It is hard to get around it. Very early on, there’s a lot getting destroyed. A couple of obvious points leap to mind, however. It’s said that “God is the most prolific abortionist”. Something like half or more of fertilized eggs, zygotes, are eliminated in what looks like a regular (late) menstruation. Anybody who can post about how late this can happen, spontaneous abortion, would be welcome. It doesn’t help the cause of building awareness to leave this sort of thing out, as that tends to convolve things like “the day after pill” with surgical abortion, which seems wrong-headed. The other thing is “her eye color are all determined…” avoided, wasn’t lumped in with the criticism of “inappropriately ascribing ‘human’ traits to a fœtus” (traits are traits, and if ya got ‘em, ya got ‘em, so I don’t have a problem with that, heartbeat, brain activity, behaviours, etc—if they’re there, they’re there, and it’s painful to think about), when in fact this predestination comment may be the worst example. A woman has two X chromosomes, so at every cell division, her body has to decide which grandmother is going to determine who she is. Hence only female calico cats are calico, only women exhibiting heterochromia (I’d appreciate a shout-out confirmation on this) and likewise men, with only one X chromosome, if the grandmother we got stuck with had color-blindness (expressed or unexpressed), we get it. So it’s true that Olivia’s whole body and eye color and future has been determined at conception, but in the same kind of way that today being partly cloudy with snow flurries and a gentle breeze from the southwest was determined at the formation of the Universe. In other words, only true in a way that both sides fundamentally disagree on. The point trying to be made is that “life begins” very much earlier on than current arguments, and fœtuses doing complex behaviours supports that, but saying that epigenesis somehow doesn’t exist. If you’re going to use science, facts, and logic, go for it, it makes a strong case. But if you throw in thinly-veiled superstition and religiosity it undermines it and alienates the audience. Is a single cell a person? Probably not? Is everything about a future person determined at fertilization? Probably not in a meaningful way, certainly not for a woman. Avoid the trap of showing a fœtus clasping its fingers and leaping to “so everything else we said is true, even the stuff that is only supported by vague interpretations of Bible verses, nya, nya, nya!” It’s a moving video, though. Best not to overplay it.
I was going to make a comparison to Tom Cruise in Minority Report—the idea that if you can know with certainty that somebody will commit a crime beforehand, that gives you the right to punish them? And who is “you” in this case? Who has standing, legally, in a crime that hasn’t happened yet? That may be the biggest existential question here, more so than the impossibility of knowing the future with certainty. But the rabbit hole keeps going down…what about conspiracies and accomplices? Making a baby is a conspiracy, obviously.
Make a statement, eg, “everything is decided At fertilization” but take responsibility for following it back the other direction to its logical conclusion.
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