As the March for Life approaches, anti-abortion leaders are rebranding as ‘pro-science.’ Scientists say otherwise
WASHINGTON — When anti-abortion demonstrators numbering in the tens of thousands join the March for Life, an anti-abortion protest set to take place Friday on the National Mall here, many will tout signs bearing a new slogan: “Pro-life is pro-science.”
Much of the country’s mainstream scientific community would argue the opposite.
In recent months, anti-abortion advocates have advocated for the cancellation of a federal research contract for fetal tissue procurement and pushed to halt other research they view as immoral. The results: a $2 million project to test HIV drugs derailed and another pair of studies, including one to develop cancer immunotherapies, left in limbo. The movement’s latest objective: to force President Trump to fire the renowned director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, the country’s top biomedical research scientist.
“The segment of the community that’s against this type of the research has been there all along, but it’s just emboldened by this administration,” said Lawrence Goldstein, a University of California, San Diego, neuroscientist who uses fetal cells in his research. “This sort of thing has a chilling effect.”
The backers of the March for Life — along with other advocates who support similar anti-abortion causes — argue that their work is in fact “pro-science,” as their slogan confirms.
“Science needs to be at the service of life,” Jeanne Mancini, the March for Life president, told STAT in an interview, arguing that research involving human
