{"id":267873,"date":"2022-05-12T08:40:18","date_gmt":"2022-05-12T13:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=267873"},"modified":"2022-05-10T22:33:03","modified_gmt":"2022-05-11T03:33:03","slug":"pro-lifers-preborn-human-beings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/pro-lifers-preborn-human-beings\/","title":{"rendered":"Pro-lifers aren’t ‘making’ preborn children human beings – they already are"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As the abortion debate continues to rage in the wake of the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion<\/a> overturning Roe v. Wade<\/em>, a U.S. News & World Report reporter claimed to explain how the pro-life movement is working to “have fetuses seen as human beings.” Yet absent from the piece is any discussion whatsoever of scientific fact, which would have undermined the author’s entire argument.<\/p>\n

Kaia Hubbard, who frequently<\/a> reports on abortion and seems to support it, wrote of how the pro-life movement is working to “make abortion murder<\/a>.” Pro-lifers, she ominously warns, have a secret mission to make fetuses, who the abortion movement derides as meaningless clumps of cells, into actual living human beings. “[P]erhaps more quietly, they\u2019re also reframing the conversation from one that centers the woman\u2019s health to another advocating for the fetus \u2013 no matter the cost,” Hubbard wrote. “And in doing so, they\u2019re elevating a decades-long push to have fetuses seen as human beings.”<\/p>\n

Hubbard correctly pointed out that, for decades, viability \u2014 often considered 24 weeks gestation (though premature babies have survived as young as 21 weeks)\u00a0\u2014 was seen as the benchmark for when abortion should largely not be allowed. Yet many states have been trying to pass laws banning abortions at earlier gestational ages, such as 12 or 15 weeks. Though the abortion movement derides these bans as extreme, the United States is one of only a small handful of countries allowing late-term abortions; most of the world bans abortion long before 24 weeks \u2014\u00a0usually around 12 weeks<\/a>. If Roe<\/em> is overturned, Hubbard warned that “fetal personhood” would be next on pro-lifers’ agenda, so that abortion would be illegal everywhere no matter what.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0The irrefutable case for the rights of preborn human beings<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

But what is<\/em> fetal personhood? And why do so many in the pro-life movement argue that fetuses<\/em> \u2014 a scientific term denoting a period of prenatal human development \u2014 are human beings? The answer is simple, and it involves something Hubbard didn’t factor in to the equation at all: science.<\/p>\n