“You really think that this is an image of a human being?”
If you say yes, the abortion advocate will ruthlessly mock you.
That is because the above image is not a human embryo. It is a dog embryo.
Many pro-lifers have been tricked by this hyper-dishonest, bad faith, “argument.” Truth is, it is not an argument at all. It is simply a deception.
The abortion advocate does this purely to embarrass the pro-lifer. Most often this tactic is deployed in public settings, like debates or tabling events on college campuses where there is a large audience.
The obvious framing of the debate surrounding abortion is that we are disputing the humanity of a human in the womb. Using this common understanding, the abortion advocate knows they can show an image of a mammalian embryo, and the good faith logical assumption is that it belongs to the species Homo sapiens because any other embryo would be totally irrelevant to the discussion.
This bad faith deception tactic was once used on Charlie Kirk, and ever since then abortion advocates have used it countless times.
For those of us who are not embryologists, many mammalian embryos look strikingly similar.
But what exactly is proven by deception? If an abortion advocate manages to trick a pro-lifer by showing a dog embryo, does that mean that unborn humans are not actually human? No, of course not.
A case of mistaken identity does not change reality.
For example, a popular online trend shows expert bakers who sculpt incredible lifelike replicas of household objects out of cake. It is easy to mistake these sculptures for the real item, but that does not change what the cake truly is.
In the same way, it can be easy to be deceived by images of dog or dolphin embryos that look very similar to a human embryo, but that does not change what they are.
When an abortion supporter seems a bit too eager to show you an image of a embryo and ask, “do you really think this is a human,” the odds are high that they are about to try to trick you.
Knowing about this tactic in advance is all that is needed to defeat it. Simply say, “well at a glance it looks like it could be, but many mammal embryos look similar at that stage. What species is the DNA?”
Ironically, by showing an image of a dog embryo and differentiating between it and a human embryo, they accidentally make a significant concession. They admit that the dog embryo is a dog! In the same way, they de facto admit that a human embryo is a human.
Abortion advocates would be wise to not bring up embryology in an attempt to justify abortion. There is a 96% consensus among biologists that life begins at fertilization.
Human beings do not have rights because of what we can do, where we are, or what we look like. We have rights because of what we are.
In Defense of Life,
Victor Nieves
President, Life Issues Institute
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