Three years after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, the right to life — America’s foundational principle — remains under siege. The stalled Life at Conception Act in the 119th Congress epitomizes this crisis and underscores that, despite Dobbs, Roe’s dehumanizing legacy continues, perpetuating scientific ignorance about when a human being begins to exist.
The Life at Conception Act, reintroduced this session by Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo., with 76 co-sponsors, would codify the scientific truth about when a human life starts, defining the unborn as “persons” under the 14th Amendment. This definition would be a game-changer: you could even describe it as a vital reset for humankind. The act does not ban abortion or dictate policy — that would require separate legislation — but corrects a grave systemic error akin to the fantasies of flat-earthers.
For over 50 years, Roe v. Wade fueled a deadly fiction: that the unborn are not fully human. It perpetuated the lie that an unborn child is merely a “bunch of cells,” a “parasite,” a “pre-person,” or a “potential human being,” disposable for any reason until birth. Dobbs overturned Roe and affirmed the humanity of the human embryo and fetus but left constitutional protections unresolved, allowing Roe’s preposterous notion that the unborn are less than fully human persons to fester.
This dehumanizing mindset is rampant. Shockingly, nearly 40 percent of young adults believe a human life begins at birth, and most people are unaware that this is a strictly scientific matter.
The cost is stark. In 2024, more than one million abortions occurred in the United States. Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, performed a record 402,230 abortions and received nearly $800 million in taxpayer funding. Chemical abortions, which account for two-thirds of all abortions today, harm women (by sepsis, infection, and hemorrhaging) at a rate 22 times higher than that claimed by the Food and Drug Administration.
In November 2024, 10 states voted on ballot measures to enshrine abortion, treating the destruction of unborn children as on par with a new sales tax or retirement law. After decades of pro-abortion indoctrination, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in misinformation campaigns, seven measures passed.
The objective, internationally acknowledged, empirical facts of human embryology are clear. The 23 Carnegie Stages of Human Embryonic Development document that, in human sexual reproduction, fertilization — not birth — marks the transition from two cells (sperm and oocyte) to a new, whole, living, individual human being. Moreover, human embryology establishes that “personhood” is inherent in fertilization, not a negotiable philosophical construct. Human reproduction initiates the continuum of human life: the new human being develops as the same human throughout the embryonic period, fetal period, and then after birth. Simply put, the human being and the person are inseparable.
The Life at Conception Act would correct abortion’s false, poisonous view of humankind by asserting the biological reality that a human being is a person from the start (termed “conception” for the act’s purposes). It states: “Congress hereby declares that the right to life guaranteed by the Constitution is vested in each human being.” It defines “human being” and “human person” to include “each and every member of the species homo sapiens at all stages of life, including the moment of fertilization, cloning, or other moment at which an individual member of the human species comes into being.”
By affirming personhood for the unborn, the Life at Conception Act would establish a transformative legal framework. This pivotal recognition would empower lawmakers to enact laws upholding the unborn child’s right to life. (Even piecemeal legislative efforts, responsive to political realities and addressing the 14th Amendment’s guarantees, hinge on this new standard.) Ultimately, the Act would provide a critical foundation to counter Roe’s dehumanizing legacy and serve as a monumental step in the pro-life movement’s “one-step-at-a-time” strategy.
In our post-Dobbs era of productive disruption, in which biological realism is shaping U.S. policy, Congress has an unprecedented opportunity to advance this vital bill — not to settle related debates (e.g., about abortion and IVF), but to anchor them in reality and uphold America’s core values. Instead, the Life at Conception Act languishes as an inconvenient truth, stalled in the House Judiciary Committee with no hearings, markup, or vote, a four percent chance of advancing, and no Senate companion bill.
Critics, aware of upcoming elections and the popularity of Roe’s false science among voters, exacerbate the issue, using fear tactics (e.g., claiming the Act would ban abortion or IVF) to ensure the bill’s toxic status and defeat, while threatening pro-life lawmakers with electoral defeat.
Lawmakers have a duty rooted in the Declaration of Independence’s “right to life” to protect all human beings. Plus, public opinion isn’t unanimously pro-abortion, yet. Voters rejected abortion ballot measures in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota, and approved a pro-life measure in Nebraska. And polls show most Americans support some legal limits on abortion, signaling a window for bold action.
The time is ripe for legislation grounded in biological truth. As House Speaker Mike Johnson noted in a different context, “A man is a man, and a woman is a woman,” emphasizing biological reality in policy. Similarly, the fact that all human beings are human persons should be the starting point for public policies, and laws.
Advancing the Life at Conception Act isn’t about ending abortion today. It’s about ending science denial now. The act is a clarion call for Congress to affirm the empirical truth about when a human being begins to exist, aligning law with reason and biology. Until the U.S. explicitly rejects abortion’s distorted vision of humanity, the knowledge gap about humankind will widen, and public opinion will drift further from reality. Anything less than advancing this bill is a vote for confusion over clarity, politics over principle.
Brooke Stanton is the co-author of “When You Became You” and the chief executive officer 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.
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