Click for distraction.
Since the vast majority of the pro-life movement is religious, it was inevitable the the OP’s religious beliefs would come into question, and he did acknowledge his religious affiliation.
There's kind of a funny story about that, and it's better to leave that aside, because the proverbial morals of the story have to do with other people who are not you. The inevitability and acknowledgment you refer to occur in a context no longer effective.
To wit—
That said, the OP did not ...
—it was implicit in a particular manner no longer applicable. The actual what that happened, as noted, doesn't have to do with you, which, to the upside, means one less aspect of consideration or dispute for you to carry through the discussion.
As to the more substantial issue:
... and needed not use that affiliation to philosophically justify his notion of life or personhood at conception.
Believe it or not, there are atheist who hold those views as well.
This is one of those aspects that ought to be simple but can get complicated really fast.
First, you are correct, theistically religious argument is not required to "justify" a "notion of life or personhood at conception".
The example you provide, however, is an organization of small but unknown number, and, honestly, to take it from the founder, they're vapid nearly to the Poe threshold:
The abortion industry would have you believe that people like me do not exist. They would have you believe that the pro-life movement is almost exclusively old white men, with a few pearl-clutching church ladies thrown in. This characterization is insulting to both young and old. The older pro-life leaders of today are the pioneering young adult activists of the 1970s, who courageously dissented from Roe v. Wade. And they have recruited new generations of pro-lifers to follow in their footsteps; millennials in the movement call ourselves the “pro-life generation.”
There are important differences between the millennial generation and those that came before. One of the biggest is religion. The well-reported decline in church attendance is driven largely by young adults. Over a third of millennials tell pollsters they have no religious affiliation, compared with 23 percent for Generation X and 17 percent for baby boomers. And even among millennials who have maintained a religious affiliation, many favor same-sex marriage and show less appetite for the “culture war” than their elders do.
Yet this more secular generation still shows up to save preborn children and their mothers from the tragedy of abortion. This puzzles some abortion supporters, who had assumed they would benefit from demographic changes. The key to understanding this discrepancy is to realize that it is not a discrepancy at all: We see abortion not as a culture war issue or as a religious issue but as a human rights issue.
(Hazzard↱)
The problem is there is no evolution of the argument. It's not even a sleight in the manner of "Intelligent Design" unto "Creationism"; it's merely an ostensible atheist appropriating religious arguments and omitting God; the whole thing is so much an anti-identification the author even makes sure to take a swing at the religious audience she is pandering to in
America, a.k.a., The Jesuit Review. Additionally, the affiliated Equal Rights Institute receives considerable funding from Christian churches and some from Republicans. Additionally, she has worked with Americans United for Life, whose current president is known to appear on Christian-network television. As a pro-life atheist, Kelsey Hazzard of Secular Pro-Life seems to spend most of her time talking to religious allies, not carrying her advocacy to others. A note of personal aesthetics does go here: While enterprise websites tend to get formulaic, there is something about conservative political websites, and in this case we might think back to the Republican primary in 2016, because the candidates had identical websites, and that model persists in conservative media spheres; in that context I did notice that even AUL's website looks just like ERI's, which looks just like SPL's. None of this is surprising, but it does lend to a suggestion that Hazzard is just working a well-known epistemic bubble, and in that case, no, SPL is probably not an example evangelical atheists would be pleased to answer for.
We can disdain religious claims of ultimate authority in effect all we want, but at least Christianist, for instance, aesthetic demands have an identifiable root. Hazzard and SPL, by contrast, simply appropriate religious appeals to emotion and aesthetic and apply minimalist cosmetic changes. It's one thing to recall, as I have, the pathetic attempt to transform "Creationism" into "Intelligent Design", but this isn't even that. This is lazy. More effort is put into accommodating religious audiences than devising a rational argument against abortion. Or, more directly,
the effort is to accommodate religious audiences, because that is an easier way to get paid than figuring out a demonstrable, rational argument to support cosmetically rebranded religious aesthetics.
Hazzard's "secular" arguments are rehashes of religious political advocacy. One interesting exampl;e is attending
SPL's attempt↱ to parse their opposition to abortion:
The Mission of Secular Pro-Life is to end elective abortion.*
‡
* While SPL considers every abortion a tragedy, we recognize that abortion is sometimes medically necessary. We do not oppose abortion in situations where the mother's life is in danger and early delivery is not possible. We also do not take a specific stance on the rape exception, leaving the discussion open amongst our members.
They initially clarify because they are pitching to the religious, and must justify the use of the word "elective", but just like the intersection of GOP and evangelical Christianist politicking—
i.e., SPL's audience and financial supporters—it turns out these ostensible atheists aren't up to resolving a position on forcing raped women to bear the children of their rapist. It's one of the most important footnotes I've encountered in a while.
I'm not a fan of particular forms of comparison when the accompanying contrasts are so influential, so, no, for example, "house infidel" really is inappropriate for being inflammatory along multiple vectors. It does, however, provide a particular contrast: To the one, it's a way to get paid while expressing oneself, and there are, by such perspectives, far worse jobs to have in this world, but that makes for a very cynical critique, but neither is the point that telling supremacists what they want to hear can make for profitable work anything new. To the other, though, if you let people keep talking, they eventually tell you the truth. Around here, for instance, that happens quite a lot; and no, it's not just you.
Nor is that last specifically intended as a jab. It's true, I did just rake you on this count, but looking through the iterations of Hazzard's endeavor, I'm reminded of something I said in another thread, though neither do we yet know the tale of Hazzard's atheism. Still, in a question of atheism, sin, and Calvinism,
I suggested↱ a convert
has gone from former conditioning to responding to that former conditioning in such a manner as to weirdly fulfill it. Additionally, I noted a moral code she described
is as relativist as it sounds, and while relativism is not in and of itself damned or damnable, as such, this is precisely what [her] predecessors, the Calvinist heritage, fear. And there are, of course, deeper considerations to it, but that author
is telling the truth in a way that suggests she doesn't seem to know any better; part of the problem is a marketplace question at least somewhat akin to blaming society, and to some degree greater explication by the accomplished author will help clarify her point, but it is also possible to keep talking and blow it all up by reasserting underlying, often subconscious, priorities.
Similarly, Hazzard's advocacy seems more oriented toward reconciling her own perspective with a religious audience, and while there is certainly a capital or commerce question we might suggest, we might wonder if, as she keeps talking, the underlying priorities will reinforce that appearance or offer a key to understanding how this part does anything other than denigrate rational discourse in such a manner as to verge up to a Poe's Law threshold. The largest effect of SPL's approach to rape and pregnancy is its pretense to legitimize aesthetics and appeals to emotion as rational counterpoints to valid and reliable data.
And, yeah, since you mentioned it, SPL isn't really a good example of anything other than someone hanging a shingle, as such.
____________________
Notes:
Hazzard, Kelsey. "The atheist’s case against abortion: respect for human rights". America. 19 )ctober 2017. AmericaMagazine.org. 1 March 2019. http://bit.ly/2VupIhi
Secular Pro-Life. "Mission & Vision". 2013. SecularProLife.org. 1 March 2019. http://bit.ly/2XtBk5T