One of the Progressive tropes is that conservatives are anti-science. As with everything emanating from the Left, not only is this untrue about conservatives, but it falsely implies that Progressives respect science. One only needs to see the celebration about a defeated initiative in Mississippi to appreciate how deeply anti-science the Left can be:
Mississippi voters Tuesday defeated a ballot initiative that would have declared life begins at fertilization, a proposal that supporters sought in the Bible Belt state as a way to prompt a legal challenge to abortion rights nationwide.
The so-called “personhood” initiative was rejected by more than 55 percent of voters, falling far short of the threshold needed for it to be enacted. If it had passed, it was virtually assured of drawing legal challenges because it conflicts with the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a legal right to abortion. Supporters of the initiative wanted to provoke a lawsuit to challenge the landmark ruling.
The measure divided the medical and religious communities and caused some of the most ardent abortion opponents, including Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, to waver with their support.
Opponents said the measure would have made birth control, such as the morning-after pill or the intrauterine device, illegal. More specifically, the ballot measure called for abortion to be prohibited “from the moment of fertilization” — wording that opponents suggested would have deterred physicians from performing in vitro fertilization because they would fear criminal charges if an embryo doesn’t survive.
Supporters were trying to impose their religious beliefs on others by forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancies, including those caused by rape or incest, opponents said.
My liberal facebook friends are delighted. Those I bothered to tweak a little were taken aback when I pointed out that, no matter how one feels about abortion, the biological fact is that life does begin at conception. The actual question is when we, as a society, want to give that life legal rights — and Mississippi voters agreed that, in their state, rights don’t extend to the moment of conception. The response I got when I made this point was that some of those fertilized eggs aren’t viable (which, to me, means that nature exercised her unique prerogative to snuff out nascent life), and therefore politics shouldn’t make the decision. Huh?