Pro-Choice Advocates Must Accept Science to be Winners

In a recent New York Times op-ed piece, “To Win Again, Democrats Must Stop Being the Abortion Party,” Thomas Grome gave sage advice to anyone who is pro-abortion. It’s received a lot of attention.  National Review’s The Corner carried an article on it highlighting some of this attention, like the organization Catholic Democrats providing a forum for critics.  This article is my take of the position that Democrats must stop being the abortion party.  Although Grome did not address it, science is necessary to the equation of why.

Science is used to defend many issues: transgenderism, climate change, the environment, and animal rights. Yet, science is distorted when it comes to the development of the human fetus and when precisely life begins. Doing so leads to doublespeak.

For anyone not familiar with doublespeak, it’s rooted in George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty- Four. It comes from doublethink: due to political indoctrination an individual accepts two contrary beliefs.   Doublespeak is used to deceive, disguise or misrepresent the truth.

Pro-abortion Advocates’ Use of Science:

Below are some examples science is cited to. This is not a statement for or against any one issue. Instead, it’s meant to highlight where science is trusted or relied on by democrats, liberals, and progressives.

Transgenderism:

While promoting her transgender documentary on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, Katie Couric said, “It’s in the later stage of development, it’s when your brain is wired, and sometimes a surge of testosterone can make…a female fetus feel as if that baby is male or that person is male. And the opposite, if there’s not enough testosterone.”

Under transgender vocabulary, sex is biological while gender is a “person’s innate, deeply-felt psychological identification…”

Climate Change:

Science in this area is heavily [promoted by the media and even the Pope/Vatican (ed.) to be] accepted and regarded as accurate and reliable. Those who disagree with the science or the realities of climate change are criticized.  Obama condemned climate change deniers, saying anyone who denies it will end up lonely.

Environment:

Science and ecology are used to urge protecting the environment.  Leonardo DiCaprio made a documentary, Before the Flood.  Using science, the documentary appeals to responsible treatment of the planet.

Animal Rights:

Some argue animals are persons, advocating animal rights equal to humans. A documentary, Unlocking the Cage, follows an attorney’s fight to change the laws recognizing the personhood of non-human animals. The attorney uses DNA to show the similarities between humans and chimpanzees. Peter Singer, a pro-abortion, utilitarian philosopher at Princeton, says animals have equal interests as humans. Like humans, their interest is to not suffer.

Science IS Important:

Based on the above, science is necessary and important to consider. Take this same fervor for science in the above issues it naturally follows science related to human development is equally necessary and important.  Likewise, the same logical framework should apply.

For instance, pro-animal right/interest logic and DNA science should be applied to preborn babies; environmentalists should rely on human embryology science to protect a preborn baby’s environment; and condemnation towards climate-change deniers should be directed towards abortionists as well.

The Science:

The science pro-abortionists ignore exposes their doublespeak. Science shows that human life begins at the moment of fertilization. At conception a distinct, human organism with its own DNA is formed. Just 16 days after conception the neural plate forms. This is the foundation of the brain and spinal cord. At four weeks there’s a beating heart, along with limb buds. By week 6 or 7 the five sections of the brain have formed, as well as lungs, jaw, and nose.  At week 9, the reproductive organs begin to form.  Week 10, male fetuses produce testosterone.

Further, personhood is predicated on being a living member of the human community, a member of the human species.

Conclusions from Couric’s Misuse of Science:

Many pro-abortion advocates argue a preborn baby is not a person because she neither experiences nor has consciousness. Yet, Couric, who is pro-abortion, imputes experience and consciousness on preborn babies. By week 10, not in the later stages, preborn babies have a brain and testosterone.  So, at week 10 preborn babies can consciously reflect on their deeply-felt, innate gender to identify with it!

Using science, and Couric’s charge that preborn babies “feel” their gender, let’s take her position to its logical conclusions.  There are three outcomes pro-abortionists won’t want:

(1) Babies have a right to identify with their gender. Put another way, transgender persons (even preborn) have a right to identify with their gender and to not be aborted.

(2)  Advocating for abortion and not allowing babies to identify with their gender encourages discrimination; and

(3) It’s legal to abort (i.e., kill) transgender persons.  Related to this, encouraging abortion sanctions killing (preborn) transgender persons.

Accepting Science:

In defense of social issues we are now discussing gender and orientation as being determined before birth. The science on the origins of transgenderism is still open. It is prudent, therefore, to re-open the discussion on when a human becomes a person and when life begins.  Ironically, Roe v Wade couldn’t answer this question, but legalized the intentional killing of babies.

With the evolution of science and the knowledge we now have about life, combined with progressive movements on gender and orientation, the progressive thing to do is to appeal to the science and discuss rights of the preborn. Given the science, we must be concerned about ALL life, and not those we pick and choose to defend. Otherwise, we’ll fall into doublespeak.

 

This article, Pro-Choice Advocates Must Accept Science to be Winners is a post from The Bellarmine Forum.
https://bellarmineforum.org/pro-choice-advocates-must-accept-science-winners/
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