The Department of Health and Human Services has published a draft of a new strategic plan that states in its introduction that life begins at conception. The personhood of the unborn child is central to the abortion debate — as even the justice who wrote the landmark Roe v. Wade opinion has acknowledged — because, if established in law, it would nullify a “right” to abortion. The largely overlooked HHS strategic plan for 2018-22 states the agency “accomplishes its mission through programs and initiatives that
cover a wide spectrum of activities, serving and protecting Americans at every stage of life, beginning at conception.” Bioethics specialist Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism, wrote at National Review’s The Corner blog that while life “beginning at conception” is a “fact of basic biological science,” expect “the usual suspects to be furious about the proposal.” READ MORE
