Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Wednesday accused liberals of “hypocrisy” for criticizing him as a climate-change denier while “conveniently” ignoring what he called a scientific consensus that human life begins at conception.
Appearing on Sean Hannity’s radio show, Rubio defended remarks he made Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that doubted scientists’ consensus that human activity is driving climate change. The senator reiterated that while he does believe the climate is changing, he doesn’t think cap and trade legislation will help the environment.
“Here’s what I always get a kick out of, and it shows you the hypocrisy. All these people always wag their finger at me about science and settled science. Let me give you a bit of settled science that they’ll never admit to,” Rubio told Hannity. “Science is settled, it’s not even a consensus, it is a unanimity, that human life beings at conception. So I hope the next time that someone wags their finger about science, they’ll ask one of these leaders on the left: ‘Do you agree with the consensus of scientists that say that human life begins at conception?’ I’d like to see someone ask that question.”
“That’s not even a debatable thing,” he added. “It’s a proven fact, and yet that’s a scientific consensus they conveniently choose to ignore.”
The debate over whether life begins at conception has been playing out in state legislatures where “personhood” amendments, which legally define a fertilized embryo as a person, have been introduced. Recently the GOP challenger to Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO), Rep. Cory Gardner (R-CO), flipped his stance on personhood measures because it “restricts contraception.” The issue is likely to affect other Senate races this fall, too.
So the science is “settled” on the beginning of life, but he “doesn’t believe” that climate change is man-made… and even if it is, it’s not our job to stop it.
Rubio is either real stupid, real scared, or both.
I’m thinking both.
As far as I’m concerned, life can begin before conception. It doesn’t negate a woman’s Constitutional right to have control over her body and her pregnancy.
Please Sen. Rubio, show me a dozen or more PEER reviewed papers that support your contention that life begins at conception. Please feel free to send it privately.
BUT YOU CANNOT! that is hypocracy!
Exactly. I am perfectly happy to call the fetus a person. But one person doesn’t have the right to crawl inside another person. If they did, what if I demanded the right to take up residence inside Sen Rubio (Ughh!)?
There is no settled “science” on life beginning at conception, because that’s not a testable theory. Yes, cells begin to divide at conception towards creating an individual life, but cells also divide after death or in a petri dish.
The fact is that more than half and as many as two thirds of all conceptions do not result in an individual human life, either not attaching to the uterine wall or resulting in miscarriage. Cells dividing and differentiating happen all the time without resulting in a person.
The question of when cell division starts is a scientific question that can be determined through testing, but the question of when a human being starts is a moral question. There was a time not too far in the past when families who lost a child would name a second child the same with the idea that the first soul would replant in the new baby. There was a time not too far in the past when people didn’t name their kids for six months because so few lived that long. This is because they did not consider them individual entities until they passed a certain point of viability even outside the womb.
Today we have a different standard, but it is a moral standard and not a scientific standard because there is no scientific basis to make this determination. The majority sees viability outside the womb as the measure of an individual entity with rights and privileges because our science has developed far enough that a seven month old fetus can survive as a baby with assistance outside the womb.
Rubio doesn’t even believe morally that full personhood begins at conception, because if he and those like him did believe a fertilized human egg is a full human being then why doesn’t the right have funeral homes, cemetery plots, memorials for every single time a woman has her period three weeks late? They don’t because it is not, and they know it as well as we do.