March for Life Unveils 'Unique From Day One' Theme Arguing That the Pro-Life Movement Is Pro-Science

The March for Life unveiled their theme on Capitol Hill Thursday, “Unique From Day One: Pro-Life is Pro-Science.” The organization’s president Jeanne Mancini emphasized the growing body of scientific evidence that human life begins at conception.

“Our DNA is present in the moment of fertilization and no fingerprint ever, past, present, future is like yours and that’s what it means to be unique from day one,” she told reporters at the Capitol Hill event.

Mancini referenced former President Barack Obama dodging the question of when life begins, arguing that his response was not backed up by science.

“Consider in 2008 when President Obama was famously asked when does life begin,” she said, “and we can all remember he dodged the question by answering that was above his paygrade, he didn’t know and yet while that conveniently gives cover for someone who advocates for the destruction of human life in its earliest stages, scientifically it’s not factual.”

Mancini pointed out that just three weeks after conception, the fetal heart begins to beat and at eight weeks of pregnancy, “the baby’s moving around even though mom can’t quite feel that yet, by the tenth week of pregnancy, the little fingers and toes are forming.”

Dr. David Prentice, the Vice President and Research Director for the Charlotte Lozier Institute and the Adjunct Professor of Molecular Genetics at the John Paul II Institute, followed Mancini’s announcement by pointing to the consensus in the scientific community that life begins at conception.

“The mammalian body plans start being laid down from the moment of conception, your world is shaped in the first 24 hours after conception,” he said. “These are the scientific facts and this is a consensus really in the scientific world. The arguments aren’t about biology. This is accepted science and has been for decades.”

Prentice went on to quote world-renowned Irish embryologist Ronan O’Rahilly, who helped develop the Carnegie stages of human development.

"Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed,” O’Rahilly wrote.

He also noted that both the National Institute of Health and the National Academy of Science refer to “the developing organism,” not a random collection of cells.

Prentice also cited the story of Micah Pickering, a now six-year-old boy who was born prematurely at 22 weeks gestational age (20 weeks), defying conventional wisdom about viability.

He referenced the 1999 corrective surgery on Samuel Armas for spina bifida at 21 weeks in utero. A photographer captured the amazing moment that Samuel reacted to the doctor’s touch and grabbed the doctor’s finger.

Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, a radiologist and policy adviser for the Catholic Association, also spoke about the science of fetal development and the strides made in seeing the stages of growth.

“For us to believe what the pro-abortion movement tells us about early human life and the flourishing of women and the decency of our culture requires blindness, deafness, and silencing of the truth,” she argued. “Modern science has changed everything, It has opened our eyes, it’s opened our ears, and it’s allowed us to speak the truth with perfect confidence.”

“A baby’s growing in the uterus and we know it because we see it,” she said, “fetal ultrasound was, I believe, a game-changer.”

Christie’s belief that fetal ultrasounds have revolutionized the way people look at a pregnancy is not a unique one.

Earlier this year, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” argued that 3-D ultrasounds have changed people’s beliefs on late-term abortion.

"You are seeing poll numbers move on abortion for banning abortions after 20 weeks,” he said. “Why? Because for the past decade, younger Americans have been going in and they have been seeing 3-D imagery where they can look into the womb."

Towards the end of her presentation, Christie played a fetal heartbeat at three weeks post-conception.

The 46th annual march is scheduled for Jan. 18, the anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion.

I agree! It’s personally quite devastating as the 2 who I think are the most unrepentant are the closest to me (family) - and this inability to truly connect with spirituality is very, very sad. I mourn these lost children, even if they won’t - as I’m sure I’ll see them again!

I see a lack of true faith and selfishness as the very root of this evil.

These women will never see abortion as THEIR fault - they see it as some kind of “them or me” thing where they think they were completely entitled, and justified, to choose themselves. I cannot say that I understand that point of view - but it’s how they get through life, and not just with regards to this issue.

But the 2 slightly repentant women that I know are kind of scarier cases because both are generally pretty good women - one did go on to have 2 kids in addition to her stillborn at 20 weeks - and while drinking and infidelity did plague her for years, she is a good person who always tries to give to others before herself. But she has not asked herself if she has committed murder, or if she needs to somehow atone - although she may have gone through that a little when she lost her baby at 20 weeks.

The media has done a good job of presenting the ridiculous notion that babies are better off DEAD than with an unfit mother, or being adopted out. And that’s certainly something all of these women used to help convince themselves that this was a “good” choice. One of the real crimes is that most girls have heard of Planned Parenthood, and few know that there are pregnancy resource centers that will help you with an unplanned pregnancy.

I read that the majority of abortions are pressured or coerced - I even saw that they should renamed “Woman’s Choice” “Parent’s Choice” or “Guy’s Choice” - which is interesting. There’s no doubt that several of the women I know felt pressure from family or the guy to get an abortion. But in the end, a lack of true faith in God - in his creation, in his love - and in living by his laws - are what led each of them to commit this heinous act (at least 2 of them had multiple as well...)

Before Roe v. Wade there was never a personhood argument; it was only introduced afterward as a canard to make the decision to have an abortion a little more palatable. The same thing happened with Dred Scott. “He’s not a person,” they claimed, “he’s black. He’s not a person, though he’s a human technically; but that’s just a little detail. It’s not significant.”

For your thoughtful consumption:
https://www.str.org/articles/fetal-personhood-it-s-simple

“Personhood is not a separate, added quality that gives human beings significance. It is a property that is essential to being human. Humans are personal beings. It’s part of an inseparable package. For example, an essential part of being a sphere is to have volume. A sphere without volume is not a sphere, but a circle. All spheres have volume. In the same way part of what being human entails is being a personal being.”

https://www.str.org/blog/are-you-a-person

“Whether or not “personhood” has been scientifically defined, what’s the difference between being human and being a person?”

Your kidney is “human”, but it isn’t a human *being*. You can’t murder a kidney. At some point in development, be it conception or birth, somewhere in between or somewhere afterward, we become members of the human community, with “inalienable rights”. I can’t imagine how that can be exclusively a scientific question.

“Personhood is not a separate, added quality that gives human beings significance.”

That argument is somewhat tautological. In this context “person” and “human being” are two terms for exactly the same thing. So what have you proven? The important question is when, exactly, does a human egg become a human being? Is it when it becomes “viable”? When it’s “inevitable”? When it’s capable of free will? When it looks like a person? When it looks too cute to harm?

According to US law, when most of the head of a developing human “something” is outside of its mother’s body, it suddenly, mystically, becomes a human being, endowed with full human rights. This arbitrary and quasi-religious definition is sanctified as “settled law”. That’s sure to cause bitter problems, and it does.

All of that is why this push to recognize that one becomes a human being at conception is most scientifically and logically sensible. Other reference points along the development curve are too arbitrary in nature to even BE “points” at all, and the “magic birth canal” argument currently codified in Law is simply ridiculous on its face. The notion that one transitions from “not a human being” to “a human being”; from “having no rights” to “having rights” by passing through a tube — utterly stupid.

On that score, I would suppose that passing Eastward through the tunnel beneath the English Channel might make me a Frenchman endowed with all the legal trappings of a citizen of that country. It’s simply a preposterous idea.

No, FAR better to establish a definable, recognizable, testable, instant in time where one actually can be legitimately construed as having BECOME a “human being”; and the moment when all the necessary DNA that makes you you is first brought together is the only moment that meets those criteria, and that is conception.

Now too, as you point out, “person” and “human being” are two terms for exactly the same thing in context to speaking of the personhood of human beings; that one is a “person” is inherent in that one is a “human being.” So, when the egg becomes a human being is also when the egg becomes a person endowed by [his] Creator with certain inalienable rights; life chief among them. And science is unequivocal in asserting that the egg becomes a human being at conception, as that is the earliest definable instant where all of the requisite DNA is present together.

“All of that is why this push to recognize that one becomes a human being at conception is most scientifically and logically sensible.”

I think you make an interesting point if you add that it is *legally* sensible, a clearly definable milestone, before which (nearly) everyone would agree there was not a human being, and after which there is a moral danger that killing would amount to murder.

Still, is it a “self-evident truth” that a fertilized egg is a human being, and to kill it is murder? That still seems to me to be a matter to be argued or a matter of faith, not something immediately self-evident.

Let’s say that fertilized egg divides a few times, and then splits into twins, a non-hereditary phenomenon. Was it always two people, or did the moment of “conception” in that case begin with the splitting? If you chemically thwarted the blastocyst from splitting, did you “murder” one of the two twins? Which one? Reasoning of that sort leads me to think of a fertilized egg as a “potential person” rather than a full fledged “person”.

I don’t mean to be argumentative; we seem to be very nearly on the same page. Ultimately, though, I don’t think appeals to logic or science are going to settle the argument about abortion. I think what will win the argument in the end will be appeals to the heart, not the head.

You are unfortunately correct.
The Catholic brand has been ruined in light of the widespread sexual abuse of thousands of innocent children by thousands of pedophile priests worldwide fully supported by Vatican hierarchy.

To attone Catholics should support the prolife movement, no doubt.
However, Catholics would do well to not reveal their affiliation with Vatican’s criminality in order to protect the real good that Prolife supporters intends.

RE: “We go to the March but I believe all the Catholic imagery dilutes the message and turns off non Catholics”

“I don’t mean to be argumentative; we seem to be very nearly on the same page.”

Yes, I think so.

“Ultimately, though, I don’t think appeals to logic or science are going to settle the argument about abortion.”

That is certainly the case if people do not think carefully about the issue, and consider it from several angles, as we have been.

“I think what will win the argument in the end will be appeals to the heart, not the head.”

Well, it is true that emotional appeals are compelling. God knows the left has been relying on them heavily in a near-vacuum of supporting facts. My thinking is that the most successful argument will target BOTH, linking an emotional appeal to the heart with supporting facts for the head to chew on.

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