Human lives begin at conception and there is simply nothing you can do about it
We are still debating this and that is incredible
It is a wonder that Moloch, for all his canniness, has not sent out an order for pro-choice advocates to shut the ever-loving heck up about when life begins. Perhaps no other issue is so singularly humiliating to pro-abortion activists as this one. They humiliate themselves time and again on it and they never seem to tire of it. Here’s Dr. Phil this week politely beclowning himself on the matter on national television:
Lila is right and Dr. Phil is very much wrong. Scientists overwhelmingly affirm the beginning of human life at conception. A few years ago at the University of Chicago, PhD student Steven Jacobs asked thousands of academic biologists when they believed human life begins; huge majorities responded that it begins at the moment of conception. When asked if “fertilization marks the beginning of a human’s life,” fully 75% agreed. Even when asked with a more conventionally pro-life spin—
—"When does a human’s life begin?"—even a strong majority of very pro-choice biologists said “fertilization.” Of course there is a consensus.
Human life begins at conception. Actually it would behoove pro-life advocates to switch their framing to the more medically and philosophically accurate formulation: “Human lives begin at conception.” If you structure it as “life” rather than “lives,” pro-choice advocates will pretend to act kind of innocently confused on the issue; they’ll say: “A skin cell is human life. A nerve cell is human life. Who's to distinguish between one human cell and another?” Of course we’re not talking about cells, we’re talking about organisms, distinct and self-directing biological entities—in a word, beings, which is to say human beings. “Human lives” covers this concept much more cleanly and pointedly. And human lives begin at conception, which is the moment the organisms in question come distinctly into being.
In any event, pro-choice advocates just need to admit this and stop the chicanery. It is just embarrassing beyond measure at this point, quite like denying the Earth is round. There is a case to be made for abortion—it’s wrong, fatally so, but at least it can be made—yet the place to make it is not, at all, by arguing against the hard, inarguable, absolutely clear-cut facts regarding the beginning of human lives. Pro-choicers: You have lost this battle and you lost it really before it even began. Cede the field and move on.
So pro-life people should strongly stress this simple, basically undeniable fact, that human life (or better, lives) begin at conception. Then what? One possibility is pushing the narrative that there are times when taking a human life is morally defensible or even laudable (which is true). I would like to be in on that discussion!