For all their fervor, the center-left media still struggle to condemn Planned Parenthood for selling baby’s aborted organs for profit. Even as the most recent Center for Medical Progress video provides evidence the abortion provider harvested the brain of a live baby. The heart of this struggle seems to be a lack of understanding or willingness to admit science proves life begins at conception. This leads to a moral relativism about babies that is misguided, confusing, and sad.
What’s The Difference Between Miscarriage And Abortion?
In a recent piece on Vox a woman described how her miscarriage made her question her pro-abortion stance. The piece is personal and worth reading, especially as she describes the way she supports abortion yet grapples with her own loss early in pregnancy: “I felt guilty both for supporting women’s choices to end their pregnancies and for feeling so sad about the end of mine. What made my baby so different from those I was advocating women to be able to ‘terminate’?”
If one is pro-choice, it’s imperative a fetus be a “ball of cells.” Most people of conscience would not passionately defend the right to end the life of a living, breathing baby.
When Does Life Begin?
The torn mother continues:
“Two years later and with a toddler at my feet, I finally feel at peace. I’m at peace with my sadness I felt about my miscarriage–and with my belief that abortion is a fundamental human right. The question, really, comes down to: When does life begin? Is it the moment sperm meets egg? Implantation? The first kick? The first kick that the mom feels? Is it weeks later, when the baby could survive outside the womb? Or weeks after that, when he or she actually does? I’ve decided that I don’t know when life really begins, and that is okay.”
She is not alone in her questions. But just because she does not know when life begins — although science is clear on this point — it’s not okay to be okay with terminating life because of her ignorance. The problem with this logic is it enables people to be inconsistent in their policies, selfish in their worldview, and ignorant in scientific conclusions, and as such they appear embarrassingly blinded.
In a recent interview with Senator and presidential candidate Marco Rubio, CNN broadcast journalist Chris Cuomo, proliferates the myth that pro-lifers, not science, have arbitrarily decided when life begins:
CUOMO: I know, but you’re deciding when it is human life…
RUBIO: No, science has decided when it is human life.
CUOMO: Science has not decided it’s at conception.
RUBIO: No, let me correct you. Science has — absolutely it has.
CUOMO: Not at conception.
Science Proves When Life Begins
Let’s grant for a moment that we are unsure when life actually begins, since many of us have zero medical education or training. If, let’s say, it begins some time between conception and 10 weeks, when a baby boy’s neural tissue can be donated (or harvested, as the case may be) wouldn’t we want to err on the side of life? Is there a logical, persuasive example of any other situation wherein we would not err on the side of life? Your child needs an arm amputated or he may die of infection: Do you choose to wait and see if infection sets in or amputate the arm to save his life? Your husband needs emergency brain surgery due to a stroke, or he may die within hours: Do you choose to allow him certain death or opt for the surgery wherein his life may be spared?
But let’s grant further, the opinions, nay, the opinions based on science — of doctors and professors who state with zero hesitancy — that life begins at conception: Ashley Montague, a geneticist and professor at Harvard and Rutgers, is unsympathetic to the pro-life cause. Nevertheless, he affirms unequivocally, “The basic fact is simple: life begins not at birth, but conception.” Dr. Jerome LeJeune, professor of Genetics at the University of Descartes in Paris, discovered the chromosome pattern of Down syndrome. Dr. LeJeune testified to the Judiciary Subcommittee, “after fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being.” He stated that this “is no longer a matter of taste or opinion” and “not a metaphysical contention; it is plain experimental evidence.” He added, “Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception.”
In the academic paper, “Four Residents’ Narratives on Abortion Training: A Residency Climate of Reflection, Support, and Mutual Respect” (published in the July 2015 issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology), a resident grapples with abortion training:
“Increasingly, I have found myself caught up in an endless array of rhetorical questions. Is there not a more profound difference between 10 and 20 weeks than between 20 and 30? If my first task as a physician is to do no harm, how can I justify harming a fetus? I do not pretend to know the answers to these questions, but given what I perceived to be an abyss of ambiguity, I chose not to provide elective terminations […]
As someone who entered obstetrics and gynecology because of the opportunities to empower women, I find myself feeling guilty that I cannot get over what increasingly seems to be a theoretical suspicion that life as seen on a two-dimensional ultrasound scan represents actual life. I wonder if I will change my mind after residency, if and when I encounter women who have less (or no) access to abortion services.”
If Life Doesn’t Begin at Conception Moral Relativism Takes Hold
The Vox author concluded, “I don’t know when life really starts, but I do know that it’s okay for me to mourn the loss of my 10-week-old fetus and for me to simultaneously fight for another woman’s right to end hers.”
For those still clinging to their pro-choice flag, willingly ignorant of science, please know: Your moral relativism is nauseating in its consequences, annoying in its logical fallacies, and disgusting in its devastating effects on political and cultural debate.
If ever there was a case for the mantra that “ideas have consequences,” it’s clear in the heartache of a woman who mourns her miscarriage and the irony of those who turn their heads when a baby is aborted then sold for profit. We cannot have it both ways. Yet pro-choice advocates desperately attempt to, and when this cognitive dissonance is pointed out, they cry “hypocrite!” and “unhinged zealot!” Science is on the side of life. The proof remains clear and ever-growing. The only thing that needs to change is the cultural relativism, which instead of being freeing is stifling; instead of providing clarity, seeks to proliferate confusion.
