By: Staff – wnd.com – July 20, 2019

The chief of a major pro-life legal team that has fought abortion across the country says politicians need to recognize the science and admit that life begins at conception.

“Despite how much politicians try to use euphemisms to deny it, every human life begins at conception, and thousands of biologists now confirm this truth,” said Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel. “It should go without saying that every unborn and born baby has value, no matter the stage or circumstances.”

He cited a relatively recent scientific assessment that revealed that 95 percent (5212 out of 5502) of biologists who participated affirmed the biological view that a human’s life begins at fertilization.

It’s a key issue in abortion, since many of those who support abortion claim they are unaware of when life begins, or they claim that it begins at birth, that the unborn child is not really a child.

But even Harry Blackmun, who wrote the Supreme Court opinion creating a right to abortion in 1973, admitted there were concerns.

He said that if the personhood of the unborn were to be established, the premise of the ruling would collapse and the unborn baby would have the full protections of the Constitution.

The study Staver cited, “Biologists’ consensus on ‘when life begins,” started out with a question of nearly 3,000 adults about who should answer the question about the beginning of life.

The overwhelming group identified were biologists.

“Indeed, the majority justified their selection by describing biologists as objective scientists that can use their biological expertise to determine when a human’s life begins,” the study said.

“Academic biologists were recruited to participate in a study on their descriptive view of when life begins. A sample of 5,502 biologists from 1,058 academic institutions assessed statements representing the biological view ‘a human’s life begins at fertilization.’ This view was used because previous polls and surveys suggest many Americans and medical experts hold this view,” the study authors explain.

“Each of the three statements representing that view was affirmed by a consensus of biologists (75-91 percent). The participants were separated into 60 groups and each statement was affirmed by a consensus of each group, including biologists that identified as very pro-choice (69-90 percent), very pro-life (92-97 percent), very liberal (70-91 percent), very conservative (94-96 percent), strong Democrats (74-91 percent), and strong Republicans (89-94 percent).

“Overall, 95 percent of all biologists affirmed the biological view that a human’s life begins at fertilization (5212 out of 5502),” the study said.

The authors noted that that particular question “as dictated the normative view that drives America’s abortion laws.”

For example, abortion was illegal at “quickening” in the 18th century and illegal at “conception” from the 1800s.

Now, there is virtually unlimited abortion in the U.S. thanks to the Roe v. Wade decision and subsequent rulings that determined no one can put an “obstacle” in front of a woman demanding an abortion.

Liberty Counsel explained it was Steven Jacobs, a University of Chicago Ph.D. candidate, who recently defended his dissertation, “Balancing Abortion Rights and Fetal Rights: A Mixed Methods Mediation of the U.S. Abortion Debate.”

It was based on the study of biologists.

Liberty Counsel explained Jacobs asked the biologists to agree or disagree with two statements: “The end product of mammalian fertilization is a fertilized egg (‘zygote’), a new mammalian organism in the first stage of its species’ life cycle with its species’ genome,” and “The development of a mammal begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.”

Ninety percent agreed with the first statement; 75 percent the second.

“Jacobs’ research also suggests that 83 percent of ‘pro-choice’ participants surveyed believe that support for legal abortion would decrease ‘if it became common knowledge that fetuses are biological humans at fertilization,’” Liberty Counsel said.

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Source: 95% of biologists: Life begins at conception – WND