Photo // Claire McKenna
DEFENDING YOUR BELIEFS. Ben Ice leads apologetics training for the Hoosiers for Life club.
By: Claire McKenna
Staff-Writer
On April 3, Hoosiers for Life hosted an apologetics training with guest Ben Ice, the Indiana Regional Coordinator for Students for Life of America. Ice gives presentations and trainings around Indiana and has hit about 70 colleges so far.
First, he defined apologetics, which is “defending an ideology.” The word comes from a religious background, but Ice said that it has transformed to mean defending any belief you have. In this event, Ice used apologetics to defend the anti-abortion argument.
“My goal is that you guys will have the tools and the ability to be able to answer these questions on your own,” Ice said. “I’ll give you some intellectual games that you can play with yourself and your own mind and your thought processes.”
He then listed his four dialogue principles: be nice, common ground, clarify objections and listen.
Ice asked the group for some reasons a person might support abortion. The group offered answers like they are scared to have children, they don’t have the money to care for a child, they want to keep kids out of foster care and they are just following others’ choices.
“Just remember that this is an emotional topic for a lot of people, and it’s really important that you meet this with love and compassion as well whenever you’re talking about this,” Ice said.
Ice explained different arguments like “Trot out the Toddler” (applying the ethics of abortion to a small child) and the 10-second apologist (boilerplate language people can apply to a variety of situations to introduce their anti-abortion belief), and he talked about what makes life valuable.
The group then did an exercise where one person would pretend to be pro-abortion and another would be anti-abortion, so they could practice the dialogue principles. After that, they went over any arguments that they couldn’t defend on either side, including discussion of how outlawing abortions can lead to more unsafe abortions and about situations where the mother’s life is in danger.
To stay informed of future Hoosiers for Life events, find them on Titan Atlas or on Instagram @hoosiersforlifeiusb.
