When we were kids we hated to see two or three guys gang up on a loner. We’d usually join in for a free-for-all.
On Tuesday evening I was invited on Court TV to discuss the wrongful death lawsuit filed by an Illinois couple whose embryo was thrown away. I had to face off with the ACLU’s non-stop talker Colleen Connell, California Attorney Gloria Allred and a hostile hostess, Catherine Crier.
Stacked Deck on Court TV
They played word games with the law, and even tried to misread the 1980 Illinois law that says that life begins at conception. As interpreted by Judge Jeffrey Lawrence II “there is no doubt in the mind of the Illinois Legislature when life begins. It begins at conception.”
Judge Lawrence says he had carefully studied the law and that he believes his ruling is absolutely correct. I had been interviewed for a Sun-Times story, and part of my statement got to the Associated Press, that the ruling is “scientifically correct: life begins at fertilization, not implantation.” That and other pro-life comments stirred up a hornet’s nest.
We’ve been doing radio talk shows as well as the segment of “Court TV” for my audacity to agree with science, and the Illinois state law on when human life begins. It is obvious to many that the abortion crowd is running scared.
Public Are Learning the Truth
Nothing seems to be going their way, as the public is getting educated as they are exposed to the scientific evidence that proves beyond a doubt that a new human life begins at the beginning—fertilization., and not at a later date that makes room for outrageous evils to be visited upon these helpless human beings.
At one point the hostess of Court TV asked me if a couple had ten eggs fertilized, kept one, and had the other nine destroyed, would they be guilty of murder. I answered, “Of course.” The three gasped in horror from their various stations in California, Chicago and New York.
After the show we got a few e-mails running two to one “pro-embryo” even though the proper term is “blastocyst,” and one bizarre letter threatening to give the death penalty to women who miscarry.
Letters to the editors in Wednesday’s Chicago Sun-Times, except for one are all on this topic. One letter defends the judge, while three are all the old canards about having to report miscarriages or go to jail, but one, while sarcastic, does say that if the couple wins the wrongful death suit against the clinic for discarding the embryo they wanted to implant, then they should be charged for the wrongful deaths of the eight discarded embryos they didn’t want. There is logic in the suggestion, even if the writer is trying to make a different point.
There’s also the old “an acorn is not an oak tree” ploy, which we’ve heard a million times and which you’d think a doctor would be embarrassed to use. But he does.
We like Stephen Baker’s ominous warning to the abortionists:
An Illinois judge is allowing a couple to proceed with a wrongful death suit against a fertility clinic for the negligent destruction of a fertilized embryo . . . I do not know where the prosecutions would end; I do know that the legal bases for them are already being laid one brick at a time.
The Truth Will Out
There is a saying that the truth will out. The truth is all on our side. A quick reading of any medical book on embryology makes is crystal clear that a new life begins when the sperm and egg unite.
So much is now known about DNA, hereditary traits of both parents and generations before, the chromosomatic make up of the new life, that there is no way to deny that life begins at fertilization. Among the best books on fetal development is Alexander Tsiaras’ From Conception to Birth: a Life Unfolds.
A Chicago Sun-Times editorial Tuesday insists that cells in a Petri dish don’t add up to a human being. They call Judge Jeffrey Lawrence’s decision “outrageous,” yet present nothing but problems that this decision would cause. What is outrageous is this weak, confused editorial.
