Denver, Colo., Sep 14, 2022 / 10:06 am (CNA).
Lila Rose, the founder and president of the national pro-life group Live Action, recently spoke in defense of the unborn in cases of rape and fetal anomalies to a national audience on Dr. Phil’s talk show.
In response to the talk-show host’s statement that the scientific community is divided on the question of whether life begins at conception, she countered with a powerful one-liner.
Rose asked: “In an abortion, if it’s not a human life why do you have to kill it?”
.@LilaGraceRose brings SCIENCE to Dr Phil:
96% of 5,577 biologists from 1,058 academic institutions affirmed that human’s life begins at fertilization
“If it isn’t a human life in the womb, why do you have to kill it?”
Science is crystal clear that life begins at fertilization pic.twitter.com/fZ1YkHvS9a
— Live Action (@LiveAction) September 13, 2022
Dr. Phil was joined by Louisiana State Sen. Katrina Jackson; Rose; attorney Ben Crump; and Christian Nunes, the president of the National Organization for Women.
The pro-life case for babies who are going to die
Nancy Davis and Shedric Cole, a couple from Louisiana, were denied access to an abortion after receiving a fatal diagnosis regarding what would have been their fourth child. The baby was diagnosed with acrania, a rare but fatal condition in which the fetus does not form a skull. She was advised by doctors to terminate the pregnancy but, due to a law enacted after the overturn of Roe v. Wade in the state of Louisiana, would have to travel out of state to receive an abortion.
Davis described the experience as “emotionally draining” and said that she was forced to “carry my baby, to bury my baby.”
In response to this case, Rose shared her heartfelt condolences saying, “My heart broke when I heard your story, because that’s the worst thing any mom wants to hear is that their baby is going to die.”
“My husband and I, we had a miscarriage about two years ago. They were some of the darkest days of my life and they were dark days because it was our child,” Rose added. “You know, we knew this was a baby. And I think that’s the fundamental point here is that we’re talking about a baby, we’re talking about a human life.”
“And the pro-life position is that all humans have human rights. And the first right is life. To not be killed … Nancy, you deserve better. You deserve better health care. There’s perinatal hospice, there’s palliative care so that your baby could die in the loving arms of their, of their parents instead of at the abortionist’s tools,” she said.
The pro-life case for babies conceived in rape
The focus then shifted to a 10-year-old girl who was raped and traveled from Ohio, where most abortions are illegal, to Indiana to have an abortion. Dr. Phil asked his audience members for their thoughts on the matter.
One woman directed her comments to Rose, saying, “You just want to legislate evil. That’s really how it feels when I hear you speak, especially when you’re talking about a 10-year-old girl who was raped. To hear you say that, you know, they should just have that anyway is disgusting.”
“I really think you’re a traitor to your own, and I will never be able to agree with you,” she added. “There is nothing you could possibly say to justify that level of lack of empathy.”
Rose responded: “Abortion is devastating to women’s mental health.”
The audience member interrupted, questioning, “Do you know what it’s really like to get raped and then have to have the child? What kind of trauma is that that you’re inducing on somebody?”
“The trauma is from the rape. The child’s an innocent party there,” Rose said.
“The child isn’t born yet. It’s not there,” the audience member interjected back.
Rose responded: “Our fundamental human right, that we all share in this room, is life. It’s the first human right. Laws are meant to protect the weak. In a society, who’s the weakest? Who’s the weakest in the society? A child. They don’t have a voice. They can’t speak.”
“Whether you live 10 minutes or 10 years or a hundred years, you’re human life and you have the right to not be killed. And that’s what the pro-life fight is all about,” she continued. “That’s what we’re fighting for. A culture of life where we provide real health care. You know, abortion is the intentional destruction of an innocent human life. We can do better than that.”
.@LilaGraceRose powerfully responds to abortion advocate on @DrPhil:
“Laws are meant to protect the weak. Who is the weakest in our society? A child.
Whether you live 10 minutes, 10 years, or 100 years, you’re a human and have the right to not be killed.”
RT! pic.twitter.com/IkzDnjRRXs
— Live Action (@LiveAction) September 12, 2022
The pro-life case for life from the moment of conception
The guests also debated the question of when human life begins after Dr. Phil commented that “there is no consensus among the scientific community.”
“There is, Dr. Phil. Ninety-six percent of scientists say that life begins at fertilization,” Rose stated.
A study conducted by a University of Chicago doctoral student showed that a majority of biologists believe life begins at conception. Of the 5,577 biologists who responded to a survey he sent out, 96% supported this fact.
“When do you say human life begins then?” Rose asked.
Dr. Phil replied, “Well, it doesn’t matter what I think, I don’t care what I think. What I’m saying is the scientific community does not have a consensus about when life begins.”
“A single-cell embryo is a unique, new human life,” Rose stated.
“You can go to the body of scientific literature and you can find neuroscientists who say that it begins when there is a detectable brain wave,” he said.
At this point, Dr. Phil turned his attention from Rose to his live audience encouraging them to “fact check” him, find the different definitions available from scientists, and decide for themselves what to think.
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I’m tired of listening to fraudulent science whether it has to do with vaccines, the beginning of human life, or the natural law as it pertains to males and females, etc. Besides using a bit of common sense, let’s stop perverting science for political ends.
Amen!
If it’s growing – it’s alive.
What is difficult about that?
As a scientist I will reemphasize what every honest scientist or even an enthusiast of science knows, that science, by its very nature, has absolutely nothing and can not possibly have anything to do with value judgments under any circumstances at all. Anyone who invokes “science” to support a value judgment, knows nothing about science, nothing at all.
Having said that I need to add that noting what science does not preclude in negative value judgments is worth noting for its objective facts of physical realities that correspond to authentic metaphysical and social values, and God given endowments.
Einstein spoke against bracket creep, whether by the churches or by scientists. Science is not geared to define values and ends. He wrote:
“This is where the struggle of the Church against the doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs. On the other hand, representatives of science have often made an attempt to arrive at fundamental judgments with respect to values and ends on the basis of the scientific method, and in this way have set themselves in opposition to religion. These conflicts have all sprung from fatal errors” (Albert Einstein, “Science and Religion” (1939), in Out of My Later Years, Philosophical Library, 1950).
I heard a scientist on the radio quite recently stating that man-made wombs will come into existence within the next ten years. One of the questions asked by the interviewer was at what point will you decide when a new life has come into existence?
Response; at Conception.
kevin your brother
In Christ
God bless Lila Rose. She is fearless. Her grasp of the scientific facts and her composure in the face of manipulative emotionalism and irrationalism are impressive, to put it mildly.
I haven’t watched Dr. Phil since he began making the claim that “there is no objective reality, only perception.” He is a fraud as a psychologist and looks only for ratings in his program. Contrary to “Dr.” Phil’s assertion that there is disagreement on when life begins, biology and common sense both reveal that life begins at conception. Dr. Phil may want to “perceive” differently than reality reveals, but that doesn’t make it so. There truly is objective reality, even if Phil denies it. Lila Rose is a true heroine of the ProLife movement, and I applaud her statement that abortion kills a baby, because that truly is objective reality.
“At this point Dr. Phil turned his attention from Rose to his live audience, encouraging them to “fact check” him.”
Why would he do that? Methinks it was because he knew he was losing the argument big time and he needed to get attention away from that.
If life does NOT begin at conception, then WHEN does it begin?
If it’s growing it’s alive – is it that simple?
Yes.
They forgot to debate how many angels dance on the head of a pin. The abortion promoters always use the most extreme situation to justify their evil.
Without a revealed knowledge of God, through doctrine, prayer, grace, the sacraments particularly the Holy Eucharist, persons whether or not Christian will not possess a true understanding of the sacred value of human life. And with comprehension the right to life. That there is a nexus of the infant in the womb and its Creator.
Lila Rose is what a Catholic is ordained to be. A true heroine of the faith and defender of life.
The premise of the pro-abortion argument is that the end of the life of the conceptus is the purpose of ending the pregnancy. Now, sometimes the argument is about the means by which to end the pregnancy and when you encounter that attempted dodge you find that the means, ending the life of the human being, is in service of some other end. Pregnancy, in the course of things, can end with birth. That is a termination of pregnancy that kills neither the mother nor her child. When the argument shifts to the end of NOT carrying the burden of raising the born child, and anticipating hardship for the mother, then, the trade-off is openly conceded: the life of her child in exchange for fulfilled desire of the mother to not raise her child. Sometimes this is narrowed to the end, supposedly, of the mother not living through the pregnancy itself. Again, the trade-off is conceded openly: the means, pregnancy, to the end, the birth of her child is subordinated to the means, killing the child, to the end, avoiding a perceived, or actual, burden of carrying her own child. The contrast then is between life and desire; and between a child doing as a child does, living and growing (as do we all older human beings also do by just being alive) versus the mother doing as we all do by just being alive. The unequal treatment is then brought to the foreground where the means, pregnancy, of caring for the youngest in society is contrasted with the end, birth, which is a milestone of that very means and is not in itself an end. Life begins before birth, quite obviously, and pregnancy is the early part of the means used by humankind to care for and to protect and encourage the flourishing of human beings. This is all directly supported by scientific evidence that is rock solid.
The topic of women impregnated through rape, if put aside, does not end the pro-abortion argument, does it? Tell the pro-abortion advocate that, for the sake of discussion, we can agree that rape is the exception and that choice may be reserved for such an extreme situtation. The advocate will circle-back and not accept an easy win for their argument. Instead, that exception will be treated as the general rule.
However, the mistaken premise of the rape exception is that the child is not the mother’s child but the rapist’s means of continuing the rape of the mother. Clearly, this treats the child as a violater of the mother but essentially concedes, openly, that the relationship of the two is one of mother and child. The mistaken premise confuses cause and effect. The life of the child does not cause the apprehended harm that the mother is said to experience; and that experience is real but is it caused by the child, in actuality? No, the child is innocent and while the child was NOT present nor part of the rape, the false premise that the chid continues the rape is clearly false. That the mother might experience the rape and the pregnancy as a whole, and find it difficult, tragically, to separate one from the other, the pro-abortion argument exploits the emotions, not the facts, felt both by the mother (rape vicitim) and by the individual who, humanely, empathizes with the rape victim as victim. The mother is not victimized a second time. But the feelings can be exploited to make it seem that the way to resolve the rape victim’s suffering, and to stop the effect of the rape, is to end the life of the child. This, too, is a false line of reasoning. The rapist is not the child nor is the child lan accomplice of the rapist; the emotional manipulation is really meant to treat the defender of the child’s life as an accomplice to the rape. And that line of reasoning, too, is provoundly mistaken. To stop that argument in its tracks simply point out that the pro-abortion advocate is more close to being an accomplice to the killing of the child than the pro-life advocate is to being an accomplice to the rape of the mother. While the latter harbours no ill-will and advocates no crime, no harm, the former promotes the choice to destroy an innocent human being. This openly concedes the child would be a victim of violence and the motivation is what is really the crux of the matter. If one is motivated to alleviate the suffering of the mother, then, killing the child clearly can not undo the rape nor can it perpetuate the rape.
Each pro-abortion argument eventually relies on the contrast in treatment of two human beings, mother and child.