Life Matters

While Life Matters focuses on the battlefield of ideas, something that often trumps ideas and influences many people’s decisions, are emotions. Emotions predate our consideration of ideas. As infants, emotions dominate our experience of, and understanding of, the world around us.  Dr. James Dobson once wrote a book called “Emotions: Can You Trust Them?”  Emotions are often indicators. They can indicate something to us about life or our circumstances, but they are not always the best guide for making important decisions. Images of an unborn child can carry powerful emotion and that’s good news for us in the pro-life movement. The journal Neuromarketing has examined the use of a child’s image in marketing because it universally draws on the emotions of the viewer. Not unlike images of a small animal, these images draw emotions of compassion and protection. That’s good news for us. But, if that commitment to protecting that child is only based on the emotions surrounding that cute pre-born child, then that pro-l