Posted on 06/11/2014 3:07:28 PM PDT by NYer
In a recent interview, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) declared it is a scientific fact that “human life begins at conception.” He also said that “leaders on the left” who “wag their fingers” about the “settled science” of global warming are hypocrites when it comes to science, and someone should ask them if they accept the “consensus of scientists that says that human life begins at conception.”
Going further, the senator added, “I’d like to see someone ask that question. It’s never asked. And that’s not even a debatable thing, we can actually see that happening. I mean, that is a proven fact. And yet that’s a scientific consensus they conveniently choose to ignore.”
In the wake of these remarks, MSNBC reporter Irin Carmon and Washington Post blogger Philip Bump pushed back at Rubio, asserting that:
However, as documented below, the facts of science support Rubio’s point and reveal that the claims of Carmon and Bump are scientifically baseless.
Science shows that life begins at conception
Contrary to Carmon’s allegation that “conception” and “life” are not scientific terms, both of these words are clearly defined in science dictionaries and widely used in scientific literature.
To cite just a few examples, the American Heritage Science Dictionary defines “conception” as “the formation of a zygote resulting from the union of a sperm and egg cell; fertilization.” (For reference, a zygote is the first stage of a human embryo.)
Likewise, the entry for “life” in the American Heritage Dictionary of Science states that life is “the form of existence that organisms like animals and plants have and that inorganic objects or organic dead bodies lack; animate existence, characterized by growth, reproduction, metabolism, and response to stimuli.”
Rubio’s statement that “human life begins at conception” is consistent with both of these definitions, because human zygotes display all four empirical attributes of life:
Furthermore, the science of embryology has proven that the genetic composition of humans is formed during fertilization, and as the textbook Molecular Biology explains, this genetic material is “the very basis of life itself.”
In accord with the facts above, the textbook Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects directly states: “The zygote and early embryo are living human organisms.” This may be controversial from a political perspective, but the sciences of embryology and genetics leave no doubt as to when human life begins.
ACOG is not an objective scientific authority
Bump’s article is entitled, “Marco Rubio demanded people look at the science on abortion. So we did.” Yet as far as the article reveals, the entirety of Bump’s “scientific” research consisted of speaking to a single organization: the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, or ACOG.
While Bump’s article clearly shows that ACOG avoided the question of when life begins and attempted to change the subject, Bump did not articulate this to his readers. Instead, he used ACOG’s non-answer to conclude that life “is something of a philosophical question,” and “the scientific experts we spoke with didn’t offer any consensus” on this issue.
That is not “looking at science,” as Bump claims he did. Rather, it is cherry-picking the opinions of selected scientists and uncritically relaying them. It also presumes that the chosen scientists are unbiased and incontestable authorities on this issue, which is demonstrably not the case with ACOG’s leadership.
For instance, when a debate over partial-birth abortion was raging during the Clinton Administration. ACOG prepared a statement disclosing that a “select panel convened by ACOG could identify no circumstances under which this procedure, as defined above, would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.”
Yet instead of releasing this information to the public, ACOG faxed it to the Clinton administration with a header that stated: “CONFIDENTIAL, NOT FINAL, DO NOT COPY, DO NOT DISTRIBUTE.”
This document came to the attention of a White House lawyer and policy advisor named Elena Kagan (later appointed by President Obama to the Supreme Court). She was displeased with ACOG’s conclusion and wrote a memo warning that its release would be a “disaster,” especially since ACOG opposed banning partial birth abortions.
Kagan then proceeded to edit ACOG’s statement by adding that partial-birth abortion “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman….” Those words did not reflect the thrust or scope of ACOG’s findings, which Kagan clearly understood because she had detailed them in a previous memo.
Nevertheless, ACOG adopted Kagan’s words as its own, thus using the rhetoric of a Clinton administration lawyer in place of its own medical conclusions. Those are not the actions of an objective scientific authority but of an organization that is willing to place politics over science.
What is science?
There is a lot of posturing about science in the world of politics, but some of what is reported as “science” is actually just the claims of selected scientists, which happen to be at odds with the facts of science.
Science, in the words of Webster’s College Dictionary, is the “systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.” Notably, this does not entail parroting the assertions of someone with scientific credentials.
In the realm of science, what matters is facts and logically inescapable conclusions that flow from them—not opinions, no matter who voices them or how prevalent they are. A classic example of this is Galileo, who wrote that when it comes to the sciences, “the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man.”
In this instance, Rubio is that man, and Carmon, Bump, and ACOG are substituting their ideology for science in the public debate over abortion.
Editor’s note: This essay first appeared June 10, 2014 on Just Facts and is reprinted with permission.
Catholic ping!
There’s really no debate about when a new unique life begins - at conception. The debate is when does it matter.
Pro-abort think it never matters.
We think it matters from the beginning of life.
Folks in the middle are just floating in the wind.
If doctors declare people dead with cessation of brainwave activity, then why not start with detection of brainwave activity as when you’re alive?
If you have the reputation of being “the life of the party,” I guess it begins when you arrive. ;-)
When cell division begins...or sooner. As soon as there is a new DNA identity.
I can’t answer this - do brain wave turn on like throwing a switch?
There is no relationship between IQ and race.
There is no relationship between physical abilities and race.
A fetus becomes a human if/when its mother decides she wants to bring it to term.
The Earth has been warming, and continues to warm, due mostly to human activities.
etc.
Rand Paul is wondering the same thing.
CNN:
BLITZER: So, just to be precise, if you believe life begins at conception, which I suspect you do believe that, you would have no exceptions for rape, incest, the life of the mother, is that right?
PAUL: Well, I think that once again puts things in too small of a box. What I would say is that there are thousands of exceptions. You know, I’m a physician and every individual case is going to be different, and everything is going to be particular to that individual case and what’s going on with that mother and the medical circumstances of that mother.
I would say that after birth, you know, we’ve decided that when life begins, we have decided that we don’t have exceptions for one- day-old or six-month-olds. We don’t ask where they came from or how they came into being, but it is more complicated because the rest of it depends on the definition of when life comes in. So, I don’t think it’s a simple as checking box and saying exceptions or no exceptions.
And there are a lot of decisions that are made privately by families and their doctors that really won’t — the law won’t apply to, but I think it’s important that we not be flippant one way or the other and pigeon hole and say, oh, this person doesn’t believe in any sort of discussion between family. And so, I don’t know if there’s a simple way to put me in a category on any of that.
BLITZER: Well, it sounds like you believe in some exceptions.
PAUL: Well, there’s going to be, like I say, thousands of extraneous situations where the life of the mother is involved and other things that are involved.
So, I would say that each individual case would have to be addressed and even if there were eventually a change in the law, let’s say, the people came more to my way of thinking, it’s still be a lot of complicated things that the law may not ultimately be able to address in the early stages of pregnancy that would have to be part of what occurs between the physician and the woman and the family.
Cell division will not take place without “Life”
The Zygote will not form without “Life”
Life is present at conception or there would be no conception.
But people aren’t declared dead with cessation of brain waves.
They are declared brain dead. It needs the qualifier.
The detractors of Rubio forgot that in light of fact, “The zygote and early embryo are living human organisms”, their answer is supposed to be personhood.
Your question approaches that issue.
A society can make some claim that human beings don't become persons until they exhibit some level of intelligence and independence, i.e. its OK to kill them up until they're seven years old or so. This is the odd, but at least internally consistent, position of one philosopher.
Of course we allow corporations to be treated as persons so why can't fetuses be persons as well?
If one accepts the self-evident, plain as the nose on your face truth that human life begins at conception, or creation, it’s time to take the next step.
http://www.equalprotectionforposterity.com/
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are CREATED EQUAL, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men...”
“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.”
“No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
“We the People of the United States, in Order to...secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves AND OUR POSTERITY, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
The taboo structure of the nation guided the decisions regarding how, when, and to what lengths physicians would go to try and save BOTH ALIVE HUMAN BEINGS. Now, with the complete lack of a taboo structure the society has witnessed the complete disenfranchisement of the alive unborn. We can be absolutely certain that this pisses off the God from Whom all blessings flow.
**When Does Life Begin?**
At conception.
When the baby comes out.
Two minutes before that, it’s perfectly all right to crush its screaming head, then pull it out with a steel hook.
There is really no question about when Life begins...(it continues on after the joining of two living cells, it doesn’t really “begin”). The debate should be on when does that life become a person? People can come up with all kinds of criteria, but in the end, it boils down to this-—if unsure, err on the side of life.
I would imagine that life begins when the egg is fertilized.
I might even be willing to say that it begins as late as the first cell division. But once that division occurs, then we are talking about a life.
Seems self evident.
A very revealing thing about Rand is how incoherent he is about simple issues, before he and his team can work out a method of dealing with conservatives.
From foreign policy to domestic issues, Rand can be seen desperately seeking some way to avoid giving a position or to conceal what is leaking from him.
Here is an example on “gay marriage”, see if you can make sense of this.
Rand Paul’s Same-Sex Marriage Plan: Continue The Debate ‘For Another Couple Of Decades’
“Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) opposes same-sex marriage, but his tactics for doing so are unique. For example, last month he offered a completely unfeasible suggestion to simply erase any mention of marriage from the laws and establish all its protections through various contracts. But he really isn’t interested in taking any steps to help that along. In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network this weekend, he expressed hope that by continuing to allow individual states to decide, the debate on same-sex marriage might continue unresolved for several decades:
PAUL: Where marriage is adjudicated, whether it’s at the federal level or at the state level, we’ve always had marriage certificates and we’ve had them at the state level. If we keep it that way, maybe we can still have the discussion go on without make the decision go all the way one way or all the way the other way.
I think right now if we say we’re only going to have a federally mandated one-man, one-woman marriage, we’re going to lose that battle because the country is going the other way right now. If we were to say each state can decide, I think a good 25, 30 states still do believe in traditional marriage, and maybe we allow that debate to go on for another couple of decades and see if we can still win back the hearts and minds of people.”
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