Miracle of Life: The Action-Packed Days of Unborn Babies

The abortion debate is picking up again today. It turns out that John Sides is spreading the same half-truths on public opinion and abortion that I debunked previously (see, "Majority of Americans Identify as 'Pro-Life'").

At issue are the recent polls by Pew and Gallup finding a majority of Americans as pro-life. As I pointed out earlier, the recent data confirm a decade-old decline among those who identify as pro-choice. The findings are bothersome to the lefties, especially "scholarly" Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money. Lemieux has dismissed the results as "outliers," despite the fact that Gallup has been asking the same question since 1995, and the data clearly indicate a decreasing proportion of Americans supporting abortion over time. Pew's data do so as well as indicated by the questionnaire page.

Also at issue is question wording, which is alleged to be "vague." Sides touches on that angle in particular. After a long review of the data he concludes:

Simply put, the Pew and Gallup findings obscure far more than they reveal ... both Pew and Gallup employ vague questions that do not easily map onto actual policy debates. Once more precise data are employed, it becomes clear that opinion strongly depends on the circumstances under which the abortion would occur.

In fact, however, the surveys are quite specific, as I noted previously.

Perhaps Lemieux and Sides want pollsters to ask, say, "do you support abortion in the case of a promiscuous 17 year-old mother of two?" Or, "do you support abortion in the case of a 19 year-old college student with three previous abortions but who now claims rape to garner more sympathy for her irresponsibility"? Don't laugh. These are by no means outlandish circumstances. Indeed, pro-abortion extremism is on the rise: Recall that Planned Parenthood has refused to report statutory rape during abortion consultations for minors, and the Texas legislature has moved to decriminalize infanticide.

Poll respondents are not dumb, in any case. When Gallup asks, should abortion be legal under any circumstances; legal under certain circumtances; or illegal under all circumstances, respondents have no difficulty thinking through the implications of the questions.

But if the leftists insist that both Pew and Gallup are methodologically flawed, that's their play. I mean, sure, it's true that a bare majority of 53 percent supports Roe v. Wade in the Gallup poll. Yet, that's hardly robust given the fact that Americans are considered less supportive of the pro-choice position since Barack Obama assumed the presidency. Leftists, frankly, are simply in denial about the public's growing skepticism of the abortion-on-demand agenda.

In a related note, the New York Times reports that President Obama called for dialogue on abortion in his commencement address at Notre Dame. And the Washington Post has the text of Obama's speech.

I'll simply close with a reminder on the bottom line on abortion: It kills. Leftists continue to spin slanderous tales about how conservatives are determined to suppress the rights of women. But what they rarely discuss are questions of sanctity of life - and that's because it's an argument they just can't win.

I just read an astonishing essay at Psychology Today on the science of fetal development in the earliest stages of pregnancy.

The title of the article is indicative: "A Fateful First Act: The Action-Packed Days a Baby Spends in Utero Influence Her Emotional and Physical Makeup for Years to Come."

The essay recounts the science showing that even within the first 40 days of pregnancy, the development of a fetus is powerfully influenced by environmental factors like environmental noise and the mother's oxygen levels. Difficulties in a fetus' brain development could later have consequences for cognitive impairment and susceptibility to disease. What is most interesting about the story is how scientists conceive of a fetus not just as a living organism, but as a developing person; and thus such a consensus makes even more grisly the arguments suggesting that fetuses are "brain dead" or other such nihilism we hear routinely among abortion-rights absolutists (for example, right here).

Note this passage from the Psychology Today piece:

Until recently, doctors believed that the journey from fertilized egg to baby followed unwavering genetic instructions. But a flood of new studies reveals that fetal development is a complicated duet between the baby's genes and the messages it receives from its mother. Based on those signals, the fetus chooses one path over another, often resulting in long-term changes—to the structure of its kidneys, say, or how sensitive its brain will be to the chemical dopamine, which plays a role in mood, motivation, and reward.

This new science of fetal programming, which investigates how in utero influences cause physiological changes that can linger into later life, is producing clues to mysterious disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, as well as evidence of the very early effects of stress and toxins. Scientists still don't know all the hows and whys of these fetal cues, but the when is very clear: earlier than we ever thought.

A Delicate Project

Our first nine months resonate for the next 70 or 80 years because the fetal enterprise is so enormously ambitious. In just 270 days, a single cell becomes trillions of diverse and specialized cells—that's more cells than there are galaxies in the universe. As in any construction project, events unfold in a highly coordinated sequence. Each cell not only has its own job to do, it spurs other cells to action—sending out chemical signals that tell its neighbors to divide like crazy or to self-destruct. So when something goes wrong it can set off a domino effect. Cells might not travel to their intended destination, or they might stop multiplying too soon, or, in the case of brain cells, they might fail to establish the right interconnections.

"We pass more biological milestones before we're born than at any other time in our lives," says Peter Nathanielsz, director of the Center for Pregnancy and Newborn Research at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. "If we do not pass them correctly, there is a price to pay."

Well, we can't pass those biological milestones if the little lives of these human miracles are destroyed. And thus the obliteration of the moral soul is the ultimate "price to pay" among pro-choice extremists.

From conception to term, abortion is murder. Our goodness as a society rests on how we protect the unborn.