What Madonna Said

“If you have any scientific questions about this, please ask me!”

While I was holding a microphone and had been taking questions from the crowd of students spread across the commons at University of Akron, I was not the one who had made this appeal. Rather, it had been a pink-clad woman proudly bearing the vest of a “clinic escort”—signifying that she works outside abortion facilities to quickly escort women past pro-life men and women offering counsel on the sidewalks.

When no student responded, I raised my microphone and said, “I have a question.”

Madonna, the clinic escort, turned to me expectantly.

“What is a zygote inside a mother?”

She replied, “A one-celled embryo.”

When I pressed her to tell me what kind of one-celled being, she asked what kind of being the mother was. Even after I clarified that I was talking about humans—which I thought had been implicit—she continued to dance around the simple truths of embryology. Nevertheless, her clarifying question provided an elegant illustration of the fact that living things reproduce after their own kind. While this is an elementary notion, it is critical for underscoring the humanity of preborn humans. We know they’re humans because their parents are human beings.

This opportunity to illustrate the humanity of babies provided by a pro-abortion clinic escort came on the heels of another fruitful object lesson provided by NARAL of Ohio. The day prior, our team’s outreach at Cleveland State University saw the return of NARAL staff member Annie Krohl in her giant uterus costume in an attempt to undercut our work. But I again found her presence helpful. I pointed to Annie and said, “Look, Annie is a human being with dignity, even if she is hidden inside that uterus.”

Even those who oppose equality between born and preborn humans can’t avoid simple truth. And sometimes they unwittingly help us advance those truths in the culture.