Wheeler: He surveyed 5,502 academic biologists
from all over the world and asked them the question,
"When does a human life begin?"
Guess how many of them answered
that life begins at conception?
A PhD student at the University of Chicago
named Steve Jacobs, have you heard of him?
Good, I was hoping that you wouldn't.
Otherwise it would make my story less interesting.
Okay, so Steve Jacobs was getting his PhD
at the University of Chicago,
and he was told by his professors
that his chosen topic for his PhD dissertation
that he was too white, too male,
and too Christian to write on the topic.
Does anyone want to guess what this topic was?
Student: Abortion?
Wheeler: Yes.
Who said that?
Abortion, of course it was abortion.
Jacobs had decided to write his doctoral dissertation
not on abortion itself or the morality of abortion,
but on questions about abortion
that ultimately led to people changing their minds.
Because anybody in this room
who's had a conversation with someone on the Left
about abortion knows that there's always roadblocks
in helping someone change their mind
if they've already formed their opinion on abortion, right?
So Steve Jacobs decided to identify what questions
were those roadblocks in people's minds
when they were talking about abortion,
and write his dissertation on that.
It took him almost a decade
to get finished with his dissertation
because the faculty did not want to help him.
To do a dissertation,
you have to have faculty sign off on it and be your advisor.
And they did not want him to do this,
perhaps because they did not want the public to know
what Jacobs had found.
So I'm going to tell you what Jacobs found this morning.
Just flew in, still jet lagged.
Jacobs' scientific survey was done in two parts.
First, he surveyed 2,899 American adults,
and he asked them, "Who is the most qualified,
or who has the highest authority to answer the question,
'When does a human life begin?'"
Of these 2,899 adults,
83% of them,
so an overwhelming majority of them,
said academic biologists
are the highest authority to answer that question.
Now you don't have to agree with what they said.
A lot of people in this room might be religious.
You might believe that the highest authority is God,
but these American adults surveyed said
to answer that question,
I wouldn't listen to a conservative pundit,
wouldn't necessarily listen to a doctor,
wouldn't listen to a religious leader,
I would listen to an academic biologist.
So Steve Jacobs said okay, he accepted that.
And he decided in the second part of his survey,
he would conduct a global survey,
not just in the United States, of academic biologists.
And so he surveyed 5,502 academic biologists
from all over the world,
and asked them the question, "When does a human life begin?"
Guess how many of them answered
that life begins at conception?
95% of academic biologists
said life begins at the moment of fertilization.
The other 5% of biologists,
you want to know what they answered?
These are real answers, verbatim answers, quotes from them.
"Is this a study funded by Trump and the KKK?"
[audience laughter]
"Sure hope you aren't an effing Christian."
"I believe it's a horribly manipulative survey,
and its end is to support the religious, patriarchal abuse
of women's rights that has gone on for way too long."
So clearly, those 5% were dedicated to their science.
So, why is this story important?
Why did I start out my speech with this story tonight?
Because your generation
could be the generation that ultimately leads
to Roe v. Wade being overturned.
[audience applause]