Dear MSNBC: Do a series on Human Life 101

I was consideirng making that a question as a header. But there’s no question.

Not when things like this still turn up in what some people still consider ‘mainstream media.’

During a recent MSNBC show on abortion, [host] Melissa Harris-Perry made a comment that will surely make people wonder whether she has any grasp on the science behind fetal development.

Harris-Perry talked about how much it costs “to have this thing turn into a human” when referring to an unborn baby.

During the rest of her talk she “accidentally” breaks a model of a fertilized egg, claims there is no science supporting the notion that unborn children are human beings, and dismissively refers to babies.

Okay, starting with basics, women have an abortion when they discover they’re pregnant and either don’t want the child or are pressured into ‘terminating it.’ And they are aborting or terminating is a fertilized egg, which makes a woman pregnant. Which means the doctor treating her has two patients. 

A charitable presumption would be that the MSNBC host is one of those people who believes that conception, making a woman pregnant with a fertilized egg, means a ‘blob of tissue’ is there, and that by removing it, you can prevent it from becoming a baby. But if that presumption is true, such archaic thinking should exclude any candidate from the position of a major television network host if that network is pursuing honorable journalism.

As the best informed consent law in the country – which stands after multiple court challenges by Planned Parenthood and its affiliates – states explicitly:

…abortion will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.” The law required doctors to disclose that abortion may cause women psychological harm, and that the mother’s relationship with the human being she carries is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Human life is already present at conception of a fertilized egg. You can call that a person or not consider that a person. Your terminology doesn’t change the reality.  That human being either has rights or doesn’t have rights. But…isn’t that the same argument that raged over slavery?

Can we be honest about this?