The headline read: Elisabeth Hasselbeck returns to 'The View' and debates abortion with Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar. Admittedly I don’t know anything about these ladies.  The name Whoopi Goldberg is familiar, and I have heard about this show called “The View”.  My comments therefore are not grounded in a lot of knowledge or backstory.  The article showed up in my Google news feed and it was the title that grabbed my attention.  I can’t write about anything beyond what is in the article.

Apparently, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, was a previous co-host and returned to the Show and the topic of the Kansas’ debate on whether to keep pro abortion rights in light of the recent dismantling of the Roe vs Wade decision by the US Supreme Court.

If the reporting is accurate, the author, Suzy Byrne, wrote: “Using religion in her response, Goldberg said, "As you know, God doesn't make mistakes. God made us smart enough to know when it wasn't going to work for us. That's the beauty of giving us freedom of choice."”

I have no desire to defame Hasselbeck.  In fact, I admire her courage and I applaud her use of adoption as an alternative to abortion.  My focus is on the phrase, “Using religion in her response.” My point is that although religion could be a response to the abortion debate, it is not the best nor is it the necessary response.  Prolife is not simply a religious conviction.

Scott Klusendorf writes, “The abortion controversy is not a debate between those who are pro-choice and those who are anti-choice. It’s not about privacy. It’s not about trusting women to decide. It’s not about forcing one’s morality. It’s about one question that trumps all others.”[1]

The question is, Is the unborn a human being or not?  That is not a religious question.  At its core that is a scientific question. I don’t think there is any reason to debate the issue with someone who admits the unborn to be human and is willing to take its life.  One would hope that this approach is fundamentally wrong on any level. So the real debate between so-called pro-choice and so-called pro-life is WHAT IS THE UNBORN?

Klussendorf has written a very compelling book entitled The Case for Life.  I think someone seriously committed to do what is morally right ought to read his book. It argues extensively, this point:

“The science of embryology is clear. From the earliest stages of development, the unborn are distinct, living, and whole human beings. Therefore, every “successful” abortion ends the life of a living human being.”[2]

“Leading embryology textbooks affirm this. Keith Moore and T. V. N. Persaud, in The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, a widely used embryology text, write that “human development begins at fertilization when a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoon) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell— a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.”[3]

He goes on to quote T.W. Sdler’s Langman’s Embryology text that affirms that human life begins at fertilization.  He points the reader to a 1981, a U.S. Senate judiciary subcommittee that heard expert testimony on when human life begins. Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth of Harvard University Medical School told the subcommittee, “It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive. . . . It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception.” Other expert citations are offered by Klussendorf and are important sources for the reader to examine.

“Embryology textbooks uniformly state that new human life comes into existence upon completion of fertilization.” [4] The scientific, embryonic research supports the conclusion that life begins at conception and human beings didn’t come from a fetus but are fetuses. So, the question of enquiry is clear: what is the unborn.  The scientific (not religious) response is that the unborn at every stage are human – not mature, but a complete, whole human being in its essence.   

“From conception onward, the human embryo is fully programmed, and has the active disposition, to develop himself or herself to the next mature stage of a human being,”[5] write Robert George and Patrick Lee.

So, as much as I admire and in principle will agree with Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s argument on The View, the pro-life position is not founded on religion, but on science.  “Pro-lifers don’t look to theology to tell them these things but to the science of embryology.”[6]  Where religion comes into the discussion is what follows when one has properly heard the science.  My question is, by what code of ethics or morality is it right to kill a defenseless human being without justification?  This is where Hasselbeck is correct. “"I believe our Creator assigns value to life, and that those lives have plan and purpose over them as designed by God that are not limited to the circumstances of conception, nor the situations they're born into."

If someone properly answers the question, “What is the unborn”, the morality is clear.  And this is where Hasselbeck’s solution is totally appropriate: adoption is a better pro-choice argument.

 

 

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[1] Scott Klusendorf. The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture (Kindle Locations 201-203). Kindle Edition.

[2] Ibid, (Kindle Locations 555-557).

[3] Ibid, (Kindle Locations 565-568).

[4] Ibid,(Kindle Location 863).

[5] Robert P. George and Patrick Lee, “Acorns and Embryos,” The New Atlantis, No. 7, Fall 2004/ Winter 2005, 90-100; http:// www.thenewatlantis.com/ publications/ acorns-and-embryos.

[6] Scott Klusendorf. The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture (Kindle Locations 856-857). Kindle Edition.