Pseudo‐embryology and personhood: How embryological pseudoscience helps structure the American abortion debate

There is a pseudo-embryology flourishing today, well nourished by popular science, religious ideologies, and the public media. Just as eugenics was a pseudoscience that influenced (and still influences) American popular culture and which was responsible for racist anti-immigration laws (such as the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924), pseudo-embryology is also influencing popular culture and legislation. This new pseudoscience promotes the belief that science supports current zygotic and fetal per-sonhood movements as well as anti-abortion legislation. However, what often passes forscienceareactuallyideologicalmyths,oftengroundedinandsupportingmalesupe-riority. Indeed, the first myth of pseudo-embryology is that fertilization is a masculine act that can be viewed as a classical hero narrative. The second myth is that fertilization is ensoulment, allowing it to displace the feminine act of birth as to when life begins.Here,DNAisseentoplaythesecularanalogueofsoul.Thethirdmythisthatthe fetus in the womb is an independent autonomous entity and that birth merely moves the fetus from the womb to the outside world. This expresses the "seed-in-the-soil" myth that was also prevalent in ancient cultures. In this manner, masculine stories of fertilization are valorized while feminine narratives of birth are suppressed. So when public narratives discuss what "science" says about when human