Snow White, the Seven Dwarfs, and Simplifying the Abortion Debate with One Question

As the father of three young children, a good bit of my spare time is spent eating popcorn and watching Disney movies and superhero films. Although scenes from these movies oftentimes leave impressions upon me, there is one scene that I have thought about for quite some time—especially in light of the abortion debate.

In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the Magic Mirror reveals to the Queen that Snow White is now “the fairest” in the land, which sparks jealousy in the Queen and motivates her to instruct the Huntsman to take Snow White into the forest and kill her. As proof of Snow White’s death, the Huntsman is ordered to return to the jealous Queen with Snow White’s heart in a jeweled box. However, the Huntsman, in a moment of clarity, simply cannot bring himself to kill Snow White. Overcome with emotion, he tearfully pleads for Snow White’s forgiveness, disclosing to her that the Queen wants her dead. Therefore, he urges her to flee into the woods and never return.

Lost and afraid, the princess eventually stumbles upon what appears to be an empty cottage deep in the forest. In reality, the cottage, which is rather untidy upon Snow White’s arrival, is occupied by the Seven Dwarfs who are away from their home while working at a nearby mine. As the Dwarfs return to their home after a full day’s work, they are alarmed when they notice that the lights in their cottage are on and the inside of the cottage is now clean and tidy, leaving them to suspect that an intruder has broken into their home while they were away. Carefully searching through their home, beginning with the downstairs and eventually moving to the upstairs, the Dwarfs find “the intruder” completely covered with a sheet and asleep across several of the beds on the upper floor. Surrounding “the intruder” and arming themselves with weapons of their own choosing—from clubs to mattocks—the Seven Dwarfs raise their weapons in the air and prepare to eliminate “the intruder,” when Happy loudly exclaims three words that cause the other Dwarfs to immediately stop in their tracks.

These three words, actually forming a question, are the most important words in the entire abortion debate. Everything rises or falls on the answer to this question:

“What is it?”

Before the Seven Dwarfs killed Snow White, they answered the question raised by Happy: “What is it?” Then, upon realizing Snow White’s identity as a human being, they lowered their weapons. She wasn’t an “intruder” after all; she was “a girl.”[1] This reveals an important principle: Before killing something, we must first determine the identity of what we are killing.

We must apply the same question—“What is it?—to the abortion debate. One of America’s leading bioethicists, Scott Klusendorf, maintains that we can simplify the debate by focusing on the one question that matters more than all others: “What is the unborn?”[2] Elsewhere, Greg Koukl writes, “Whether or not it’s right to take the life of any living thing depends entirely on the question what it is” (emphasis added).[3] If the unborn are members of the human family, then killing them is morally wrong because it treats distinct human beings, possessing intrinsic moral worth, as nothing more than disposable objects. On the flip side, as Klusendorf and Ensor indicate, “[I]f the unborn are not human, killing them for any reason requires no more justification than having a tooth pulled.”[4]

Earlier I mentioned that I am the father of three young children, one of whom is a boy. Although both of my older children enjoy playing with all kinds of bugs and insects, my son is known to inflict what he calls the “Hulk smash” on these tiny creatures from time-to-time. For a moment, consider this scenario:

Imagine my son coming to me with something behind his back and asking, “Daddy, can I kill it?” My question to my son would be, “What is it?” If it was a bug or insect, I might say something like: “Sure, just not in the house and not in front of your mother.”

If my son came to me again with something behind his back and asked the same question, I would again respond by asking, “What is it?” If it was a small dog belonging to my neighbors, I would be upset that my son would even consider killing the puppy as an option. “No, we can’t kill the neighbors’ dog,” would be my response.

Now, think about my son coming to me a third time with something behind his back, inquiring, “Daddy, can I kill it?” Yet again, my question would be: “What is it?” This time, if it was his baby sister, I’d immediately stop what I was doing and take him to counseling, because it is obvious to virtually everyone that taking the life of a small child is morally reprehensible.[5]

The above scenario, along with the scene from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, makes clear that the most important question we must ask and answer when deciding whether we should kill something is: “What is it?” Again, before killing something, we must first determine the identity of what we are killing. With the abortion issue, are we talking about a disposable clump of tissue and cells or a human person possessing intrinsic value? If the former, then abortion is permissible for any reason; if the latter, virtually no reason for aborting an unborn child is justified.

Here’s the point: Before deciding where you stand on the abortion issue, you must first ask yourself, “What is the unborn?” If you do your research, carefully examining both the science of embryology and the arguments of philosophy, you might come to the same conclusion as Doc in Snow White: “It’s a girl!”[6] or “It’s a boy!” In other words, you’ll come to the conclusion that the unborn, even “[f]rom the earliest stages of development…are distinct, living, and whole human beings. Therefore, every ‘successful’ abortion ends the life of a living human being.”[7]

Stephen S. Jordan currently serves as a high school Bible teacher at Liberty Christian Academy in Lynchburg, Virginia. He is also a Bible teacher, curriculum developer, and curriculum editor at Liberty University Online Academy, as well as a PhD candidate at the Liberty University Rawlings School of Divinity. Prior to his current positions, Stephen served as youth pastor at Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church in State Road, North Carolina. He and his wife, along with their three children and German shepherd, reside in Goode, Virginia.

notes:

[1] In response to Happy’s question, Doc responds by shouting, “It’s a girl!”

[2] Scott Klusendorf, The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2009), 22. As a side note, on at least one occasion, I had the privilege of having Mr. Klusendorf in my classroom at Liberty Christian Academy, where he spoke to my students on the abortion issue.

[3] Greg Koukl, Precious Unborn Human Persons (Lomita, CA: STR Press, 1998), 7.

[4] John Ensor and Scott Klusendorf, Stand for Life: A Student’s Guide for Making the Case and Saving Lives (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2012), 8.

[5] Ensor and Klusendorf share a similar scenario in Stand for Life, 21. I’ve also heard Scott Klusendorf use this same scenario in a number of debates, lectures, etc. Interestingly, Klusendorf admits that he actually borrows this example from Koukl in Precious Unborn Human Persons, 7.

[6] Again, this was Doc’s answer to Happy’s question.

[7] Klusendorf, The Case for Life, 35.