Peter Bromberg's UnBlog

Science tells us unequivocally that as soon as the first embryonic cell division takes place, we have a human life - separate and distinct from the mother. This is not a religious issue - it is one of biological scientific fact. Any biologist in the world can tell you that a mammal’s life begins when the sperm from the father unites with the egg from the mother.  This fact is very inconvenient for those who want to treat embryonic and fetal human beings as property. The real argument in the abortion debate is whether or not this human being is a "person," with all the legal rights and protections of  "personhood". Those who traffic in human tissue argue that he or she is not. This is the same argument used in the Dred Scott decision in which the Supreme Court of the United States declared that black Americans, though human, are not "persons" under the law. As long as "personhood" is denied to human beings in their embryonic and fetal stage...

  This subject comes up repeatedly, and because I have a number of liberal friends who challenge me on it from time to time, I thought it would be appropriate to summarize my views again. First and foremost, I do not base my pro-life stance on religion. I am about the most unreligious person you will ever meet. I'm not an atheist, but my beliefs in a Supreme Being certainly didn't come from attending church or synagogue. They came from science . Science - that is biomedical science - tells us that once the very first cell-division takes place in a fertilized ovum, it meets all the scientific qualifications for a developing human life. Period. You don't need to wait until it develops a heartbeat. In the very first hour, it's a developing human being completely distinct from the mother, with it's own DNA. Therefore, as caring human beings, we must provide it with the same protections and rights as any other human being. To me, this renders all these progressive li...

Abortion is unlike any other issue debated today. Millions of American women have aborted a child, and the pain, loss, and emotional need to justify what was done, both on the part of the mother and on the part of her loved ones, is strong and deep. This means that, in any debate, you may face an invisible thumb on the scale so that even the best logic will fail to persuade. The best you can do is arm yourself with the facts and deliver them in what you hope will be a winning way for your audience -- meaning you will need to make your case, in most instances, not in the language of faith or religion but in the language of the post-modern secularist. Arguing from Science The "classic" arguments from the other side collapse under the weight of science . Establishing the evidence of the beginnings of human life will ground your argumentation in science, giving you a much firmer foundation for additional arguments and preempting the charge that you are basing your position on fa...