Think clearly about abortion — even when it's hardest
A rigorous, compassionate school for rethinking abortion as a private human right — not a legislative battleground — exploring ethics, global population, contraception access, and the real-world consequences of criminalisation.
"I won't tell you what to think — but I'll give you everything you need to think it through with honesty, evidence, and full respect for the difficulty of the question."— David Clilverd
What you'll learn
What you'll be able to do
- Articulate a well-reasoned, evidence-based case for why reproductive decisions belong to the individual rather than the state
- Analyse the global population crisis — from 3.5 billion in 1970 to 8.5 billion today — and its direct link to reproductive policy
- Compare religious, philosophical, and secular ethical frameworks on personhood, life, and bodily autonomy without resorting to caricature
- Evaluate the documented public-health consequences of criminalising abortion, including the deadly reality of unsafe back-street procedures
- Explain the case for universal free access to contraception and emergency contraception as foundational preventive policy worldwide
- Engage confidently and respectfully in conversations about abortion across deep disagreement — in community, clinical, or policy settings
How it works
A school that adapts to you
This isn't a set of static videos. Every lesson is generated live and tuned to where you actually are.
We learn your level
A quick placement check tailors your starting point so you're never bored or lost.
Lessons adapt as you go
Each lesson is written for your pace and your goal, adjusting as your skills grow.
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Checkpoints, feedback, and gentle nudges turn progress into a real result.
The curriculum
What's inside your school
6 modules · 16 lessons
Beyond the Battleground: Reframing Abortion as a Private Human Right
This opening module establishes the foundational framing of the entire curriculum: that reproductive decisions are fundamentally personal, not political. Students examine how abortion became weaponised in public discourse, ground the argument in bodily autonomy — the philosophical and legal bedrock — and trace the historical arc of who has held power over reproductive choices and why that matters today. Completing this module first ensures learners have the conceptual vocabulary and framing lens they need before engaging ethics, data, or policy.
- 1.1How Abortion Became a Political Football — and Why That MattersIncluded
- 1.2Bodily Autonomy: The Philosophical and Legal CoreIncluded
- 1.3Who Decides? Power, Gender, and Reproductive Control Through HistoryIncluded
Ethics Without Caricature: Religion, Philosophy, and the Question of Personhood
This module delivers the curriculum's commitment to engaging honestly and respectfully across deep ethical disagreement. Students examine what religious scriptures actually say (and do not say) about foetal life and personhood, survey the major philosophical frameworks on when morally significant life begins, and build practical dialogue skills for navigating these conversations without resorting to straw-man arguments. Placed second, this module equips learners with intellectual humility and precision before they engage empirical data and policy arguments — preventing the common error of talking past those who hold sincere religious or philosophical objections.
- 2.1What Does Scripture Actually Say? Reading Religious Texts CarefullyIncluded
- 2.2Philosophical Frameworks: When Does Morally Significant Life Begin?Included
- 2.3Engaging Across Deep Disagreement: A Practical Dialogue ToolkitIncluded
The Global Population Emergency: Numbers, Consequences, and Reproductive Policy
This module grounds the curriculum in empirical reality: the doubling of global population from 3.5 billion in 1970 to 8.5 billion today, and the profound consequences of that growth for the planet's biosphere, resource systems, and every living species we share it with. Students learn to read demographic data honestly, connect population dynamics directly to reproductive policy, and situate the argument for accessible abortion and contraception within a framework of environmental and intergenerational justice. A prerequisite lesson on the foundational preventive role of contraception (covered next in Module 4) is explicitly flagged here to ensure sequencing is clear. This module is placed third — after establishing rights and ethics — so that population arguments are never used to override individual rights, but to reinforce why enabling individual reproductive choice is also the most effective population policy.
- 3.1From 3.5 to 8.5 Billion: Reading the Numbers HonestlyIncluded
- 3.2Reproductive Policy as Environmental and Social JusticeIncluded
- 3.3Vulnerable Pregnancies and Difficult Decisions: The Full Spectrum of CircumstancesIncluded
Contraception and Emergency Contraception: The Foundational Prevention Argument
This module makes the affirmative case that universal free access to contraception — for all people, of all genders, worldwide — and to emergency contraception is not a complement to reproductive rights policy but its foundation. Students examine the science, reach, and effectiveness of modern contraception; the profound political economy of why access remains so unequal; and the evidence base for what happens to abortion rates, maternal mortality, and population dynamics when contraception is genuinely accessible. Placed fourth — after rights, ethics, and population — this module ensures the prevention argument is understood in its full context before students turn to the consequences of criminalisation.
- 4.1The Science and Reach of Modern ContraceptionIncluded
- 4.2The Political Economy of Contraceptive Access — and How to Change ItIncluded
Criminalisation Kills: The Public Health Case Against Legislative Restriction
This module delivers the hard empirical case: when abortion is criminalised, it does not stop — it goes underground, and women die. Students engage with global public health data on unsafe abortion mortality and morbidity, hear the testimonial reality of back-street procedures, and examine the documented failure of prohibition as a policy instrument. The module also covers the essential human dimensions of counselling, conscience, and non-judgemental care — because the curriculum's goal is not only to make the intellectual case but to prepare students to support real people in real situations. Placed fifth, this module builds on the rights, ethics, population, and prevention foundations already established.
- 5.1What the Data Shows: Unsafe Abortion, Preventable Death, and the Failure of ProhibitionIncluded
- 5.2The Back-Street Reality: Testimony, Harm Reduction, and Clinical FrontlinesIncluded
- 5.3Conscience, Counselling, and Care: Supporting the Decision Without Judging ItIncluded
From Understanding to Action: Making the Case in the World
The final module is integrative and action-oriented. Students synthesise everything they have learned — rights, ethics, population data, prevention science, and public health evidence — into a coherent, evidence-based personal position and then practise making that case across the full range of real-world contexts they will encounter: community conversations, clinical settings, policy advocacy, and media. This module ensures the curriculum delivers not just knowledge but the confidence and skill to use it. Placed last, it depends on all five preceding modules and serves as both capstone and launch pad.
- 6.1Building Your Evidence-Based Personal PositionIncluded
- 6.2Making the Case: Advocacy Across ContextsIncluded
Who it's for
Is this you?
Healthcare professionals
Doctors, nurses, and midwives who counsel patients through reproductive decisions and need a rigorous ethical and public-health framework to support that work.
Policy advocates
People working on reproductive rights, maternal health, or social justice policy who want a command of the philosophical, demographic, and legal arguments that underpin their cause.
People of faith wrestling with complexity
Religious believers who've found the standard positions of their tradition unsatisfying and want to read scripture, theology, and ethics with genuine care rather than inherited certainty.
Bioethicists and philosophers
Thinkers who want a structured engagement with personhood, bodily autonomy, and the moral status of life across secular and religious frameworks — without caricature on either side.
Educators and public intellectuals
Teachers, journalists, and writers who need to engage the subject with intellectual honesty and present multiple frameworks to audiences across a wide range of perspectives.
Engaged citizens seeking clarity
Thoughtful adults who are tired of polarised debate and want a grounded, humane understanding of reproductive decision-making they can carry into their communities and conversations.
Questions
Frequently asked
Your teacher
A note from your teacher
David Clilverd
If you've picked up this page, there's a good chance you're exhausted by the way this conversation is usually conducted. The shouting. The reduction of one of the most morally serious questions in public life to a bumper sticker, a ballot measure, a tribal signal. You may hold a clear position — or you may feel genuinely uncertain, pulled in different directions by your faith, your clinical experience, your reading of history, your sense of justice. Either way, you've sensed that the debate as it's usually staged isn't actually helping anyone think.
That's what this school is for. Not to tell you what to conclude — but to give you the full intellectual terrain: the philosophy of bodily autonomy and personhood, the careful reading of religious texts, the demographic reality of a planet at 8.5 billion people, the documented public-health consequences of criminalisation, the science and politics of contraceptive access. These aren't talking points. They're disciplines, and they deserve to be taught with the rigour and respect they've rarely received in popular debate.
I built this curriculum because I believe the people doing the most important work on this issue — healthcare workers, policy advocates, pastoral counsellors, community organisers, ethicists — often lack a coherent, evidence-grounded framework to draw on when the conversations get hard. And the conversations always get hard. What I've tried to construct is something that holds the full complexity without flinching: that takes theological argument seriously alongside philosophical argument, that reads the population data honestly, that doesn't look away from what unsafe abortion actually does to human bodies, and that trusts you — the person studying it — to draw your own informed conclusions.
The final modules are about action: building your personal position on solid intellectual ground, and knowing how to make the case — in a clinical consultation, a policy hearing, a community meeting, a conversation with someone who loves you and disagrees with you completely. That's where rigour becomes something you can actually use.
If you're ready to move beyond the battleground and into genuine understanding, I'm glad you're here. This is the school I wish had existed when I needed it most.
— David Clilverd
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- 6 modules, 16 lessons
- AI-adaptive lessons tuned to your level
- Quizzes & checkpoints to lock in progress
- Your own AI learning coach
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