I call myself pro-life but I may not be 100% in what is identified as the pro-life camp. I am not adamant about overturning Roe v Wade. Even though it is faulty law, it reflects a societal reality. Targeting the Supreme Court decision has been a fruitless path and a waste of time. Society, regrettably, may very well agree that fetal life is a special category of life not fully protected by man-written jurisprudence. I disagree with that but acknowledge it is a moral, philosophical debate that my side can lose. What is imperative in that debate is to first establish that life begins at conception. The bogus discussion about when life begins is an attempt to reduce the guilt about what an abortion actually is and to defer arguing the paltry case for establishing an inferior category of human life.
I guess that puts me in the changing hearts and minds camp. Unfortunately, that position has been hijacked as also a way to put off the real life or death debate. Call me what you will, but I believe the way to win the abortion debate is to win the "debate" on when life begins and insist on the case for abortion to be made starting from that premise. When life begins is not a philosophical issue, not a religious issue and not a political issue. It is a matter of science or we are in dangerous territory of defining beings out of existence. Abortion is a moral decision precisely because it is a decision to end a life. Legalizing the immorality of taking fetal life will require putting the real cards on the table.
When Life Begins
Faced with the complicated and not-very-widely-known facts of human embryology, most people are inclined to agree with the sentiment expressed by Speaker Pelosi, who has stated “I don’t think anybody can tell you when… human life begins.”
Yet is Speaker Pelosi correct? Is it actually the case that no one can tell you with any degree of authority when the life of a human being actually begins?No, it is not. Treating the question as some sort of grand mystery, or expressing or feigning uncertainly about it, may be politically expedient, but it is intellectually indefensible. Modern science long ago resolved the question. We actually know when the life of a new human individual begins.
A recently published white paper, “When does human life begin? A scientific perspective,” offers a thorough discussion of the facts of human embryogenesis and early development, and its conclusion is inescapable: From a purely biological perspective, scientists can identify the point at which a human life begins. The relevant studies are legion. The biological facts of are uncontested. The method of analysis applied to the data is universally accepted.
Your life began, as did the life of every other human being, when the fusion of egg and sperm produced a new, complete, living organism — an embryonic human being. You were never an ovum or a sperm cell, those were both functionally and genetically parts of other human beings — your parents. But you were once an embryo, just as you were once an adolescent, a child, an infant, and a fetus. By an internally directed process, you developed from the embryonic stage into and through the fetal,infant, child, and adolescent stages of development and ultimately into adulthood with your determinateness, unity, and identity fully intact. You are the same being — the same human being — who once was an embryo.
Besides, if you really don't know when life begins, isn't best to err on the side of life?
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