"After fertilization has taken place, a new human has come into being"

Ryan Bomberger writes at Town Hall,

Most Americans should know by now that NPR stands for National Prochoice Radio. They rarely ever try to appear objective on abortion.

...As a pro-life factivist who was conceived in rape yet adopted and loved, I value both the evidential and the emotional. I appreciate Kojo Nnamdi, the host of The Kojo Nnamdi Show, for allowing an actual discussion about Planned Parenthood. But it was two against one: two staunchly pro-abortion perspectives and one unapologetically pro-life perspective.

...When I challenged why news media never asks why every major medical service has been plummeting at Planned Parenthood, neither the host nor the liberal legislator expressed any concern. It’s a revelation that is nothing new to pro-life advocates. Politics often renders facts meaningless. Liberals are just fine with Planned Parenthood doing 519,581 fewer breast cancer screenings per year since Cecile Richards took over as president of the abortion chain in 2006. Liberals are just fine with the alleged “leading women’s health care provider” providing less care to women, serving 670,540 less patients per year since 2006. Liberals are just fine with prenatal care virtually being aborted (only 0.1% of their services) at Planned Parenthood because “choice” doesn’t really mean options once a woman rejects abortion.

At 11 minutes into the interview, Kojo asked me: “What is it that you object to about Planned Parenthood’s existence?” I had a simple and direct answer: “They kill human beings.” As a factivist, I don’t play the game of semantics. They want to talk euphemistically; I’ll speak honestly. That led into a debate about whether or not the unborn child is human. Both the Delegate and Kojo were incensed that I spoke in scientific reality: the life within the womb is human. Elementary children understand this.

Dr. Jérôme Lejeune, a physician and geneticist who made history by discovering Trisomy 21—the gene that causes Down Syndrome, had this to say about when human life begins: “To accept the fact that, after fertilization has taken place, a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or of opinion. The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a metaphysical contention. It is plain experimental evidence.” Embryologists agree. There’s no question when life begins, and no question that that life is human. Pregnancy is a wonder to be celebrated, not a disease to be eliminated. I highly recommend EHD.org to any pro-abortion liberal who wants to pretend the debate over abortion is about a non-human clump of cells. Caution: it’s unbiased science about human development.

Abortion advocacy is predicated on the belief that we are not created equal. As someone who is biracial (black/white), the irony is not lost on me that Kojo doesn’t see the striking parallels between abortion and slavery. That became another fiery moment during the debate. To illustrate how absurd it was to suggest that taxpayer dollars don’t pay for abortions, I suggested a scenario where the KKK was federally funded. Would we believe, then, that taxpayer dollars weren’t used for lynchings? Would anyone buy that argument? Fire erupted. I was cut off and not allowed to explain the history, you know, because context never matters in the land of liberalism. Never mind that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, spoke to a KKK gathering and many other groups like it. She boasted of this in her own autobiography, which is affirmed in this Planned Parenthood PR piece that tries to dispel the anti-human eugenic worldview of their perpetually celebrated founder.

In the end, the $553.7 million that Planned Parenthood received last year in taxpayer funding paid for their abortion lobbying, their abortion advertising (key component being their own website that heavily promotes abortion), their abortion facilities, abortionists’ salaries, and the equipment used to commit the abortions. That money also went into funding the campaigns of pro-abortion liberals who turn back around and defend Planned Parenthood, no matter what.

Listen to the interview. I hope it inspires you to combat #fakenews and our nation’s leading abortion chain’s planned propaganda. Kudos to The Kojo Show for delivering the dialogue, unedited, so that people can be proactive and come to fully-informed conclusions about the social injustice of our day. Only those who have something to hide, back out of opportunities to face their challengers. I’m not surprised that Planned Parenthood ran from a battle. They’re used to taking on the defenseless who have no voice and no ability to fight back. But I’ll always fight for them.

Read more here.

"We should treat one another as the priceless beings we appear to be, and care for our rare cosmic home, the Earth."

Howard A. Smith writes at cosmosnautil.us.com, about the role of earthly humans in our universe.

...From a purely scientific perspective, recent books and papers have shown that that it takes much more than a hospitable environment for life even to arise, much less to evolve and survive to become intelligent. At a minimum, it takes billions of years of relatively stable conditions. Any putative planet must at least be in a stable orbital system around a star that is neither short-lived nor an emitter of toxic X-rays. Numerous evolutionary biologists, writing on the remarkably contingent nature of the evolution of humanity, have added a biological caution: Even on the Earth, if evolution were repeated, it is not likely to produce intelligent beings again. Thus, even though the processes at work around the universe are more-or-less similar, some events are less likely than others to occur. Until we know more, we must acknowledge that the evolution of intelligent life could be the result of an astronomically unlikely sequence of events.

Astronomers using NASA’s Kepler telescope and other facilities have found over 3,000 exoplanets so far, and even determined many of their sizes and masses. The discoveries have been a remarkable achievement, but no surprise to my colleagues or me. After all, we expected them. What was surprising is that we also expected them to resemble the solar system, but many don’t. In fact, the single most remarkable discovery about exoplanets is their exotic variety. Among the new planets are some Earth-sized ones in their “habitable zones” (the habitable zone is the range of distances from the star where water, thought to be essential for life, can remain liquid). Even more exciting, the statistics so far imply there could be a lot of them. But Earth-sized by no means Earth-like. Venus and Mars are Earth-sized and in the habitable zone. Moreover, most of the currently known Earth-sized exoplanets orbit around stars that are neither like the sun nor particularly hospitable. The nearby star Proxima Centauri is one such example. Its active winds and X-ray radiation probably inhibit life from forming on its recently discovered, nearly Earth-sized planet that orbits it every 11.2 days.

All the observations so far are consistent with the idea that humanity might not be common. Moreover, we are unlikely to find out one way or the other for millennia, so this conclusion will remain a distinct possibility for a long time. I call this the Misanthropic Principle.

...That the universe appears to be fantastically finely tuned for intelligent life is not particularly controversial, and is the second piece of evidence related to the end of Copernican Mediocrity. But, you might ask, why is the universe so perfect?

I am an experimental scientist because I love discovering the world and its often surprising, unexpected, features. I think it is good advice not to make too many assumptions, and presuming we must be commonplace is an assumption. Of course, presuming we are rare is another. Instead, we must learn from nature with an open mind. I think the evidence, and the simplest conclusion, is that humanity is not ordinary and we may have a significant cosmic role. There are, therefore, ethical issues to consider, and religion can contribute a meaningful voice to this discussion. We should treat one another as the priceless beings we appear to be, and care for our rare cosmic home, the Earth. Modern science may have prompted this re‐evaluation, but addressing it will require the best of all our human abilities.

Read more here.

"My Mom packed a Bible"

h/t Scott Ott