Bill Nye wades into abortion debate with critique of ‘bad science’

Conveying his ideas via an educational video, the 59-year-old science educator urges lawmakers to “stop telling women what to do with their bodies” and consider the scientific facts behind reproduction. Bill threw back a question by expounding on the fact that a great number of eggs are fertilized by the sperm yet these did not progress into becoming humans due to a lot of factors such as failing to attach to a woman’s womb. “Recommending or insisting on abstinence has been completely ineffective”, he said.

“If you’re going to say when an egg is fertilized it therefore has the same rights as an individual, then whom are you going to sue?” he says.

Nye goes on to explain how various arguments submitted by anti-abortion activists have been scientifically debunked, and that new studies on conception challenge numerous common understandings. He notes that their hard-line stance doesn’t account for all of the “lives” that are lost in a woman body by natural causes that weren’t caused by abortion, and if abortion is so vile, then why aren’t people arrested or held responsible for all of these other “lives” lost.

Ultimately, Nye summarizes what women themselves have been saying about their reproductive rights for years. “But you can’t tell somebody what to do. She doesn’t want anything to do with your genes, get over it, especially if she were raped and all this”.

“I know nobody likes abortion, okay”.

Some might argue that in taking on the abortion issue, Bill Nye is going well beyond the elementary school age set, or his chief audience when Bill Nye the Science Guy was still on the air. Tickets to the event sold out in minutes, and each side was declared the victor by various pundits across the United States and beyond.

The video follows what’s been a unsettling year for women’s reproductive rights.

In Big Think’s video, which now has over 400,000 views on multiple platforms, Nye addresses the belief – held by many conservative politicians – that abortion is murder and that abortion providers are criminals.