The “pro-choice” ideologues must be really puzzled. According to a Gallup poll released last week, 51% percent of Americans call themselves “pro-life” on the issue of abortion, while 42% are “pro-choice” (see link to Gallup article down at this blog).  It is very interesting that, not only it is the first time that a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995, but also that this is a significant reversal from the results obtained just one year ago, when 50% of people were pro-choice and only 44% pro-life.

It is an irony and a mystery that this important shift takes place right at the same time when the U.S. elects who is probably the most liberal President ever, and a strong advocate of abortion, what he has affirmed in words and confirmed by actions. At the same time, the GOP is in crisis and there are no many popular pro-life politicians and certainly the numbers of those of them in public office have decreased. So, which is the reason for such change in the public opinion?

Hopefully, our ethical comprehension is evolving and we are finally recognizing the monstrosity of a practice that has terminated more than 50 million of the most innocent lives, leaving a deep scar in many mothers too. 

Many institutions that we now find atrocious were, not long ago, understood as natural and normal. Of course the example that first comes to mind is slavery, which was practiced for centuries in many different cultures, and that even some of the U.S. Founding Fathers supported. As Dinesh D’Souza reminds us in “What’s so Great About Christianity”, Christians were the first group in history to start an anti-slavery movement, which originated in Britain in the late eighteenth century, and eventually gathered force in the Unites States and some other countries in America.  The debate over slavery was originally a religious one, but that practice was finally found to contradict the natural reason and the most basic ethical principles by everyone in the western Judeo-Christian world.  Slavery was found to be wrong as a self-evident truth (borrowing here the words that Thomas Jefferson used in the Declaration of Independence to describe that “all men are created equal”). But, it was not that something originally good mutated into something wrong with time, but it was the knowledge and capacity of comprehension of the human kind what evolved, and allowed the realization of the evil and barbaric of such ancient practice.

A somehow similar evolution can be predicated of the ethical consideration of the dignity of women, who in the ancient world (including the sophisticated Greek and Roman societies) were considered inferior to men. Women were finally recognized as equal to men in the West (unfortunately, this is still not the case in some other parts of the world).  Again, it is not that the women evolved, but the ethical perception changed and a fact once out of reach for the erred and limited human comprehension, came out to light and also became self-evident.

I suspect that the issue of abortion might be following a similar path. What was first an opposition based only on religious grounds, is spreading to an ethical, political and scientific discussion. I want to stress the scientific aspect here, because I believe that science has played an essential role in the fight for the rights of the unborn, and will continue to shed more light on the undeniable truth about the beginning of life.

FOX News reports that Massachusetts Dr. Eric J. Keroack found, during a two-year study, that 75% of his patients who were unsure about terminating a pregnancy decided not to have an abortion after they opted to view ultrasound images of the fetus.  Even famous abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson, personally responsible for 75,000 abortions and one of the founders of NARAL, after having access to technological improvements (and this was already some time ago) finally confessed that “as a scientist I know--not believe-- that human life begins at conception” and became a strong opponent of abortion.

According to the Association of Pro-life Physicians’ website, “at the average time when a woman is aware that she is pregnant (fifth or sixth week after conception), the preborn human being living inside her is metabolizing nutrition, excreting waste, moving, sucking his or her thumb…As early as 21 days after conception, the baby’s heart has begun to beat his or her unique blood-type, often different that the mother’s (Moore & Persaud, The Developing Human; Nilsson & Hamberger, A Child is Born, Rugh & Shettles, From Conception to Birth).”

Of course some people (mostly from the feminist front) will argue that the baby would not be able to live outside of the mother’s womb during pregnancy, and that is why it is part of the mother.  I respond that a newborn baby would not be able to live more than a few hours after a normal birth either, without the care of the mother or a substitute. Unlike most of the animals, we humans cannot take care of ourselves until long after being born. 

It is also science – in this case genetics - that teaches us that the just conceived baby has already the complete genetic code that will determine his or her physical and mental attributes for the rest of his or her life. The only difference between a newly conceived and a fifty year-old is precisely age and nurture. Einstein was already a genius at the womb. Who knows if among those 50 million killed was the potential discoverer of the cure for AIDS or cancer?

The abortion lobby is powerful, and the economic and political interests in play are big. Therefore, this increase of pro-life supporters against all odds is certainly encouraging, especially for those of us who share the strong belief that, at some point in time - as in the case of slavery - our eyes will open, and the evil of abortion will be finally considered another self-evident truth.