Near the beginning of 2019, several news sources began to report that abortion was the leading cause of death worldwide during 2018. Breitbart reported, “There were more deaths from abortion in 2018 than all deaths from cancer, malaria, HIV/AIDS, smoking, alcohol, and traffic accidents combined.”1
Snopes quickly ran a rebuttal.
The Snopes article stated that to make such a claim was a “political position, one which is at odds with the scientific/medical world. The medical community does not confer personhood upon fetuses that are not viable outside the womb….”2 That statement is simply false.
C.W. Kischer, who was a professor of anatomy and human embryology, made the sweeping statement, “Every human embryologist, worldwide, states that the life of the new individual human being begins at fertilization (conception)…. We exist as a continuum of human life, which begins at fertilization and continues until death.”3 Dr. Jerome LeJeune, who was a pediatrician and professor of genetics in Paris, testified before a Congressional subcommittee, saying, “after fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being” and that this “is no longer a matter of taste or opinion,” and “not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence…. Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception.”4 Since the definition of a person is a human being, science and medicine say that a human being, a person, comes into existence at conception. It is not pro-life people who are at odds with the scientific/medical world. It is pro-murder people who are anti-science and anti-medicine in this matter and it is the Snopes article that is taking a political position. Who does the article cite for support? Two sources were the United Nations’ WHO, a political organization, and also Guttmacher, which is a pro-murder organization, a political organization. Does anyone spot bias?
The article went on to list religion, philosophy, science, and other areas as giving no clear answer as to when “personhood begins”. It then quoted another article saying, “As scientists have peered into wombs with ultrasound and looked directly at sperm entering an egg, they’ve found that all the bright lines they thought existed dissolving.” That’s simply not true either. A scientist named Coy wrote in 2012, “The oviduct or Fallopian tube is the anatomical region where every new life begins in mammalian species. After a long journey, the spermatozoa meet the oocyte in the specific site of the oviduct named ampulla, and fertilization takes place.”5 If anything, the truth is exactly the opposite of the Snopes’ article. Science has simply piled evidence on top of evidence that humans come into existence at conception.
Let’s take a look at another part of the same sentence we just examined. Bethania Palma wrote, “Stating that abortion is the ‘leading cause of death’ worldwide (as opposed to a medical procedure) is a problematic pro-nouncement….” Here, the pro-murder piece seeks to cover up the true nature of abortion by speaking of it as if it were merely a medical procedure. This is a common practice by pro-murder advocates as they seek to conceal the truth. The truth is that abortion is a medical procedure wherein an unborn human being is deliberately killed to end a pregnancy. Palma, on Snopes, sought to take out what happens to the unborn child in abortion indicating that abortion was not a cause of death, but a medical procedure.
The Snopes article then went on to quote an article on Wired, which said, “When life begins is, of course, the central disagreement that fuels the controversy over abortion.” That’s totally false. Professor Hymie Gordon of the Mayo Clinic testified before a Senate committee in 1981, saying, “By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception” and “unequivocally, that the question when life begins is no longer a question for theological or philosophical dispute. It is an established fact that all life, including human life, begins at the moment of conception.”6
The article then quoted biologist Scott Gilbert as saying, “The entity created by fertilization is indeed a human embryo, and it has the potential to be human adult. Whether these facts are enough to accord it personhood is a question influenced by opinion, philosophy and theology, rather than by science.” What Palma does (and other pro-murder advocates frequently do) is a bit deceptive, shifting from one word or phrase to another as if they are the same. She wrote “…no definitive answers as to when personhood begins…” and then quoted as proof “When life begins” followed in the same quote by “when does a fetus become a person”.
Science does say that the life of a new human being begins at conception as already proven. Many similar quotes could be given that say the same thing. What’s a person? “A human being regarded as an individual,”7 says one dictionary. “A human, an individual,”8 says another. “A human being as distinguished from an animal or a thing,”9 says a third. A human being is a person and a person is a human being. Therefore, when science says that a human being comes into existence at conception, it is saying that a person has come into existence then.
By hurriedly posting this article to counter a claim about the number of abortion murders worldwide in 2018, Snopes showed its bias, lack of objectivity, and inaccuracy in an article so flawed. Ironically, on the same page as the article was this, “Snopes.com has long been engaged in the battle against misinformation….” I now wonder how much bias and misinformation is in the other articles they post in which they have a vested interest like they do in abortion.
Let the Snopes reader beware!
Dennis Lange
1 https://www.breitbart.com/health/2018/12/31/abortion-leading-cause-of-
death-in-2018-with-41-million-killed/
2 https://www.snopes.com/news/2019/01/03/abortion-leading-cause-of-
death/
3 Christine Watkins, editor The Ethics of Abortion (New York: Greenhaven
press, 2005). http://clinicquotes.com/embryologist-everyone-knows-life-
begins-at-conception/
4 http://www.epm.org/resources/2010/Mar/8/scientists-attest-life-
beginning-conception/Report, Subcommittee on Separation of Powers to
Senate Judiciary Committee S-158, 97th Congress, 1st Session April 23-
24, 1981.
5 Coy et al., Roles of the oviduct in mammalian fertilization, REPRODUCTION
144(6):649 (Oct. 1, 2012).
6 Report, Subcommittee on Separation of Powers to Senate Judiciary
Committee S-158, 97th Congress, 1st Session 1981.
http://naapc.org/why-life-begins-at-conception/
Part was found above and part was found the book: The Life and Death
Debate: Moral Issues of Our Time by James Porter Moreland, Norman L.
Geisler, p.34,35.
7 https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/person
8 https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/person
9 http://www.dictionary.com/browse/person
