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# Dr. Willie Parker: "You Can't Answer Religious Questions with Scientific Answers"

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## Video: Dr. Willie Parker: "You Can't Answer Religious Questions with Scientific Answers"

[Watch (HLS stream): Dr. Willie Parker: "You Can't Answer Religious Questions with Scientific Answers"](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/462g5zNY.m3u8) (2:02)

![Dr. Willie Parker: "You Can't Answer Religious Questions with Scientific Answers"](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/462g5zNY/poster.jpg?width=720)

_Published 2017-04-04. Dr. Parker explains why using religion to talk about abortion is misleading._


---

Jul 28, 2023 4:22 AM UTC

---

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### June 2009 -10 Questions for Candace Parker

---


## Transcript

My epiphany or breakthrough to provide abortions came about while listening to a sermon by Doctor Martin Luther King. In that sermon he described what made the good samaratin good and in substance what made that person good was to ask what will happen to this person if I don't stop to help. So I became more concerned about what happens to my patients. When abortion care is not available then what might happen to me for providing the care even though I knew that many people who shared my Christian identity wouldn't agree with my decision to do so. There needs to be the deconstruction of what I call the false equivalency of the whole pro- life pro- choice rhetoric.

That's a misnomer, there is pro- abortion and anti- abortion. People who are anti- abortion are pro- fetus. But that often leaves them to be against the lives of women. To be pro- abortion, which I am, is not abortion should happen because it is a good thing, it's not a good thing or a bad thing it's a biologic reality. But I am for women having access to the services that they need. So, we'll have to reframe the conversation to have an honest disagreement, which means that we'll have to deal with facts. People who oppose abortion say life begins at conception. That's a non- biologic understanding because when we look at how pregnancy occurs Conception occurs when a sperm meets an egg, you can't have a live pregnancy if you don't have a live sperm meeting a live egg.

And so if a sperm's alive and an egg's alive, that means that life begins before conception. Life is a process and not an event. You can't answer religious questions with scientific answers, you can't answer scientific questions with religious answers, i think Dr. Keen said it best when science gives mankind the art which gives them power, religion gives mankind wisdom which is control the two are not enemies

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