The question of when human life begins is a scientific question. And science deals with facts, not feelings. Human life either begins at conception or it doesn’t. This is not the kind of thing that can be true for me but not for you. It’s not a matter of personal preference. Rather, it is an objective feature of reality.

Whenever abortion is in the news, our social media feeds fill up with folks weighing in with their opinions. When this happens, we need to be tactical in how we communicate our pro-life convictions. In fact, I’ve written a short article that I think every pro-life ambassador should read before discussing abortion online.

I recently got into a friendly discussion with someone on Facebook named John.[1] During the short conversation, John said something that surprised me. He said, “You can be pro-choice and pro-life. I am.”

This statement needed to be clarified, so I used the first Columbo question, what do you mean by that? More specifically, I asked, “What do you mean you’re pro-life with respect to the abortion issue and pro-choice with respect to the abortion issue?”

Here’s how he answered:

Personally, I believe life begins at the moment of conception. So for me, that’s when I’ve chosen to assign the definition of “a life,” purely based on my own beliefs. But not everyone shares my beliefs, nor do I expect them to: I can understand why someone who wants to look purely at the science of it can decide that an embryo is merely a clump of cells, like any other growth process in the human body. My own definition cannot reasonably and scientifically delineate when life begins….

We simply can and should not try to stamp our own choices on the hearts and minds of everyone else, and assume that they must all bend to my own version of the meaning of life. I’m happy to declare my own beliefs on this, but identifying that I’m applying a personal morality is where it ends: it’s prideful and shortsighted to assume/believe/insist that everyone else believes what I do. That’s how I can be pro-life and still honour a woman’s right to govern the processes she oversees in her own body.

This response has been called the modified pro-choice position. I think that’s accurate, but since these individuals want to wear the pro-life label, I’m going to refer to this view as the personally pro-life position. The person holding this view believes that women should have the right to have an abortion, even though he or she personally believes abortion is wrong because it kills a human being.

In a discussion on ABC’s The View, co-host Sunny Hostin described how she is personally pro-life. She said,

There are people like me, who would agree with Meghan [who is pro-life], because I am pro-life by faith. I certainly also believe that life begins at conception. But I also believe like Ana [who is pro-choice]. I don’t want to foist my beliefs on anyone else.

There are two serious problems with the personally pro-life position.

First, this view confuses objective truth claims with subjective preference claims.

The question of when human life begins is a scientific question. And science deals with facts, not feelings. Human life either begins at conception or it doesn’t. This is not the kind of thing that can be true for me but not for you. It’s not a matter of personal preference. Rather, it is an objective feature of reality.

It surprises me that so many people don’t get this. It may help to use a different scientific claim to make this clear. Imagine I personally believe the earth is flat (and that there is a vast conspiracy to trick people into believing the earth is spherical). Can the claim that the earth is flat be true for me but not for you? No, the earth is either flat or it isn’t. That is to say, either the earth is flat—and that would be true for everyone—or the earth is not flat—and that would be true for everyone. The earth cannot actually be flat for some and not for others.

Likewise, either human life begins at conception—and that would be true for everyone—or human life does not begin at conception—and that would be true for everyone.

Fortunately, we’re not left guessing when life begins. The science of embryology unequivocally confirms that a living, distinct, whole human being comes into existence at the moment of fertilization.

For example, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology—a human development textbook written for medical students—states,

Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoon development) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.[2]

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