Because We Have to Talk About “When Life Begins”
The fall of Roe is a bad, bad thing that bodes ill for the future of democracy in America
Confidence and Joy is a newsletter by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. Subscribe here. You can also follow Emily on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook!
The fall of Roe is a bad, bad thing that bodes ill for the future of democracy in America. Lots of people will write explainers about what it means and what will happen next. What I want to contribute here is a small bit of science to help people who might be trying to have reasonable conversations with people who aren’t quite sure why “choice” should win over “life.” And the little bit of science is about the reality of what we mean when we say a fertilized egg is a “life.”
This argument is a type of “harm reduction” argument. It is not politically correct, it’s not the conversation that those of us who believe in universal bodily autonomy want to have; we can barely bring ourselves to acknowledge that anyone might waste time having it. We want to talk about the person who’s pregnant and doesn’t want to be. Caring for the needs of that living human should take precedence over anything else.
But in reality, the embryo matters more to anti-choice people than the living human who doesn’t want to be pregnant.
So we meet these people where they are.
To begin:
Around half — 30-70% (PDF) — of all fertilized eggs never implant.
That’s “conception,” according to some anti-choice folks. Not according to the medical community, but this isn’t about medical opinion, it’s about the gift of life given by God.
And if this “conception” = “a life,” then half of them die before they implant.
Dang, God. Harsh.
But wait, as they say, there’s more:
A further quarter of blastocysts — fertilized eggs that implant — self-terminate within the next four weeks (PDF).
This is often known as a “chemical pregnancy,” and if it’s life, a quarter of them die.
Oh, but we’re not done yet!
A further 10-20% of embryos self-terminate, “… about one-half being chromosomally anomalous, the remainder including those
due to known maternal causes, intrauterine infections and other environmental hazards and immunological feto-maternal incompatibilities. In a large proportion the cause remains unknown.”
Calling the 10-20% “15%,” we’re left with this:
About 68% of all fertilized eggs never make it into the 10th week of gestation.
NOTE: The days begin on the day of fertilization, which is not the same as the way your medical provider calculates your due date.
(These “days” are approximate.) (And we’re not including eggs fertilized and blastocysts implanted during IVF treatment, that’s a whole other discussion.)
If every fertilized egg is “a life,” there is horror beyond imagining happening in human wombs around the globe, a genocide of embryos and blastocysts in which fully two thirds or more of the “life” created is terminated, and it happens most often before the person even knows they were “pregnant.”
There are other conversations to have about abortion after the first trimester, but if we could all get on a same-ish page about this, we would be on the same page about 90% of abortions.
So.
If you have a loved one who doesn’t understand how abortion is not murder — and these truly are the conversations we’re going to have to have now — present them with these facts and maybe ask them to consider this:
To believe that life begins at fertilization is to believe in a God who slaughters two thirds of all human life before it makes it to the size of a kumquat.*
I know that there are absolutely people who feel comfortable believing in that God. They will hear these numbers and say, “God has a right to end pregnancies; humans do not.” And it doesn’t affect their opinion of God to consider that he kills two thirds of us long before we’re viable for life on Earth.
But is your loved one one of them? When they think about it, do they worship and love a God who “kills” so many?
When they could believe in a God who creates the potential for life, and sometimes that potential is achieved and sometimes it isn’t, and sometimes that potential is set in motion at a time when the circumstances are not right for that potential to grow closer to life.
As I said at the beginning of this piece, this is not the conversation I believe we should be having— what should be persuasive is talking about the needs of people who are pregnant and do not want to be, but it is not. People who believe a tiny innocent baby is being killed are not interested in the wellbeing or even existence of someone who is pregnant and doesn’t want to be.
So it turns out the reality of early pregnancy loss is a conversation we need to be having with reasonable religious people who could come to acknowledge that, at minimum, the vast, overwhelming majority of abortions do not end a life.
To create change on an individual basis, we meet people where they are, and if where they are happens to be “God creates life, it starts at fertilization,” then maybe some science will help.
I have successfully had this conversation with kind-hearted religious folks who say, “I didn’t realize is was that many” and made space in their beliefs for the possibility that abortion doesn’t end a life.
* If they bring up the idea that a heartbeat means a life, you can tell them heartbeats start right in the middle of that “clinical spontaneous abortion” window, when pregnancies are still being lost at a much higher rate than they are later in pregnancy. You might also can mention that we can grow a functioning heartbeat in a petri dish, and if they disapprove of scientists doing that, mention that it’s technology that can save people’s lives. “Pro-life,” right?
Questions or comments? Please email my very tiny team at unrulywellness@gmail.com
Feel free to say hello on 📷 Instagram, 🦤 Twitter and 🤖 Facebook – I don't always reply but I read everything.
Signed copies of Come As You Are can be obtained from my amazing local bookseller, Book Moon Books.
Stay safe and see you next time.