Hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers will march on Friday from the National Mall to the steps of the Supreme Court for the 46th annual March for Life.
The March for Life is both a demonstration and an act of solidarity with the tens of millions of unborn babies who have been aborted since the Supreme Court’s infamous Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized most abortions nationally.
But it’s also a chance to organize and educate, which is why the theme of this year’s march is “Unique From Day One.”
Perhaps the biggest change in the long, sad debate over abortion is that science, which was once seen as an ally of abortion advocates, is now recognized as being squarely on the side of life.
Every few months brings a technological advancement or scientific breakthrough that more fully reveals the unborn child as a living, feeling human being.
Most of what we now know about the fetus was unknown or in dispute when Roe was decided in 1973.
In his majority opinion, Justice Harry Blackmun wrote that the court “was not in a position to speculate as to the answer” of when life begins. Blackmun proceeded to speculate, writing that, “There has always been strong support for the view that life does not begin until live birth.”
We now know that’s not true. We now know that at the moment of fertilization, a new, unique human embryo with unique DNA is created. We now know that even at that early stage, an individual human life exists. We now know that the unborn baby’s heart begins to beat at three weeks, that brain waves can be detected as early as five weeks, and that all of the unborn baby’s organs are fully formed by 24 weeks.
Advancements in fetal medicine now make it possible for unborn babies to survive outside the womb as early as 22 weeks. The year Roe was decided, the lower limit was 28 weeks. We also know that unborn babies can feel pain at a point in the pregnancy when the most gruesome abortion procedures are still legal.
The more we recognize these facts, the easier it becomes to recognize the fact of the unborn baby’s humanity. And the harder it becomes to deny the baby’s inherent dignity.
Science has exposed the lie that a first-trimester baby is merely a clump of cells or a blob of tissue — or anything other than a human being. As Harvard Medical School’s Micheline Matthews-Roth has put it: “It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception, when egg and sperm join to form the zygote, and this developing human always is a member of our species in all stages of its life.”
Science also reveals that a third trimester baby is not substantially different from a newborn baby. She looks, moves, feels, and responds just like a newborn.
Last year British researcher Vincent Reid found that third-trimester fetuses respond to face-like images even while in the womb in the same way that newborn infants do. Reid told a reporter that his research “tells us that the fetus isn’t a passive processor of environmental information. It’s an active responder.”
In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report finding that the national abortion rate declined 26 percent between 2006 and 2015, hitting the lowest level that the government has on record. There are several reasons for the decline, including increased use of birth control, more restrictive abortion laws, and fewer teens having sex.
But it’s reasonable to believe that as the humanity of the fetus has become more apparent, more people have become less comfortable with abortion. Today, when a woman is informed of an unintended pregnancy, her first thought might no longer be about how she’s going to get rid of the cluster of life growing within her.
Instead, her first thought might be of the ultrasound picture of an unborn baby that her friend recently gleefully posted on social media to announce a pregnancy. Or it might be of the headline she just saw about a study finding that babies first encounter speech in the womb.
In the abortion debate, the science deniers are those who decry the taking of an innocent human life while somehow also celebrating the right to take an innocent unborn human life.
Science isn’t the only consideration in matters that carry profound moral and ethical significance. But on abortion, it can no longer be argued that science and faith are at odds.
In fact, science confirms what the Bible and other sacred texts teach us — that we are uniquely made from the moment we are conceived, and that we have moral status as human beings from that moment on.
Gary Bauer is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is president of American Values and chairman of Campaign for Working Families. He ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000.
Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/pro-life-is-pro-science
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