Let's Really Follow the Science

By Randall Smith Many politicians and other public figures these days like to say, "Follow the science!" Okay, let's do that. There's absolutely no doubt, scientifically, that human life begins at conception. At that moment, the full set of chromosomes is present that make a human life. It's not a lizard, a chimp, or a goat. It's a human being. But people are not quite getting the message, not facing the grim truth. Abortion is the termination of a human life. When you face the truth, all the blather about "reproductive health" and "reproductive choice" becomes noxious. You want the "right" to terminate a life? Terminating a life is "healthcare"? Since when is injecting poison into a human body "healthcare"? You oppose lethal injection for convicted murderers? Good. How about innocent babies? You're a vegetarian and abhor the killing of animals? You think there should be severe punishments for anyone who kills an eagle, a deer, or a baby whale. But it's okay to kill an unborn child? How does that work? I see other exhortations from various Catholic intellectuals about not being "single-issue" voters. I don't know anyone who wants to be a "single-issue voter." Most people would prefer to vote about things like the economy, budget deficit, immigration policy, energy policy, and education. But human lives are at stake. Years ago, I mentioned to a friend how Governor Mitch Daniels had reformed the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles. Unlike anything I had ever experienced anywhere else, after Daniels, you could get in and out of that office in under ten minutes. "I wonder what it would be like," I said wistfully, "if elections were about effective government?" He laughed and said: "Yeah, half the things we vote about are things we shouldn't even have to talk about." Can men be women? Sex education for five-year-olds? Killing babies in the womb? Or how about the fact that the current year-to-date budget deficit is nearly 2 trillion dollars? How about the percentage of school kids who can't read, write, or do basic mathematics? How about the increasingly fragile electric grid? How about the problem of the homeless? How about immigration policy? How about the coming bankruptcy of the Social Security system? I also want to talk about all those things. But that's not what the news media, in league with the politicians who are eager to avoid those topics, want us to talk about. It's all about who uttered a word or phrase that might be construed as racist? Which candidate is more hateful, and which has more joy? Who has election momentum, and who doesn't? What did some celebrity say about something or other? No one wants to be a single-issue voter. But some people seem to think laws against terminating human lives are "oppressive." Some philosophers say things like "It's not a person"; others shout, "It's a fetus!" But those are linguistic games, not science. If you kill a teenage girl, it doesn't become acceptable if you shout: "It was only an adolescent!" The word you use doesn't change the reality of the person. History tells us that lots of people in the past thought blacks and indigenous Mexicans were "human," but not fully "persons." That distinction has always been a mistake, and it's one of the worst mistakes we ever make. There's no point other than conception when that developing being "magically" becomes human. Hence, there's no getting around the fact that abortion terminates a human life. So we should just be honest and admit that what's being discussed is the right to terminate unwanted human lives. And for heaven's sake, let's not muddle the issue with Orwellian doublespeak like "reproductive justice" (unless "justice" means "don't kill innocent babies") or "abortion is health care" (the kind of "care" where one person always dies). The Wall Street Journal ran an article recently about a poor, put-upon Indiana medical student's dilemma, titled: "Stay Home or Move Where Abortion Is Protected?" Where abortion is protected? H...