In a recent interview, Florida Senator Marco Rubio made the comment that “Science is settled, it’s not even a consensus, it is a unanimity, that human life begins at conception.” Predictably, many in the secular media took issue with that definitive statement.
The Washington Post, for example, ran a story entitled “Marco Rubio demanded people look at the science on abortion. So we did.” The Post consulted the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) for a response to Rubio’s assertion.
Although ACOG may be viewed by some as a credible source of expertise about when human life begins, its long-term advocacy of abortion makes it anything but an objective source of information about life’s beginning. Here is ACOG’s response to the Post’s inquiry:
“Government agencies and American medical organizations agree that the scientific definition of pregnancy and the legal definition of pregnancy are the same: pregnancy begins upon the implantation of a fertilized egg into the lining of a woman’s uterus. This typically takes place, if at all, between 5 and 9 days after fertilization of the egg—which itself can take place over the course of several days following sexual intercourse.”
ACOG’s response illustrates its ideology. Sen. Rubio said there is “unanimity that human life begins at conception.” Note that ACOG and the Post responded by talking about definitions of when “pregnancy” begins.
On the question of when human life begins, a search of human embryology textbooks demonstrates that Rubio is correct about the scientific consensus that human life begins at conception (i.e. following the process of fertilization).
For example, Langman’s Medical Embryology says: “The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.” [Sadler, T.W. Langman’s Medical Embryology, 7th edition. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins 1995, p. 3]
The Developing Human by Moore and Persaud says: “Human development begins at fertilization when a male… sperm unites with a female [egg] to form a single cell--a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” Elsewhere, the textbook defines a zygote as “the beginning of a new human being.” [The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology. 6th edition. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 2003, p. 2, 16]
For an honest moral analysis of abortion, the relevant factor is when “human life” begins not when “pregnancy” begins.
Nonetheless, ACOG and the Post “muddy the water” by shifting the discussion to when “pregnancy” begins and claiming that “Consensus exists (if not unanimously), and the consensus is that uterine implantation is the moment at which pregnancy begins.”
Even on this point, however, ACOG and the Post are incorrect. In his paper “Conceiving ‘Pregnancy’” (online at downloads.frc.org/EF/EF09D12.pdf), Christopher Gacek examined the definitions of “pregnancy” and “conception” in the four major medical dictionaries (Dorland, Mosby, Stedman, Taber)—sources that he argues are far less likely to be ideological or political in their work.
Gacek looked not only at how the dictionaries define those terms now, but how they defined them historically throughout each of their editions. What is clear from Gacek’s exposé is that there is no scientific consensus supporting an implantation-based definition of “pregnancy” or “conception.” In fact, the scientific consensus (as indicated by these medical dictionaries) is that “conception” and “pregnancy” are defined as beginning with fertilization.
This verbal deception perpetrated by ACOG and the Washington Post is a stunning example of how verbal engineering always precedes social engineering.
