The Trump Administration, along with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has recently published a draft of its strategic plan for 2018-2022. In its introduction, it states that life begins at conception.
The strategic plan of the HHS is a document that details the department’s mission statement, along with other pertinent information such as the organizational structure and goals, objectives and strategies that help to do things like reform and modernize the nation’s health care system, and strengthen the social well-being of Americans across the lifespan. In its current draft, that lifespan would include the unborn.
Where the document once read, “serving Americans at every stage of life,” the newly revised document states, “serving and protecting Americans at every stage of life, beginning at conception.”
While not that many words have been added, the revised version forces people, including the government, to realize that life does indeed begin at conception. Even though many secularists are arguing that updated wording in the strategic plan is “religious,” this is something scientists have known for years.
In fact, 42 years ago, the 3rd edition of Langman’s Medical Embryology that was published in 1975 stated, “The development of a human being begins with fertilization.” In the 6th edition of the book Foundations of Embryology published in 1996, it says, “The time of fertilization represents the starting point in the life history, or ontogeny, of the individual.”
Even the American College of Pediatricians says, “The predominance of human biological research confirms that human life begins at conception—fertilization. At fertilization, the human being emerges as a whole, genetically distinct, individuated zygotic living human organism, a member of the species Homo sapiens, needing only the proper environment in order to grow and develop.”
Another change HHS has made to the strategic plan includes the term “unborn.” The document states, “Our ultimate goal is to improve healthcare outcomes for all people, including the unborn, across healthcare settings.”
The welcome changes are due in part to the following pro-life members appointed to HHS by President Trump:
- Charmaine Yoest – Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs who is also the former president and CEO of Americans United for Life (AUL)
- Teresa Manning – Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs and former legislative analyst at the Family Research Council and former lobbyist for the National Right to Life Committee
- John Fleming – Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Information Technology Reform and former pro-life Republican Representative from Louisiana
- Valerie Huber – Chief of Staff for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health and former president of Ascend, an abstinence education organization
Pro-lifers around the country are welcoming these changes to the strategic plan.
Shortly after the revisions were made public, Senator Tom Cruz expressed his approval by tweeting, “Each life is a gift from God. Encouraged to see HHS recognize that life begins at conception.”
In response to those who feel the language being used is that of the “religious right,” Dawn Eskew, founder of Personhood Education New York, says, “the department is finally looking to and acknowledging science, which happens to be what the Personhood people have been saying since the inception of Roe v. Wade.”
Those who are pro-choice are calling it, “another assault on women’s health care.”
The director of reproductive health at the National Health Law Program, Susan Berke Fogel says, “This is a license to discriminate. All of that language brings back all of these things that we’ve seen in the past that are just incongruous with really protecting health care and really improving people’s lives.”
Despite the fact scientists have known for years that life begins at conception, those who are for abortion deny this truth because it gets in the way of pushing their agenda forward, which largely has to do with women’s rights. If they did embrace the idea that a fetus is a human being in its earliest form of development, they would have to recognize that a baby in the womb would deserve to have rights as well.
While the pro-life community is encouraged by the new wording in the strategic plan, the document is not yet set in stone. The draft is open to public comment until October 27, 2017 but if it does get approved, it will replace the present plan set in place by the Obama administration.
~ Christian Patriot Daily
