On April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day launched the modern environmental movement to protect and power positive change for “people and planet,” and purportedly this continues to be the mission.
However, the environmental movement’s genuine aim stands in stark contrast to their child spokesperson and well-orchestrated public professions about saving future generations of human beings. The environmental movement’s leadership, priorities and standards have consistently demonstrated a singular reverence for and desire to protect the earth at the expense of humankind, and the movement’s distorted belief that abortion is a legitimate strategy to control population growth exemplifies this harmful and flawed principle of their world order.
Earth Day’s founder and hero of the environmental movement, the late Senator Gaylord Nelson, explicitly advocated for limits to population growth, especially through abortion; he viewed abortion simply as “a highly effective method in the armory of population control.” During a CNN town hall event in September, Senator Bernie Sanders echoed Nelson’s belief that abortion is an essential mechanism to prevent human reproduction and battle human overpopulation, and confirmed it is a “key feature” of his Green New Deal to save our species from “climate catastrophe.”
Environmentalists may not put a dollar figure on human life, but they do attach an equivalent environmental value (e.g., a carbon factor). Environmental metrics unfailingly reward those lawmakers who advance population control measures vis-a-vis abortion (e.g., federal funding for abortion) and dole out negative scores to those who vote “yes” on matters that safeguard unborn human lives (e.g., a vote to confirm Justice Kavanaugh). Interestingly, climate advocates were nearly unanimous that Sanders’ plan was the best among the field and Greenpeace gave Sanders the only “A” on their 2020 climate scorecard.
This notion that abortion is pro-environment (for “people and planet”) depends upon fake science, the scientifically inaccurate premise that human reproduction occurs at birth and thus some human beings are not fully human (i.e., instead there are pre-persons, potential-persons)—and as such are expendable. Unfortunately, this absurd idea has spread to many people and has infected humankind. According to a recent poll, 44% of Americans do not know that a human fetus is a human being and it is estimated since 1980 more than 1.5 billion human lives have been ended by abortion.
Contrary to the environmental movement’s dehumanization narrative, science knows that in sexual reproduction a human being begins to exist at fertilization — not at birth — and then he or she continues to grow and develop as the same, fully human organism throughout the continuum of human life. Birth does not transform a human being into a more fully human being or a “bunch of cells” into a new member of the human species. Human embryologists know that “birth is merely a dramatic event during development resulting in a change of environment.”
Thus, a human embryo or a human fetus is a whole, individual and living human being, and if the accurate objective science is used instead of the “science” propagated by the likes of Earth Day et al., then clearly all existing human beings are human persons, including all living human embryos and human fetuses.
Abortion does not prevent or terminate a “potential human life.” Rather, it ends the life of an actual human being during his or her embryonic or fetal period and prevents the new individual from reaching future developmental milestones, including birth and beyond. Consequently, abortion is anti-people, anti-environment and is not a valid solution in terms of curbing population growth any more than infanticide, etc. Or, are environmentalists suggesting that, for example, human adults are disposable as well?
Human beings are the most successful, influential species on the planet. Jane Goodall stated humans are “the most-clever species ever to have lived.” Plus, our humanity is what we all have in common, from a single-cell human being to a 100 trillion cell human adult, and we are the only species that has the innate biological capacity to “save the planet.” The environmental movement’s science denial regarding the fundamental scientific facts of human embryology is a contradiction, as well as a serious and growing threat to our species and ultimately to Earth.
While the World is chanting “Stay home. Save human lives.” amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and making unprecedented sacrifices accordingly, climate activists are stalling human life-saving bills (e.g., CARES Act) to advance climate-related demands and pondering how they can engender an immediate, revolutionary coronavirus-like response to the “climate crisis.”
It may help to recognize that this same erroneous environmental dogma, that humans are inferior, even expendable to “save Earth,” is the flaw that has undermined the modern environmental movement for the past 50 years, and if humans are to collectively respond to the collective threat of climate change, the environmental movement needs to develop a new paradigm: people — all people — over planet.
Brooke Stanton is the CEO of Contend Projects, a registered 501(c)(3) education organization spreading the basic, accurate scientific facts about when a human life starts and the biological science of human embryology.