My wife, Gena, and I are strong advocates for fighting for the rights of all Americans, and that includes those in the womb. We respect various opinions, but that respect was tested when we heard about California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s seven-state pro-abortion billboard crusade and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’ outlandish statement about life in the womb.
This last week, Newsom took to Twitter to boast of the billboards his gubernatorial campaign is erecting all over Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Ohio, Indiana, South Carolina and South Dakota. Newsom seeks to usurp those states governors and abortion laws by pitching California as the safe haven for those who want an abortion, while depicting citizens in those states in shackles or bondage.
Chief among Newsom’s ludicrousness is the Bible verse he quotes on the bottom of one billboard. It is Mark 12:31, where Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these.” He’s obviously citing the verse to say, “I, Newsom, am loving my ‘neighbors’ in other states by helping them to get abortions in California.” Help?
I agree with the Catholic priest and adjunct professor of theology at Belmont Abbey College in Charlotte, North Carolina, Father Matthew P. Schneider, who said Newsom’s billboards exhibit “one of the worst distortions of a Bible passage I’ve ever seen.”
“The idea that Newsom is using the words of Jesus Christ, the Holy Scriptures, to promote the killing of unborn children as somehow loving and commanded by God is quite frankly disgusting,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law & Justice, in a statement to Fox News Digital.
I’m sure if Newsom were the baby in the womb, he would take issue with his idea of what it means to love and help a neighbor. Maybe California’s governor needs a Sunday School class on the sixth commandment (Exodus 20:13), “Thou shalt not murder.”
There’s no doubt there is no closer neighbor to any pregnant woman than the baby inside her, whom we should truly love, cherish and protect always.
Again, I agree with Sekulow about Newsom’s billboard escapades: “This is a blatant, political fundraising ploy to boost his own political profile and presidential aspirations. The people are smarter than that. It just won’t work.”
As if abortion logic couldn’t get any worse, this last week Democrat gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, Stacey Abrams, made a statement about life in the womb that Gena and I still can’t believe.
Last Wednesday, news outlets revealed a video in which Abrams said at a public event with other speakers: “There is no such thing as a [fetal] heartbeat at six weeks. It is a manufactured sound designed to convince people that men have the right to take control of a woman’s body.”
“No such thing as a heartbeat at six weeks”? “A manufactured sound”? What planet is she on?
LifeNews.com responded with the facts: “The science is well established that the heart is the first organ to develop in a human being, and an unborn baby’s heart begins to beat within the first few weeks after conception.
“Secular Pro-Life recently compiled a list of quotes from textbooks, scientific journals and other expert sources that confirm an unborn baby’s heart begins to beat as early as 22 days gestation.
“For example, a pregnancy outline on the Mayo Clinic website states “the heart and other organs also are starting to form and the heart begins to beat” at about four weeks after conception.
“And a study several years ago by the University of Oxford and the British Heart Foundation suggests that the human heart may begin beating as early as 16 days after conception.
“‘The heart is the first organ to form during pregnancy and is critical in providing oxygen and nutrients to the developing embryo,’ the university researchers wrote.”
Stacey Abram’s crazy rationale reminds me of a few years ago when liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said about the fetus in the womb: “Virtually every state defines a brain death as death. Yet, the literature is filled with episodes of people who are completely and utterly brain dead responding to stimuli.
“There’s about 40% of dead people who, if you touch their feet, the foot will recoil. There are spontaneous acts by dead brain people. So, I don’t think that a response to – by a fetus necessarily proves that there’s a sensation of pain or that there’s consciousness,” the justice said.
I had to keep rereading her words because I couldn’t even believe they came out of her mouth, comparing a baby in the womb to a brain-dead adult regarding the ability to feel pain?
Like following Newsom and Abram’s ridiculous acts, immediate criticism of Sotomayor’s basic understand of science and human life filled the airways and internet, including from scholars in scientific and medical fields.
“To compare an unborn child to a brain-dead person or a corpse flouts science which tells us that at 15 weeks gestation, a baby’s organs are fully formed, her heart pumps 26 quarts of blood a day, and her lungs are already practicing drawing breath,” said Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, M.D., a radiology specialist with more than 20 years of experience.
What’s even more startling for someone of Sotomayor’s status is that she’s not even following science regarding a basic understanding of viable life and response in the womb.
Dr. Christie, who co-authored a science-based amicus brief presented to the Supreme Court in the Dobbs case, criticized the Supreme Court justice for her assertions, calling them “wholly ignorant of the tremendous scientific advances in fetal medicine.”
“As recently as last year, doctors in the Journal of Medical Ethics wrote, ‘Current neuroscientific evidence supports the possibility of fetal pain before the “consensus” cutoff of 24 weeks’ and may be as early as 12 weeks,” Christie said.
Dr. Dianne Irving, a biochemist and biologist who is a professor at Georgetown University, wrote the following about the scientific evidence for human life in the womb:
To begin with, scientifically something very radical occurs between the processes of gametogenesis and fertilization – the change from a simple part of one human being (i.e., a sperm) and a simple part of another human being (i.e., an oocyte – usually referred to as an “ovum” or “egg”), which simply possess “human life,” to a new, genetically unique, newly existing, individual, whole living human being (a single-cell embryonic human zygote).
That is, upon fertilization, parts of human beings have actually been transformed into something very different from what they were before; they have been changed into a single, whole human being. During the process of fertilization, the sperm and the oocyte cease to exist as such, and a new human being is produced.
To understand this, it should be remembered that each kind of living organism has a specific number and quality of chromosomes that are characteristic for each member of a species. (The number can vary only slightly if the organism is to survive.)
For example, the characteristic number of chromosomes for a member of the human species is forty-six (plus or minus, e.g., in human beings with Down’s or Turner’s syndromes). Every somatic (or, body) cell in a human being has this characteristic number of chromosomes. Even the early germ cells contain forty-six chromosomes; it is only their mature forms – the sex gametes, or sperms and oocytes – which will later contain only twenty-three chromosomes each.
Sperms and oocytes are derived from primitive germ cells in the developing fetus by means of the process known as “gametogenesis.” Because each germ cell normally has 46 chromosomes, the process of “fertilization” cannot take place until the total number of chromosomes in each germ cell is cut in half. This is necessary so that after their fusion at fertilization the characteristic number of chromosomes in a single individual member of the human species (46) can be maintained.
To accurately see why a sperm or an oocyte are considered as only possessing human life, and not as living human beings themselves, one needs to look at the basic scientific facts involved in the processes of gametogenesis and of fertilization. It may help to keep in mind that the products of gametogenesis and fertilization are very different. The products of gametogenesis are mature sex gametes with only 23 instead of 46 chromosomes. The product of fertilization is a living human being with 46 chromosomes. Gametogenesis refers to the maturation of germ cells, resulting in gametes. Fertilization refers to the initiation of a new human being.
(For more proof about human life in the womb, I recommend reading the article, “Scientific Evidence for the Personhood of Unborn Children,” by Wayne Grudem, Ph.D., University of Cambridge.)
Thomas Jefferson explained in the founding of our country that preserving human value and life was government’s primary role: “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.”
That is why Jefferson created and penned in his own hand the words in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government. …”
The right to life, liberty and happiness also reminded me of Justice Samuel Alito’s wisdom, when he said during Supreme Court proceedings a year or so ago: “The fetus has an interest in having a life. And that doesn’t change, does it, from the point before viability to the point after viability?”
That enduring human value and fight for life in the womb is echoed in the Bible, in Psalm 139:13-14: “For You, God, created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
(For those who are thinking of having an abortion or if you want to help someone who is thinking about it, please read this free e-copy of my friend Randy Alcorn’s small book, “Why Pro-Life? Caring for the Unborn and their Mothers.” You will also find help in Dr. James Dobson’s online article, “How to Help a Friend Who Wants an Abortion.” Further personal help and counseling can also be found HERE. )
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