Adobe Stock
Teaching young people the basic biological facts of prenatal development may be one of the most effective ways to advance the pro-life cause, according to pro-life leader Ryan Denison.
In a recent essay published in The Daily Article, Denison pointed to a new Iowa law requiring public schools to incorporate prenatal development into their science curriculum. Starting in fifth grade, students will now learn how life begins at fertilization, how organs form, and how the unborn child grows over time.
“If all of that sounds like something that should already be taught in a basic biology class,” Denison said, “you’re not wrong. Sadly, it seldom is.”
While a handful of states offer similar content as electives, Iowa becomes just the sixth to mandate it. The legislation’s authors said the purpose is to highlight “the humanity of the unborn child by showing prenatal development, starting at fertilization” — a framing that Denison believes gets to the heart of the debate.
He said that greater awareness of fetal development may help correct common misconceptions.
“[M]ost Americans have different views on the humanity — or at least on the value — of the unborn child based on how far it has developed,” he wrote. “But would that change if people believed that life begins at fertilization?”
He cited a global study of more than 5,500 biologists, 96 percent of whom affirmed that life begins at fertilization. Yet even with that overwhelming scientific agreement, public understanding lags behind — only 38 percent of Americans share that belief.
What’s more, Denison noted that even among the biologists surveyed, 85 percent still identified as pro-abortion, indicating that agreement on when life begins doesn’t always translate into pro-life convictions.
“Still, it’s an important piece to the puzzle and, when combined with the rest of the proposed curriculum, it could make an enormous difference in the number of people who choose life,” he said.
That’s why he believes education plays such a vital role.
“Teaching kids that life begins at conception shouldn’t be that controversial,” he added.
Roughly 43 percent of abortions are obtained by women under the age of 25, which makes early education all the more urgent, Denison said.
For Denison, legal restrictions aren’t necessarily the only or the most enduring path to building a culture of life.
He said, “The best way to save unborn lives is to help their parents — and particularly their mothers — see that they are lives worth saving.”
