On Tuesday, Bill Nye released a YouTube video on the topic
of abortion and specifically (supposedly) on the science of conception and
abortion. I had a friend post it on YouTube and was curious because Bill Nye
was a big part of my learning science as a kid in his role as the science guy.
However, I think my generation has forgotten that it was a role. Nye's highest level of education is a BS in Mechanical Engineering and while he does teach as a visiting professor at his alma mater, it is only in freshman Astronomy and Human Ecology classes. But because of his role in our learning science, we give
him a platform on many topics (such as his recent debate with Ken Ham onOrigins Science), the latest of which apparently is Bio-Ethics. The video is
below.
The fundamental difference in the abortion debate,
obviously, is going to be the idea of life and the definition thereof. Most
supporters of abortion have dropped the "it's not a human" argument
because it just doesn't hold scientific weight, but if someone holds that
position I can't move them off of it, nor I think can anyone else short of the
almighty. That's where the lack of dialogue on the issue comes from, a
completely irreconcilable difference in language and definitions.
But that issue aside, Nye claims that his arguments are
purely fact based and basically incontrovertible. So let's look at some of his
individual points (summarized).
"Eggs get fertilized without coming to term, we can't
prosecute people for miscarriages, thereby abortion is okay." No one is
condemning anyone for having miscarriages. In the Christian worldview (which,
let's be honest, is the only one Bill Nye cares about attacking, no one is
hitting Muslims or Orthodox Jews for also opposing abortion), the world is a
terrible place where horrible things happen because it is warped and perverted by sin. That doesn't mean that we should
intentionally make them happen. The logic here is terrible because it's like
saying that because people die of natural causes you thereby can't prosecute someone
for murder.
"Leave women's rights to women." Except if they're
pro-life, then shame them mercilessly (as does tend to happen on social media).
This argument, yet again, only means anything if you don't believe the child is
a person or has any rights. As soon as any vestige of humanity is acknowledged
on the part of the unborn it crumbles.
"White guys passing extraordinary laws." Yet
again, not a swipe at white guys, a swipe at white Christians. Which I'll cop to happily (the Christian part, I really could not care less what color skin my Christian brothers and sisters have, unless it's blue, in which case I might like you more cause that's pretty cool). Care for the unborn and children in general is a Judeo-Christian
concept which while not unheard of in other societies, is certainly uncommon to secular society. The nations around Israel practiced childsacrifice, the Romans would leave handicapped babies to die in the wilderness.
It was the Yahweh and his faithful Jews who decried child sacrifice and early Christians who saved the babies abandoned to the wild, they created the culture of care for the lives of
children in society. I am not ashamed of that in the least. Also, how are these laws extraordinary? Western culture for more than 1500 years has accepted that the killing of infants, even in the womb, is a horrific act. The current culture of acceptance in regards to abortion is the extraordinary one when it comes to the history of the last two millennia.
"A book written 5,000 years ago tells you anytime a man
and woman have intercourse it makes a baby." Bill Nye doesn't know when
the bible was written or what it teaches yet feels confident telling Christians what they shouldn't believe that it teaches. There is no implication in the bible
that sex always = baby, just that sex CAN and often does end up = baby, which I
think most everybody would agree with.
"Nobody likes abortion." And yet the official
Democratic party platform is that there should be no limits on abortion
anywhere, ever. You want to abort your 8 month baby? Cool. You want to abort
your baby because you wanted a boy not a girl? Okay. You want to abort your
potentially Downs Syndrome afflicted child (which now happens in something like 90% of cases where DS is diagnosed)? Go for it. No one
"likes" abortion except the #shoutyourabortion movement and the
ladies who videotape themselves having an abortion, smiling and giggling (since removed from youtube when it was alleged that the video was edited and sanitized in order to win a competition). I
think the old "safe, legal, and rare" slogan is being shown to be a
sham when Democratic politicians oppose making abortion clinics live up to thesame health standards as any other out-patient surgical clinic (safe) and
oppose putting any limits on it, even ones that seem logical such as outlawingpain-causing abortion methods on babies old enough to experience pain (rare).
"Rape and Incest." The MOST intense estimates put
about 2-3% of abortions as being the product of rape or incest (with the most likely being less than 1%). You don't make
a rule based on 2% of the time typically, you make it based on the 98% of the
time and then deal with exceptions or individual cases that may violate the
norm. And as for when the mother's life is in danger (which is the third in that troika though Nye doesn't mention it), I don't think there's a
thinking Christian that opposes abortion if it is the only way to save a mother's life. When you
triage patients you save whoever you can, it's a fallen world and you have to
make the best decisions you can and save who you can in terrible circumstances.
"We have more important things to be dealing
with." If you were a German during WWII would you say you had bigger
issues to deal with than the holocaust? Because for people who believe that
life begins at conception, there have been ten holocausts in the last 45 years.
Antietam was the single most deadly day in American war history, 23,000
Americans lost their lives in a single day, it was a staggering loss of life
and potential. The number of abortions from 1973-2005 is equal to 2112 Antietam
battles. One every 5-6 days for 32 years. If you believe unborn children are
human beings then there is no greater issue today (possible exception being
climate change if you also believe in that being human caused and potentially
terminal).
"You wouldn't know how big an egg was without a
microscope." Ahhh here's a good one. Unborn children don't matter because
they're too small. This argument ticks me off, because supposedly liberals
don't discriminate and yet here you're saying that a human being is less of a
human being because it's small, dependent upon someone else, or less mentally
developed. But it would be silly to apply these principles to those who have
been born right (unless they were born alive while being aborted, in which case
kill em)? Except that these arguments DO tend to start sliding this way as we
see now in the Netherlands where 42 mentally ill individuals were euthanized in
2013.
"Not giving women access to birth control." Yet
again, arguing for something no one is against. Even in the Hobby Lobby case
the business was fine with providing contraceptives, they just objected to
abortifacients (drugs that cause abortions post-impregnation, drugs that
wouldn't be needed UNLESS the egg had taken hold, as opposed to Nye's silly
line of argumentation). As far as I know, the Catholic church and Catholic
institutions are the last ones holding out on non-abortifacient contraceptives.
And even they aren't against women having access to contraceptives!!! They just
don't want to have to pay for or provide them.
"Laws that are in no one's best interest." I'd
argue that this isn't even true if you don't believe in the personhood of the
unborn. Many mothers and fathers have intensely negative psychologicalreactions post-abortion and many who consider abortion end up being thrilled
with the decision to not abort their children. So at least in THEIR cases it
seems that not having an abortion was certainly in their best interests. And is
the law forcing abortion clinics to abide by outpatient surgery center safety regulations
not in the best interest of the woman who may have died or received a staphinfection during her procedure due to inadequate health procedures? And then if
you consider the belief of the unborn being a human being, I'd go out on a limb
as saying that if that is the case it is certainly in THEIR best interests to
not be killed.
"Stop fighting. Let's work together." I hate this.
He acts like he's being rational and accepting in being willing to work with
pro-life individuals. But he's only willing to do so after belittling them
intellectually and telling them to stop holding their position or at least
acting upon it! He's basically saying, "once you see how stupid you are
and how incontrovertible my argument is, then we can work together!" So
he's only offering to work together if he gets everything he wants in the
debate and we give up our position in its entirety. How very magnanimous.
