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Marco Rubio And The GOP's Dangerous Misconception On When Life Begins

This article is more than 8 years old.

"Science has decided it is human life," rebutted Rubio.

"Not at conception!" exclaimed Cuomo.

"Absolutely it has," said Rubio. "What else can it be? It cannot turn into an animal; it cannot turn into a donkey, the only thing that that can become is a human being. It's a human life; it cannot be anything else!" -- Marco Rubio and Chris Cuomo on CNN's 'New Day' on Friday.

Does human life begin at conception? For Marco Rubio and some other politicians now running for the presidential nomination in the GOP herd, the answer is yes. There is no doubt in their mind about when life begins. Amazingly despite indifference to science regarding other matters like evolution and climate change, they invoke science on behalf of their advocacy of what might best be called "conceptionalism." And given what science shows the law must protect every new life.

Those lobbying for conceptionalism aim to outlaw all abortions, no matter how an embryo is conceived. Even if a mentally ill 12-year-old woman is raped by her predatory father, killing an embryo, if one results, ought not be a legal option in their view. When life begins at conception murder is never an option, Rubio and his fellow-travelers aver.

Rubio and other conceptionists may not say or may not even know it but their position that the law must recognize conception as a full-fledged life would also mean the end of most infertility treatment including in vitro fertilization, embryonic stem-cell research and emergency contraception. Granting embryos personhood would also mean that someone who killed a pregnant woman at any stage in her pregnancy would be at risk of prosecution for a double homicide. And in those states that restrict a woman’s right to utilize a living will if she is pregnant, no living will could apply from the moment of conception—the state would determine that woman’s medical fate, not her wishes or those of her family.

So is Rubio right? Does science show that life begins at conception? Science supports no such view.

Let’s start with the gnarly matter of what is conception. Science offers no bright line. Neither do Rubio and those in his camp.

Is conception when a sperm reaches an egg, when it penetrates the shell of an egg, when genetic recombination begins, when a new genome is formed, or, when a functioning new genome is formed? Science is not a guide in this conceptual thicket so much as it is a stark reminder that nature rarely has clean boundaries.

For those trying to invoke science in defense of conceptionalism things only get worse.

Those who say life begins at conception base their claim on the assertion that every human life begins with conception. That is true. But what they fail to acknowledge is that conception does not always create a life. Conception more often fails to produce an embryo, much less a fetus, much less a baby. In fact, conception usually results in--nothing.

The pregnancy failure rate post conception, and by that I mean implantation of the conceptus, is very high, well over 70%. Every human life began with conception but not every conception begins a human life. Rubio and other conceptionists are trying to make persons out of biological entities that cannot possibly develop for a wide variety of reasons.

Why is this fact not well known? Because scientists and doctors have, sadly, held themselves aloof from the whole contentious argument over abortion. Many, I suspect, have not wanted to alienate the source of their support—Congress and state legislators—and have decided to stay out of the whole divisive issue.

Many scientists and doctors endorse the view of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), which stated in 1981 that the existence of human life at conception is a question to which science can provide no answer. Since that time, scientists and physicians have remained more or less mum on the issue of when life begins. Their reticence permits the canard spouted by Rubio and many others that life begins at conception to flourish.

While it is absolutely true that the law or theology can stipulate when life and legal personhood begin, it is also true that science and medicine have establishing facts that bear on the answers to those questions. They’re just not the facts that Rubio and other conceptionists invoke. While the facts, as the NAS noted in 1981, do not tell us what we ought to say about when legal personhood begins, they do certainly, contrary to the NAS view, lay out boundaries for what can be said about the starting point. The starting point is later than conception.

Just to reinforce the point that conception is a bad place to begin when it comes to legislating personhood sometimes, conception creates more than one life, twins or triplets, but then one of those lives is absorbed into the body of another--fetal resorption.

Not only is it unlikely that a life begins at conception, even if life begins it really is not clear how many lives start at the moment of conception until later in pregnancy.

And even if a life or some lives begin, miscarriage is common. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists anywhere from 10% to 25% of all clinically recognized pregnancies, meaning that an embryo has implanted, end in miscarriage, depending in part on the age of the woman.

The biological facts tell us that many embryos that result from conception—indeed, the majority of them—lack the capacity to become living human beings. They do not produce disabled humans. They cannot produce any sort of human life. Science and medicine know this. It just requires a bit of digging to find out that this is so.

Conception is the start of something, but it is the start of the possible rather than the actual. Presidential candidates can propose drawing lines wherever they want. But, they cannot and ought not be permitted to invoke science on their behalf when the science does not support what they say.

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