On Saturday, progressives across the country convened to “March for Science.” The event, which was meant to “hold our political leaders accountable for passing equitable, evidence-based policies that serve all people and all communities,” touted things like climate change and vaccinating. In light of their catchy adage, “Make America Scientific Again,” one wonders where is science when it comes to abortion?
In order to deflect from the ethical controversy surrounding abortion, progressives have long claimed they aren’t sure when life begins or when babies can actually claim personhood. Such obfuscation was useful decades ago when, perhaps, one could claim while morally it made sense that life began at conception, science couldn’t prove it. However, in recent years, scientists, researchers, and medical doctors have become increasingly vocal about when life begins: at conception. Yet the Left chooses to ignore science in favor of pressing abortion as their landmark issue of the century.
Several weeks ago, this very debate was highlighted in an unusual way, when freezers at two fertility clinics, which preserves embryos, experienced major malfunctions and thousands of embryos were lost. At one of the clinics, the University Hospitals Fertility Clinic in Ohio, about 700 families lost embryos. A couple weeks ago, one of the couples who lost three embryos, Wendy and Rick Penniman, brought a class action lawsuit against the organization, and recently filed an additional complaint. The Daily Beast reported:
Legal experts say that the complaint is unlikely to be successful. But if the court rules in the Pennimans’ favor, that decision might have implications for the fertility industry and for reproductive rights in the United States.
The hospital believes the embryos to be property, or “chattel,” according to the lawsuit, but the Pennimans believe the embryos to be tiny people, and therefore, would like to sue for wrongful death. Of course, in terms of pure science, this seems somewhat simple: If an embryo isn’t a person, why would it matter if it died or in this case, was destroyed? At the same time, that very question poses more difficulty, in terms of law and politics. Roe v. Wade already ruled embryos are not people with constitutional protections decades ago.
This shows just how hypocritical progressives tend to be: If science can bolster their cause (for example if gender quotas might bolster feminism), gender matters. If, however, switching genders is helpful to advance the transgender cause, gender is merely a societal construct.
The same applies to abortion and personhood: When fertility clinics can help create embryos, with the aid of advanced science, and freeze them for couples, science is great; embryos are people; ideology is irrelevant. But when couples lose that hope, in the form of an embryo, science is obscure and abortion is still king. It remains ironic that the party of science will hold a “March for Science,” to discuss matters relevant to their ideological causes but will clutch their pearls to the point of exhaustion and turn a blind eye to science when it might, in fact, hurt the cause dearest to them.
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator’s Young Journalist Award.
