supporters, Not Arguments. Then do Assignment #175.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes

Assignment #175: Robin Koerner, Paradigms, and Persuasion (Part II)

By Stephen Wagner, Executive Director, Justice For All

Prerequisite to this Assignment 175 is Assignment #174: Listen to Episode 693 of the podcast The Tom Woods Show: Ep. 693 The Art of Political Persuasion: Winning Supporters, Not Arguments

Assignment: Note two or three points that stood out to you from this interview and connect them to your work persuading people to love unborn children.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes

Project #17: One-Page “Mental Map” (Assignments 176-179)

By Stephen Wagner, Executive Director, Justice For All

Summarize the key points of JFA’s training seminar in a one-page mental map. (Or, you can call this a “summary” or “cheat sheet” of you like.) If it’s helpful, you can break the project into the following four, 30-minute assignments. You can do the assignments in any order. You might find one of the assignments to be more helpful than another as you organize your thinking.

Assignment 176:

Take note of the most common things pro-choice people say to you during outreach events. Note your responses and how these connect to different portions of JFA’s Abortion: From Debate to Dialogue Seminar.

Assignment 177:

Think of making your case for the pro-life position. Imagine someone asking you, “Why are you pro-life?” Make an outline or sketch of your train of thought in responding.

Assignment 178:

Think of the structure of the JFA seminar and determine what you think are the “high points,” the most important things you think people need to remember when they leave or when they are on campus for the first time.

Assignment 179:

Try to map a typical conversation. Where does it start? Where does it end? How did you get there? How do you use JFA’s seminar material in the course of the conversation? Which aspects of the seminar are most helpful?

Suggested Time: 2 hours

Project #18: It’s Her Body (Assignments 180-183)

Estimated Time: 2 Hours

www.jfaweb.org/blog/bodily-rights

Read each of the eight short articles in this series (except for the articles linked beyond these eight articles).

In your own words, describe the main point of the articles to a friend, family member, or colleague.

Or, write a short response in which you summarize the main point. Send your response to Steve Wagner and your supervisor or JFA mentor.

Assignment #184: The Moral Turn (Hadley Arkes)

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/05/the-moral-turn

Read the article.

In your own words, describe the main point of the articles to a friend, family member, or colleague.

Or, write a short response in which you summarize the main point. Send your response to Steve Wagner and your supervisor or JFA mentor.

Assignment #185: Another Pro-Life Victory? (Hadley Arkes)

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/06/another-pro-life-victory

Read the article.

In your own words, describe the main point of the articles to a friend, family member, or colleague.

Or, write a short response in which you summarize the main point. Send your response to Steve Wagner and your supervisor or JFA mentor.

Project #19: What Is the Unborn? (Assignments #186-191)

www.jfaweb.org/what-is-the-unborn

Familiarize yourself for three hours with all of the links and content on this page.

Project #20: What Is Abortion? (Assignments #192-197)

www.jfaweb.org/what-is-abortion

Familiarize yourself for two hours with all of the links and content on this page. Note that some of the material is very graphic and disturbing.

Project #21: JFA Stories (Assignments #198-203)

Estimated Time: 3 Hours

Read each story linked on these three pages:

www.jfaweb.org/featured-stories

www.jfaweb.org/dialogue-examples

www.jfaweb.org/vivid-descriptions-of-conversations

Select three stories and interact with each by writing a one-paragraph response.

Assignment 204: Numbers of Deaths from Illegal Abortions

6/21/2019

Read this Op-Ed:

https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-abortion-silence-men-20190616-story.html

Read this “Fact Checker”:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/29/planned-parenthoods-false-stat-thousands-women-died-every-year-before-roe/

Assignment 205: Hadley Arkes on “Backing into Relativism”

6/24/2019

Read Hadley Arkes’s latest piece on the failure of conservative justices of the Supreme Court to give principled reasons for their decisions:

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/06/backing-into-relativism

Assignment #206: EHD’s Downloadable Video of Unborn Children

6/25/2019

Read the terms of downloading the new EHD video, and download it to use in presentations according to the terms.

https://www.ehd.org/your-life-before-birth-video/register.php

Project #22: Ed Whelan’s Review of Supreme Court Opinions on Abortion (Assignments #207-210)

Read and summarize two articles by Ed Whelan. (Time: 2 hours)

Assignment 211: When Do We Learn It? (30 minutes)

Originally Assigned: May 21, 2021

Read and interact with the ideas in this newsletter by Joanna Bai:

“When Do We Learn It?” - January 2013 Newsletter

http://doc.jfaweb.org/Joanna_Wagner/JWnews_2013_Jan.pdf

You may respond in writing, by recording an audio file, by posting this link and your thoughts to social media, by forwarding the link to a pastor or priest or friend in hopes of starting a conversation about JFA’s method, and/or through some other form of engaging with Joanna’s letter that is meaningful to you.

Expected Engagement Time: Maximum 30 minutes. It’s okay, though, for JFA staff trainers to spend more time.

Project #23: Rochat on the Mirror Test (Assignments 212-215)

Total Estimated Time: 2 Hours

Assignments 212-213 (Project 23): Read the Article

Read the entire Rochat article linked below. Note especially the excerpted portion below.

Philippe Rochat, "Five levels of self-awareness as they unfold early in life,"Consciousness and Cognition, 12 (2003) 717–731.

See especially the following on pp. 725-726 of the Rochat article:

<<Despite all these remarkable perceptual discriminability between what pertains to the self and what pertains to others, up to the middle of the ﬁrst year infants are oblivious that some rouge has surreptitiously been smeared on their face or that a yellow ‘‘Post-It’’ might appear on their forehead when looking at their own specular image (Bertenthal & Fisher, 1978; Povinelli, 1995). It is only by 18 months that, as shown in Fig. 2, infants start to reach for the mark on their own body, often in order to remove it (Level 3). This behavior is considered by most developmental and comparative psychologists as the Litmus test of self-awareness (but see Loveland, 1986, for a critic of this view). It is often viewed as the evidence of a conceptual or ‘‘represented’’ sense of self in any organism behaving like this in front of mirrors, whether the human child, non-human primates, avian, mammals like elephants, or even cetaceans like dolphins (Parker, Mitchell, & Boccia, 1994). But why? It is mainly because by showing this behavior, individuals demonstrate the ability to refer to the specular image as standing to their own body. In other words, they refer the silhouette they see reﬂected in the mirror to precise regions of their own body they cannot see directly (e.g., their forehead). This would be impossible without a body schema or own body representation that is mapped onto what is seen in the mirror. Therefore, this behavior indicates that the mirror reﬂection is seen by the individual as standing for this representation (Level 3). It is identiﬁed as referring to the body experienced and represented from within, not anybody else's. Identity is used here in the literal, dictionary sense of ‘‘recognizing the condition of being oneself, not another’’ (Random House Unabridged dictionary).>>

Assignments 214-215 (Project 23): Answer the following questions:

What was the most interesting part of the article for you?
Is the way JFA trainers describe the mirror test accurate?
Briefly describe each of the five levels of self-awareness covered in the article.
Could the five levels of self-awareness be helpful to our conversations about abortion and personhood? How?
What else was interesting to you about the article?

Assignment 216: ERI’s Critique of Human Plus as an Ad Hoc Move

https://equalrightsinstitute.teachable.com/courses/479757/lectures/27364707

Evaluate ERI’s material on Human Plus.

Please engage Jim’s and Alex’s comments in your response to this assignment.

Project #24: “When Does Human Life Begin?” by Maureen Condic (Assignments #217-224)

This project is an in-depth study of Maureen Condic’s “When Does Human Life Begin,” which reviews scientific consensus on the question, “What is the unborn?” (Est. time: 4 hours)
Article Link: Maureen L. Condic, "When Does Human Life Begin: A Scientific Perspective," Westchester Institute For Ethics & the Human Person, White Paper, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2008

Assignment 217 (30 minutes)

Read pages v, vi, vii, and ix. Excerpt one to three sentences (copy). Then write a short paragraph to summarize why those sentences are important.

Assignment 218 (30 minutes)

Read pages 1-2 including all footnotes in the sidebar. Excerpt one to three sentences (copy). Then write a short paragraph to summarize why those sentences are important.

Assignment 219 (30 minutes)

Read pages 3-4 including all footnotes in the sidebar. Excerpt one to three sentences (copy). Then write a short paragraph to summarize why those sentences are important.

Assignment 220 (30 minutes)

Read pages 5-6 including all footnotes in the sidebar. Excerpt one to three sentences (copy). Then write a short paragraph to summarize why those sentences are important.

Assignment 221 (30 minutes)

Read pages 7-9 including all footnotes in the sidebar. Excerpt one to three sentences (copy). Then write a short paragraph to summarize why those sentences are important.

Assignment 222 (30 minutes)

Read pages 10-12 including all footnotes in the sidebar. Excerpt one to three sentences (copy). Then write a short paragraph to summarize why those sentences are important.

Assignment 223 (30 minutes)

What questions remain for you regarding biology and the unborn child? What are the best arguments against the idea that “the unborn is a living human organism from the time of fertilization”? What are your responses? How will you get clarity so you can respond?

Assignment 224 (30 minutes)

Put what you learned in this study into practice by writing a sample dialogue or by interacting with another JFA trainer in a role-play.

Assignment 225: The Parable of U2 and the Dancing Goat

By Stephen Wagner, Justice For All

A few years ago, a friend gave me two tickets to see U2 in Orange County. I had never heard of "The Dancing Goat" before, and it didn't sound much like a stadium or arena, but Rebeccah and I were full of anticipation as we left a friend's house, where our daughter would be spending the evening. When we arrived at "The Dancing Goat," we thought there must have been some mistake. It was obviously just a small local coffee house. Were we ever in for a treat, though! U2 played an incredible intimate set of new and old songs, many of them in new stripped-down arrangements, complete with off-the-cuff monologues and improvisations. This was a perfect concert for me, since I am always wanting to hear things done differently than the album...and I'm always wanting to hear what happens when a band can't rely on 100 studio takes and multiple overdubs. Can they really play? Well, U2 did themselves proud that night with a 3-hour set of songs from the 80's and each successive decade. [Remember, I've been a fan since I was 9, and I heard the Christian radio station playing "Pride (in the Name of Love)" because 3 out of the 4 members of the band "are Christians!" -- you can talk to me later about that.] Oh, and they took requests from the audience:)

Still, I've heard lots of stories over the years of the energy U2 creates in a stadium. I've seen a few YouTube clips and a National Geographic 3-D Imax movie, but I've never been in person. In a sense, with "The Dancing Goat," I missed out.

Fast forward to last week. I was on campus at the U of A and the new A-Frame wasn't attracting much attention. Jon Wagner was leading our outreach, and he wisely asked me to make sure I was getting in conversations rather than managing something. He had it under control. At one point I saw Brad, a homeschool dad and JFA volunteer, standing on the walkway, but it looked like he wasn't able to get conversations started. I walked up and asked how it was going. He said, "Not too good." He had tried to get a conversation started at the "Where Do You Draw the Line?" kiosk, but it wasn't working. The poll table had many volunteers around it already. So I said, "Let's go talk to that guy." We walked up to a student strolling by, but the conversation was short. After that, I tried in vain to get some people to stop at the A-Frame. Finally, exasperated, I asked Brad if he wanted to help me do surveys. He said, "Sure!" He was definitely more excited than I.

I know the power of surveys. I have led teams of 15-40 people doing surveys on campus without even a poll table as a base of operations. The effect on the volunteers has always been positive. I have even led a group of high schoolers to survey people at bus stops in the rain in Portland, OR. Yet I hate the idea of doing surveys myself, though, probably because I don't like walking up to people and asking them to talk about abortion. I really prefer that they come to me, already interested. But this time at the U of A, I had to do the survey myself, because Brad's needs mattered more than my discomfort.

So, Brad and I set out with a clipboard and brochures in hand. We talked to a Chinese international engineering major...who changed his mind on early abortion. Then we talked to two Hispanic young man...who also seemed to shift in their views. We finished up with a conversation with Aaron, a skeptic, and Brad and I both had opportunities to discuss our views on morality and our Creator with Aaron before all of us had to leave.

What does my survey experience with Brad have to do with U2 playing "The Dancing Goat"? Simply this: I might have gone to "The Dancing Goat" hoping to see U2 in all its stadium glory, complete with jumbo screens, lights, and towers of speakers. But what I got was still U2, and U2 in a way some people would give their right arm to see.

Brad may have come to campus hoping for the Big Exhibit experience, complete with open mic, crowds, and lots of people stopping with interest. But what he got was just as special: a dialogue with someone who disagrees about something that matters. He got an unforgettable dialogue experience....one that some people would give their right arm to have. In fact, just as with the U2 concert, Brad also got a different sort of experience, one with the same core but with different quirks and particulars.

Here's the point: Because we are relying more on surveys this spring than in the past as one (and in some cases, the only) tool volunteers will use to create dialogue, I want you to ponder whether or not you can give a volunteer that unforgettable dialogue experience just using a survey...and if you are skeptical, why?

[Note to Reader: As any hardcore U2 fan can tell you, the story of U2 at the “Dancing Goat” is purely fictional. Although there is a real U2, there is no “Dancing Goat,” and I never got to see the band play there. But I can imagine this scenario and imagining it helped me think through how I see the act of using surveys to create dialogue. When I first shared this story with my team in 2012, there was no “parable” in the title. I wanted them to be immersed in the story to help them get the point. I got some feedback that this approach felt like a supreme “bait and switch,” so hopefully adding “parable” to the title tipped you off before you got too personally invested in my exciting adventure!]

Suggested Time: 30 minutes

Originally Assigned in 2012

Project #25: Chisholm and The Problem of the Criterion (Assignments 226-233)

Estimated Time: 4 hours

Assignments 226-231:

Read and/or listen to The Problem of the Criterion.

Summarize the problem, the skeptic’s solution/position, the methodist’s solution/position, and the particularist’s solution/position. Which of these is Chisholm’s solution/position?

Do you agree with Chisholm’s solution?

Assignments 232-233:

Engage with the problem interactively by sharing the basic problem with a friend and discussing it or by creating a sample dialogue between a skeptic, methodist, and particularist. Or, you can interactively engage the material in some other way.

Assignment #234: Zygote: A Functional Part with Different DNA?

By Stephen Wagner, Justice For All

Read the following conversation between JFA Mentor K and me:

K: “[I just finished Assignment #119.] How do I respond to the argument that the unborn is a biological part of the mothers body? I have been simply mentioning the difference in DNA until someone commented that sex cells have different DNA and I'm referring to them as a part.”

Steve: Let me see if I understand the person's argument:

A woman's egg cells do not have an identical DNA fingerprint to every other cell in the woman's body.
The unborn entity does not have an identical DNA fingerprint to every other cell in the woman's body.
The egg cells are functional parts of the woman's body.
Therefore, even though the unborn does not have an identical DNA fingerprint to every other cell in the woman's body, the unborn is a functional part of the woman's body.

If this is the argument, it appears to have the hidden premise

[Any cell or group of cells in the body that do(es) not have an identical DNA fingerprint to every other cell in the woman's body is a functional part of that body.]

That premise is far from obvious.

I think more can be said here, but before I (or someone else) says it, somebody tell me whether you think I'm on the right track here.

K: That is the argument. It’s inside of her and DNA is not enough because sex cells have diff DNA and are still a part of her.

Steve: I think this person's argument just highlights the fact that being a diploid cell with identical DNA fingerprint to the rest of the body is not a necessary condition for being a part of that body. But how does this fact show that being a diploid cell with a different DNA fingerprint than the other cells of the body is a sufficient condition for showing that that cell is a functional part of the body? Wouldn't something else be needed, namely, the actual orientation of the cell to function for the good of the larger body?

Sure, if our argument is that the unborn zygote is not a part of the body merely because it doesn't have the identical DNA fingerprint to every other cell in the woman's body, then showing that the ovum also has a DNA fingerprint different from the diploid cells in the mother's body would be enough to show that the unborn is a part of the body like any other body part.

Every cell in the mother's body, whether diploid cells with her genetic fingerprint or haploid reproductive cells with half that complement, are actually functioning for the good or purposes of the larger body. I take this to be a sufficient condition for thinking they are functional parts of that body.

The unborn, however, is not functioning to directly fulfill any known purpose of the mother's body. Sure, there may be accidental benefits the unborn fulfills for the mother's organism, but none of these show the unborn is connected in a teleological way (is purposed for the better functioning) to the mother's body.

As it happens, all we need to do here (I think) is clarify that when we cite the difference between the unborn's DNA fingerprint and the mother's, we are referring to the fact that the unborn zygote is the only diploid cell in the mother's body at that time which has a different DNA fingerprint. All the other diploid cells have a different (identical to each other) DNA fingerprint.

Does that help? Others, please feel free to chime in and/or set me straight.

[This dialogue among JFA mentors originally took place in 2013.]

Suggested Time: 30 minutes

Project #26: Condic’s “Totipotency: What It Is and What It Is Not” (Assignments #235-240)

Level: Advanced / Estimated Time: 3 hours

Directions: Read the article and respond. What are 2-3 insights or points from the article that you found to be most helpful?

Maureen L. Condic, “Totipotency: What It Is and What It Is Not,” Stem Cells Dev. 2014 Apr 15; 23(8): 796–812:

Link to PDF: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3991987/pdf/scd.2013.0364.pdf

Link to HTML: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3991987/

Project #27: The Problem with the Citicorp Center (Assignments #241-243)

By Stephen Wagner, Executive Director, Justice For All

Originally assigned in 2016.

Assignment #241: The Problem with the Citicorp Center

Listen to Episode 110 of the podcast 99% Invisible: “Structural Integrity”. Then do Assignment 242.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes

Assignment #242: Reflect on the Citicorp Center Story

Note that Diane Hartley waited for almost 20 years to hear the results of her humble inquiry. She didn’t know that she had made such a great impact, possibly saving the lives of tens of thousands of people who might have been killed had the Citicorp Building fell down.

Write a short reflection on your pro-life activities with Diane Hartley’s situation in mind. Reflect especially on your feelings and thoughts related to not knowing of your impact. If possible, relate your pro-life activities to the posture of humble learner that Diane Hartley took when she initially made the call to LeMessurier. Do you take this posture when creating dialogue on abortion? How would it change your conversations and possibly your impact? Finally, reflect on God as the source of impact for our pro-life activities. Is it a struggle for you to give God credit for this? Or is it a source of freedom? Explain your answer.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes

Assignment #243: Practice Telling the Story

Read Steve Wagner’s “One Humble Call Saved Manhattan.”

Practice telling the story as if you were closing a JFA event, aiming to inspire people to create conversations and trust God with the results.

Suggested Time: 30 minutes

Project #28: Does Numbers 5:27 Condone Abortion? (Assignments #244-246)

Originally Sent to JFA Staff on April 9, 2021:

Assignment #244

A few of you may have seen the World Magazine cover story recently:

https://wng.org/2021/03/translation_abuse

Assignment #245

I thought Alan's article at STR is helpful on this topic (Numbers 5:27):

https://www.str.org/w/did-god-ordain-abortion-as-punishment-for-infidelity-

Assignment #246

Write a response to a critic who brings up Numbers 5:27 during an outreach conversation.

(Create a sample dialogue or put your response in some other form.)

Suggested Time: 1.5 Hours

Assignment 247: Mississippi 15-Week Ban Before SCOTUS

Directions: Familiarize yourself with this case for 30 minutes. Due June 30, 2021

Email Exchange:

Rebekah (5/20/2021):

Here is what I found on the reasoning behind the 15 week ban in Mississippi.

"The legislature found that most abortions performed after 15 weeks gestation are dilation and evacuation procedures and that the 'intentional commitment of such acts...is a barbaric practice, dangerous for the maternal patient, and demeaning to the medical profession.' It also found that developments in medical knowledge of prenatal development have shown that, for example, the abilities to open and close fingers and sense outside stimulations develop at 12 weeks gestation. Finally, it found that abortion carries risks to maternal health that increase with gestational age, and it noted that Mississippi has legitimate interests in protecting women's health."

This law that's being challenged was actually passed back in 2018 and the sole abortion clinic in Mississippi challenged it immediately.

For some reason, the court granted the abortion clinic's request to limit discovery to the question of viability in this case and this made it easier to challenge this 15 week ban because viablility is not possible at 15 weeks (as of now anyways). Maureen Condic was the expert on neurological embryology and fetal development but her expert testimony was excluded because the abortion clinic got the court to strictly review the law in terms of viablilty.

Steve (5/26/2021):

Thanks. Is it your impression that the Supreme Court won't weigh in on any question other than "are all bans on pre-viability abortions unconstitutional?" ?

That's my impression, that this case is limited to that question (based also on the "issue" statement here: https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization/), and as such, the justices are unlikely to wade into issues of fetal development, etc...

Team, Note that in the document Rebekah sent, it clarifies that this is about 15 weeks "gestational age." That's 13 weeks post-fertilization. Because of how early in the second trimester this is, I think people may also turn the discussion of this into a discussion of protecting first-trimester abortion.

Here are some additional links that are worth reading/noting:

https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/05/court-to-weigh-in-on-mississippi-abortion-ban-intended-to-challenge-roe-v-wade

https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization/

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/19/595045249/mississippi-governor-signs-nations-toughest-abortion-ban-into-law

http://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/documents/2018/pdf/HB/1500-1599/HB1510SG.pdf

Note this section from Page 5:

(e) "Gestation" means the time that has elapsed since 110 the first day of the woman's last menstrual period. 111

(f) "Gestational age" or "probable gestation age" means 112 the age of an unborn human being as calculated from the first day 113 of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman.

That's confusing at best.

Compare to Assignment 140: https://docs.google.com/document/u/2/d/e/2PACX-1vTo3ifuS84ZyJdAKUsQ6yF3ObJeY9AP3vCH2eJkzS5t8KSOtUZkmnz5_CVLK4gipOS91mpCxcRAz2QF/pub#h.bfl3y5o9grgw

Assignment 248: Stuttering and Public Speaking

Article/Podcast: John Stonestreet (with extensive quoting of Gerald McDermott), “President Biden’s Stutter and the Image of God,” 6/1/2021

https://breakpoint.org/president-bidens-stutter-and-the-image-of-god (8.5 Minutes)

Assignment: Read the article or listen to the podcast episode. Write a short reflection of approximately a paragraph. (11.5 Minutes)

Est. Total Time: 20 minutes

Project #29: Sherif Girgis on Dobbs (Assignments # 249-251)

https://reason.com/volokh/2021/06/07/sherif-girgis-on-the-supreme-courts-options-in-the-next-abortion-case/#

Estimated Time: 90 Minutes

Read the article by Will Baude / Sherif Girgis. Select 1-3 terms you don’t understand and find the definitions. List them in your response. Then select one idea from the article that you find most helpful or interesting. Why is it helpful or interesting to you?

Project #30: Beefy’s on the Green (Assignments #252-#253)

Estimated Time: 1 hour

By Steve Wagner

Originally Assigned on July 29, 2021. Due August 17, 2021.

Assignment 252 (30 minutes): Read

Read the four newsletters in the “Beefy’s on the Green” Collection (www.jfaweb.org/beefy).

Assignment 253 (30 minutes): Reflect

Write a reflection of 2 paragraphs or more answering one or more of the following questions:

Which of the personalities in the stories do you identify with the most?
What can you do in your area to connect with others who have different strengths and weaknesses from you so that you can work together to get more conversations started about things that matter?
To which places in your region are you most drawn when you think of creating conversations? What places might be good places for conversation, but are like a “stone unturned”? For example, if you naturally don’t think of your church as a good place to create conversations about abortion and worldview, why is that? If you naturally don’t think of parks or beaches or college campuses or the sidewalks outside of high schools, do you think there’s good reason to set these places aside? Or, are there reasons to second guess your initial reluctance to create conversation in that particular place?

Project #31: Amicus Curiae Brief of Robert George and John Finnis (Assignments 254-259)

Optional: Originally Assigned as an Optional Project on 8/3/2021 (Due 9/15/2021)

Estimated Time: 3 hours

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-1392/185196/20210729093557582_210169a%20Amicus%20Brief%20for%20efiling%207%2029%2021.pdf

Assignment 254:

Read Pages 1-6 and write a one-paragraph response or discuss briefly with a colleague.

Assignment 255:

Read Pages 7-12 and write a one-paragraph response or discuss briefly with a colleague.

Assignment 256:

Read Pages 13-18 and write a one-paragraph response or discuss briefly with a colleague.

Assignment 257:

Read Pages 19-24 and write a one-paragraph response or discuss briefly with a colleague.

Assignment 258:

Read Pages 25-30 and write a one-paragraph response or discuss briefly with a colleague.

Assignment 259:

Read Pages 31-33 and write a one-paragraph response or discuss briefly with a colleague.

Project 32: Human Development Milestones (Assignments 260-265)

Estimated Time: 3 Hours

https://www.ehd.org/prenatal-summary.php

Explore the human development milestones on this page.

You can also use the EHD See Pregnancy App linked on JFA’s Links page (www.jfaweb.org/links), but you may not find the sources in the App. Use the webpage for sources.

Select five developmental milestones that are interesting or important to you. Go deeper to read or examine the sources given for each milestone. If possible, find the medical journal article or medical textbook excerpt that supports the milestone. Please do not simply cite pro-life pamphlets or other similar literature. Read enough of the excerpt to be conversant in defending the milestone as accurate. What reasons can you give for believing in the milestone? What authority on the topic can you cite?

List each milestone along with a short discussion of the sources you examined.

You can also use Embryology textbooks available in the JFA office or in University Medical Libraries to help.

See also Project 24 for support for milestones early in development.

Project 33: Are the Unborn Parasites? (Assignments 266-269)

Read Rebekah Dyer’s “Babies Are Not Parasites” (Human Defense, March 2019).

Then, explore each article Rebekah cites.

Finally, show you are able to use what you’ve learned in a conversation through one of the following:

Role-play with a JFA staff member or volunteer. Ask him or her to play the role of the pro-choice person who claims the unborn is a parasite and therefore can be killed.
Write 1-2 pages explaining to a pro-life friend your tips for how to think through one’s response to the “unborn is a parasite” claim before it comes up in conversation.
Write a sample dialogue which you could share with a pro-life friend to prepare him/her to respond to the “unborn is a parasite” claim.

Estimated Total Time: 2 hours

Original “Due Date”: 9/30/2021

DRAFT Project 34: Fetal Pain - Basic (Assignments 270-275)

Estimated Total Time: 3 hours
Original “Due Date”: 9/30/2021

Abstract: "Fetal pain has long been a contentious issue, in large part because fetal pain is often cited as a reason to restrict access to termination of pregnancy or abortion. We have divergent views regarding the morality of abortion, but have come together to address the evidence for fetal pain. Most reports on the possibility of fetal pain have focused on developmental neuroscience. Reports often suggest that the cortex and intact thalamocortical tracts are necessary for pain experience. Given that the cortex only becomes functional and the tracts only develop after 24 weeks, many reports rule out fetal pain until the final trimester. Here, more recent evidence calling into question the necessity of the cortex for pain and demonstrating functional thalamic connectivity into the subplate is used to argue that the neuroscience cannot definitively rule out fetal pain before 24 weeks. We consider the possibility that the mere experience of pain, without the capacity for self reflection, is morally significant. We believe that fetal pain does not have to be equivalent to a mature adult human experience to matter morally, and so fetal pain might be considered as part of a humane approach to abortion."
Daily Mail: Unborn babies MAY feel pain before the 24-week abortion limit, scientists say

Assignment 276: Ontological vs. Epistemological

http://doc.jfaweb.org/steve/SWnews_0905.pdf

Read this story from a conversation Steve Wagner had, and write a short reflection on how the epistemological / ontological distinction might be helpful in conversation. If you can think of another topic this distinction can shed light on, describe it.

Estimated Time: 30 minutes or less.

Assignment 277: A Conversation with an Aggressive Student

Read “Make an Impact on Any Topic with Anyone” by Steve Wagner (April 1, 2007).

Reflect on the conversation. How would you summarize David Lee’s approach to this conversation? What strategy or strategies did he use?

Have you had a conversation with an aggressive student during JFA outreach? What was that conversation like? Would you or the person with whom you were speaking have benefited from the approach David used here?

Estimated Time: 20 minutes

Assignment 278: A Careful Distinction

Read “What Kind of ‘Wrong’ Is ‘Right’?” by Joanna Wagner

Reflect on the conversation. How would you summarize Joanna’s main point?

Have you had a conversation like Joanna’s in which you misunderstood the person with whom you were speaking? Were you able to see the error in the midst of the conversation or only afterward? What clarification would have helped your conversation?

Estimated Time: 20 minutes

Project 35 (Assignments 279-282): Joanna Bai’s Letters

From July 2012 until March 2016, Joanna (Wagner) Bai worked full-time as an intern and then a Training Specialist for JFA. She has continued working part-time, mainly as a gifted editor, up to the present day in 2022. She wrote some excellent letters during her full-time JFA work, many of which are evergreen (i.e. they make a point that is timeless). Spend two hours reading various letters from her archive and select at least three (3) that are significant to you and respond to them or reflect on their content. Send your reflection to Steve Wagner.

Joanna (Wagner) Bai Newsletter Archive: https://www.jfaweb.org/newsletter-archive#joanna-wagner
See also Assignment 278 (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y0TvfmhETSBfQbeGNNn8Ru1wPiQs4NEKQlrR-wo_z0w/edit#heading=h.311e8pagp58p) and Assignment 211 (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y0TvfmhETSBfQbeGNNn8Ru1wPiQs4NEKQlrR-wo_z0w/edit#heading=h.et0lzswtjd3j)

Project 36 (Assignments 283-286): Catherine Wurts’s Letters

From Jan. 2009 until mid-2017, Catherine Wurts served as a Training Specialist with JFA. In her later years at JFA, she served as Certification Coach and a mentor to newer staff.

You can get to know her a bit from her newsletter archive. Spend at least two hours reading various letters from her archive and select at least three (3) that are significant to you and respond to them or reflect on their content. Send your reflection to Steve Wagner.

Catherine Wurts Newsletter Archive: https://www.jfaweb.org/newsletter-archive#catherine-wurts
Steve Wagner has a quick link list to a myriad of other Catherine Wurts letters he’s in the process of reviewing for possible posting to her archive. Ask him for that list.

Project 37 (Assignments 287-290): Cheryl Kaye Wisner’s Letters

From mid-2012 until mid-2016, Cheryl Kaye (CK) Wisner served as an intern and then Training Specialist with JFA. You can get to know her a bit from her newsletter archive. Spend a couple of hours reading various letters from her archive and select at least three (3) that are significant to you and respond to them or reflect on their content. Send your reflection to Steve Wagner.

Cheryl Kaye (CK) Wisner’s Newsletter Archive: https://www.jfaweb.org/newsletter-archive#ck-wisner

Project 38 (Assignments 291-306): Pope John Paul II's Evangelium Vitae

https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html

Read the entire encyclical and make at least a one-sentence reflection or summary each half hour of reading (16 assignments comprising 16 sentences). If possible, share these reflections with another JFA community member and discuss.

This assignment was originally assigned on September 2, 2022 and due December 1, 2022.

Estimated Time: 8 Hours (92 pages)

Assignment 307: The Phone Booth of the Mind

Originally Assigned 9/13/2022; Originally Due 10/13/2022

Estimated Time: 30 minutes

Read this short post from Melissa Kirsch [New York Times, “The Morning” (June 11, 2022)]:

A crowd gathered in Times Square recently for the removal of what the city promoted as New York’s last public pay phone. “End of an Era,” declared the news release headline, even though the era when pay phones played any meaningful role in New Yorkers’ lives certainly ended long ago.

One might be forgiven for feeling a bit nostalgic. Pay phones are vestiges of the analog world, before the “I’ll be 15 minutes late” text, when long-distance was a consideration and people on calls in public got their own private booths.“

People miss a period of time when a call meant something,” Mark Thomas of The Payphone Project told The Times. “When you planned it and you thought about it, and you took a deep breath and you put your quarter in.”I’ve been considering the familiar refrain about smartphones, that they’ve made our lives easier to navigate at the expense of our manners, our attention, our safety while driving. We may be physically present, but we’re never really there.

Pay phones were stationary monotaskers. Before cellphones, if you wanted to talk to someone, you did it at home, at work or in a booth. Your telecommunications were contained to these discrete spaces, separate from the rest of your life. Pay phones may be nearly obsolete, but there’s nothing stopping us from reinstituting some of their boundaries in a post-pay-phone world.

What might this look like for you? For me, it would mean pulling over to the side of the road to send a text rather than dictating my message to Siri. I’d step out of the pedestrian flow and into the phone booth of the mind to listen to voice mail. I wouldn’t check social media while waiting for a friend to arrive at a bar. Long phone calls would take place at home, not while I’m on a walk or sitting on a park bench, ostensibly enjoying the outdoors.

My sentimental ideal of the phone booth — Richard Dreyfuss calling Marsha Mason from outside her apartment in the rain at the end of “The Goodbye Girl” — is a time capsule, a romantic vision of the past. But the phone booth as metaphor, as inspiration for creating boundaries between virtual and real life, still seems useful today.

As a matter of JFA work, I think it's worth engaging the yellow highlighted question above as it pertains to caring for people during JFA trips or at JFA meetings in our hometowns. Volunteer mentors, I think this question has the same relevance for you. (I think it’s also an important question to engage related to our personal lives, but that's up to each of you:)

Write a short reflection or initiate a conversation with another JFA trainer on two things: (1) whether you agree with the post and (2) how you might create good practices with smart phones that help you live out your values related to other human beings.

Assignment 308: How Many Women Getting Abortions Claim to Follow Christ?

Originally Assigned 10/4/2022; Originally Due 11/15/2022

See www.jfaweb.org/more-facts to explore the question, “What percentage of women who get abortions also claim to be followers of Christ?”

Discuss with another member of the JFA community.

Estimated Time: 15-30 minutes.

Assignment 309: Resources for Volunteers at Outreach (plus a note on Fetal Pain)

(Estimated Time: 22 Minutes)

The question of fetal pain came up at Univ. of Arizona. I wanted to say a few things about it.

First, where does JFA have resources about this? Here: www.jfaweb.org/fetal-pain

Many common questions have short urls to our best info similar to the one above. If you don't know where to go, for resources, my suggestion is see if the answer is on one of the following pages:

Smartphone Resources and Links page (www.jfaweb.org/links) -- which is the best one-stop-shop to share with volunteers (we built that page for trainers and volunteers to use on campus)
Extending Your Learning (www.jfaweb.org/extending-your-learning)

The other thing you should know about is that any claim made on our exhibits should be detailed on the Exhibit page associated with that Exhibit. See www.jfaweb.org/exhibits for more.

Please reply to Steve Wagner that you have reviewed this assignment by going to each of these links and spending 5 minutes familiarizing yourself with them.

Project 39 (Assignments 310-313): Later Abortions (via Resource Page at Secular Pro-Life)

Originally Assigned 2/21/2023; Originally Due 4/1/2023

Estimated Time: 120 minutes

https://secularprolife.org/laterabortion/

Spend 60-90 minutes reviewing the data at the above web resource from Secular Pro-Life.
Spend 30-60 minutes writing a reflection stating the most important things you gleaned from this resource.

Project 40 (Assignments 314-317): Pro-Life Movement Public Statements

Estimated Time: 2 hours Original Due Date: 8/15/2023

Assignment 314:

Read the following statements from pro-life movement leaders:

Statement 1 (1/20/2023): https://www.newsweek.com/policy-proposals-building-post-roe-future-opinion-1775071

https://postroefuture.com/

Statement 2 (6/15/2023):

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/06/the-pro-life-movement-should-follow-its-north-star-equal-protection/

Assignments 315-316:

Interact with the statements: With which points do you agree? Why? With which points do you disagree? Why?

Assignments 317:

Give counsel to the pro-life movement by writing your own statement that includes what you think the pro-life movement should we say to the public at large.

Project #41: Pierre Poilievre, the Apple, and the Questions that Kept Him in the Driver’s Seat (Assignments 318-319)

Estimated Time: 60 Minutes

Originally Due: 11/23/2023

First, watch Tim Barnett’s Red Pen Logic analysis of a recent video clip of Canadian candidate Pierre Poilievre

https://youtu.be/TTwnJtLe35A?si=y9w5htRrrU-nOyuP

Next, think of three common canards, slogans, or claims people have leveled at you to try to make a point or unsettle you in a conversation similar to the journalist in the video.

Finally, go to another JFA community member and ask to role play for 20-30 minutes. It must be someone who has also prepared for this activity.

During the role play, you play the pro-choice position and level your charges at your partner sometime during the role play. The pro-life advocate should then use questions in the same way that Mr. Poilievre modeled in his interview and Tim Barnett highlighted in his video.

Debrief and discuss what worked and didn’t work. Focus especially on times the pro-life advocate shoulders the burden of proof or the burden to explain unnecessarily. Think of a question you could have asked instead.

Then, switch roles and let your partner level his/her prepared charges against you.

Debrief as described above.

After this experience, you should have a list of six charges someone might level at you and a question you can ask to keep yourself in the driver’s seat and out of the hot seat in the conversation.

(If you’re interested, you can watch the full interview at Pierre Poilievre’s YouTube here: https://youtu.be/rnEj7WLsWbk?si=PbumkpPQDLlLSCiH)

For More Resources on Using “What” and “Why” in Conversation, see Greg Koukl’s Tactics in Defending the Faith and Street Smarts.

Project #42: “Life at the Center” Statement in First Things (Assignments 320-321)

Optional Assignment for JFA Trainers (see supervisor); no due date.

Estimated Time: 1 hour

Read the Statement, “Life at the Center: A Pro-Life Statement”:

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2023/11/life-at-the-center-a-pro-life-statement

Interact with the statement. Here are some suggested prompts:

Do you agree with the approach the statement takes?
What is the intended audience of the statement?
Can it be useful in your work with JFA?
Do you agree with the statement completely or only in part?
Reflect on any other aspect of the statement that you think is significant.

Assignment 322: Rebecca Carlson’s “How to Dialogue with Crazy Extremists: Three Lessons I Learned from Teaching Philosophy”

Originally Due: 11/17/2023

Required of all JFA Trainers

Estimated Time: 25 minutes

Watch the video (8 minutes):

How to Dialogue with Crazy Extremists: Three Lessons I Learned from Teaching Philosophy

https://youtu.be/QELcG_v-yAs?si=KLxKER8e_9ufjnHH

Reflect / Write / Memorize / Discuss (17 minutes):

Do you agree this is useful for training people?
How should JFA use this video on our social media, Love3 Notes page, www.jfaweb.org/flagship page, or www.jfaweb.org/extending-your-learning page?
What are one or two things from this video you can share with a JFA mentor group the next time you mentor Three Essential Skills?
Was there a way Rebecca put something in her video that you want to memorize for the future?

Assignment 323: JK Rowling, Transphobia, and Three Skills

https://twitter.com/addicted2newz/status/1753702517765021907?s=46&t=oIayd24dWdXmbfKzuR-79g

Watch the clip above and read Steve’s brief note below. Then show that you have reflected in order to internalize the tools used in this conversation in the clip. You can discuss with a colleague, write a short paragraph reflection, transcribe the precise questions used, or more than one of these. You can also comment on Steve’s brief note if you’d like.

A brief thought from Steve Wagner about video and storytelling: I've found over the past few years that seeing the tactics in real-life video examples connects with audiences better in some ways even than telling true stories. Some members of our visual culture needs to see visually to keep interested. So, as I teach my team to pepper their presentations with true stories of real conversations, I teach them to work to make the details concrete (as Flannery O'Connor emphasized). A video clip like this does that in a more immediate way, I think, for some current visual thinkers. I think there are other benefits to verbal storytelling, though, as it demands the listener to think harder, engaging her imagination (she is a little less in the posture of a simple consumer). Maybe there are different values to both types of storytelling, video and verbal, then, and maybe that should lead us to try to use both methods in our presentations. What's obvious to me is that modern audiences do not particularly connect with or stay engaged in pure theoretical discourse. Whichever method we choose, then, we have to make things concrete. This is also the value of taking people along with us for outreach, as it is another mode of making the tools we teach concrete when they see them happening in real time.

Project #43 (Assignments #324-325): Rebekah Dyer’s Critique of “The Turnaway Study”

https://humandefense.com/the-turnaway-study-an-analysis/

Read Rebekah Dyer’s critique of “The Turnaway Study” and list three points from her article that you think are important to remember if this is ever brought up during conversations on campus.

Send your three takeaways to Rebekah, Steve, and your Certification Reader.

Estimated Time: 60 minutes (max)

Originally Due 4/1/2024

Assignment 326: Polling Data Review (Tangle, Gallup)

Estimated Time: 30 Minutes Originally Assigned: April 10, 2024 Originally Due April 17, 2024

Go to Gallup’s Abortion Polling Page:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx.

Scroll down to the two sections showing results from the May 2003 / May 2018 poll that asks about opinions of abortion at specific times of pregnancy in specific circumstances.

“Now I am going to read some specific situations under which an abortion might be considered in the LAST THREE MONTHS of pregnancy. Thinking specifically about the THIRD trimester, please say whether you think abortion should be legal in that situation, or illegal. How about ... [Random Order]?”

Review the results of both First Trimester and Third Trimester.

Then look at the poll results in the “Numbers” section at Tangle’s April 9, 2024 post:

https://www.readtangle.com/trump-announces-abortion-position/

What do you notice about the various polling numbers?

Spend the remainder of the thirty minutes of this assignment discussing what you noticed with another team member, a friend, a family member, a supporter, or by writing your thoughts down.

Future Possible Assignments

Project #44: Samuel Armas
Future Assignment ###: Babies Are Not Parasites

Est. time: 30 Minutes. Originally Due August 15, 2023.
https://humandefense.com/babies-are-not-parasites/
Read Rebekah Dyer’s “Babies Are Not Parasites.”
Write a short reflection on the article: What is useful from this article for your conversations?

“96% of Embryologists” paper.
Fetal Pain - Advanced
https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/jul/16 (Irene Morgan, 1944)
Project: Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air

DRAFT Project #43: The Role of Intuitions in Philosophy:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/meta.12665

JFA Dialogue Artist and Trainer Certification Assignments and Projects - Updated 7/5/2023