The Embryos That Do Not Become Babies

by Paul VanRaden

2023, 2025

This essay is an attempt to help you better understand abortion and convince the Supreme Court to reverse their 2022 decision.

Pregnancies

About 3.6 million babies are born, about 4 million unborn babies are aborted by nature or by God, and almost 1 million more are aborted by the combined decisions of patients and doctors in the United States each year (Table 1). Half or more of fertilized eggs are lost naturally either before or after pregnancy is detected (Jarvis, 2016). Abortions by choice are estimated to be 930,000 per year by the Guttmacher Institute (Jones et al., 2022) from national data and 630,000 by the Centers for Disease Control using data from most states. Thus, more fertilized embryos are aborted naturally than are born, and > 4 times more unborn babies are aborted by God than by patients and their doctors.

Modern technology now gives humans much more control over when and how many pregnancies should begin (Daniels and Abma, 2018). Most families and 65% of reproductive age women now prefer to plan their births at the times they prefer instead of having more children than they can support.

Table 1. Births, abortions, and birth control in the United States.

Category	Number	Source	Year	Comment
Births	3,610,000	CDC	2020	National data
Abortions by choice	930,000	Jones et al.	2020	National
	630,000	CDC	2019	Most states
Abortions by nature	4,000,000	Jarvis	2016	National
Lost before pregnancy test	1,600,000	Jarvis	2016	National
Lost after pregnancy test	2,400,000	Jarvis	2016	National
Reproductive age women	72,000,000	CDC	2017	National
Birth control - total	65%	Daniels & Abma	2018	% of 72 million
Birth control pills	12.6%	Daniels & Abma	2018	Ages 15-49
Intra-uterine device or implant	10.3%	Daniels & Abma	2018	Ages 15-49
Female sterilization	18.6%	Daniels & Abma	2018	Ages 15-49
Male condoms	8.7%	Daniels & Abma	2018	Ages 15-49
Male sterilization	5.9%	Daniels & Abma	2018	Ages 15-49

Life reproduces at higher rates than resources can support. “The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race” (Malthus, 1798). In nature and in human reproduction, many babies do not survive to become adults, many conceived embryos are not born alive, and many more male and female gametes (sperm and eggs) are produced than ever combine to become the next generation of life. Human babies require 10 to 20 years of parental support to mature. Embryos not likely to reach maturity are spontaneously aborted as early as possible so that parents and society devote their resources to raising a healthier next generation.

Major chromosome abnormalities happen very often, but most of the resulting embryos are aborted naturally. From 1-9% of sperm and about 20% of eggs (increasing with maternal age) are aneuploid with a wrong number of chromosomes (Martin, 2008; Pacchierotti et al., 2007). The 20-30% of embryos with too many or too few chromosomes are nearly all lost after fertilization and before birth. The main exceptions where aneuploid embryos survive are 0.14% of babies with Down syndrome (3 copies of chromosome 21) and 0.15% of babies with Klinefelter syndrome (2 copies of X plus 1 Y chromosome) which usually causes male appearance but infertility (Groth et al., 2013). Missing or extra copies of sex chromosomes are usually not fatal because only 1 copy of X is activated and because the Y contains few genes. Biology is complex and messy, despite an executive order signed by a president on January 20, 2025 ordering people to be only 2 distinct sexes.

To be recognized by their mother, embryos need to grow fast. If the embryo grows too slowly and produces too little human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) in the first weeks, the mother will begin a new period and reproductive cycle instead of becoming pregnant. The embryo, even if alive, will be lost. Similar processes happen in all species of mammals. Many mammal species such as dogs, cats, and pigs have several newborns at the same time. In such species, if too few embryos are alive the mother will abort them and instead begin a new cycle. Pregnancy is a big investment and usually goes to term only for healthy embryos and in many species only for a minimum number of healthy embryos. In nature, embryos with genetic defects, unhealthy, or simply that grow too slow are often aborted. Nature usually decides that an adult female’s health and resources are much more important than beginning a potential new, short, unproductive life.

Abortions

“Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. The Court overrules those decisions and returns that authority to the people and their elected representatives” (Alito et al., 2022). A very similar statement can be made about religion.

Religion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting religion. The first amendment says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” but does that also apply to the citizens of each State and their elected representatives within their States? Thus, each State may enforce or ban the practice of religion within their borders and the U.S. Congress may not interfere with those State decisions. The 10^th amendment says that such moral questions “are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” But Courts have rightly interpreted the Constitution to imply that State governments also should not enforce or ban religion. Instead, democracies should let each person decide what parts of religion to believe or not to believe.

The 1973 Supreme Court that established the right to abortion was much more respected than the 2022 court that overturned their decision. The 7 Justices that approved the Roe v Wade decision were all confirmed by very large majorities of Senators, those Senators represented very large majorities of the U.S. population, and the Justices were nominated by Presidents of both parties who had each won the popular vote. By contrast, several Justices that took away the right in 2022 were confirmed by very small majorities of Senators, those Senators represented a minority of the U.S. population because more were from smaller States, and those Justices were nominated only by Republican Presidents who mostly had lost the popular vote (Table 2).

For the example of Justice Neil Gorsuch, the 45 Senators who voted against his nomination represented 59 million more voters than the 54 Senators that voted to confirm him. That fact can be checked by matching the Senate roll call with the state population count, and such simple math should be published with every Senate vote to remind us how unbalanced and undemocratic Senate voting is. The President who nominated Justices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett lost the popular vote in November 2016 by 3 million voters and the President who nominated Roberts and Alito also lost the popular vote in his first election. In 2025, the 53 Republican Senators still represent 64 million fewer voters than the 47 Democratic Senators, and they continue to rule against the will of the people.

In March 2016, Republican Senators chosen by a minority of the U.S. population blocked any nomination from the popularly elected Democratic President, and in September 2020 Republican Senators instead quickly confirmed the nominee of a Republican President who had lost the popular vote in the previous election, lost the election 2 months later, and then fought to illegally overturn that election. During the nomination hearings, several Justices also lied about their intent to overturn the 1973 decision. After taking away the right to abortion, the Supreme Court’s approval rate dropped to the lowest levels on record.

Table 2. United States Supreme Court Justices that voted to approve or overturn access to abortion.

Justices	Senate vote to confirm that Justice	Year confirmed	Nominating President’s party	President won the popular vote?	Senators represented a popular majority?
Approved in 1973:
Warren Burger	74-3	1969	Republican	Yes	Yes
Harry Blackmun	94-0	1970	Republican	Yes	Yes
William Brennan	?-?	1957	Republican	Yes	Yes
William Douglas	62-4	1939	Democrat	Yes	Yes
Potter Stewart	70-17	1959	Republican	Yes	Yes
Thurgood Marshall	69-11	1967	Democrat	Yes	Yes
Lewis Powell	89-1	1971	Republican	Yes	Yes

Overturned in 2022:
Samuel Alito	58-42	2006	Republican	Yes¹	Yes
Clarence Thomas	52-48	1991	Republican	Yes	Yes
Brett Kavanaugh	50-48	2018	Republican	No	No
Neil Gorsuch	54-45	2017	Republican	No	No
Amy Coney Barrett	52-48	2020	Republican	No	No
John Roberts	78-22	2005	Republican	Yes¹	Yes

¹President did not win popular vote in first term but did in second term when these Justices were nominated.

Most Americans view the Supreme Court’s Dobbs vs. Jackson decision as wrong or egregiously wrong. Justices confirmed by Senators that represent a minority of the population and nominated by Presidents who lost the popular vote now overturn decisions made by previous Justices nominated and confirmed by majority winners. When politicians now threaten a pregnant woman’s life, she cannot even appeal their decisions to the Supreme Court because an “attempt to weigh the relative importance of the interests of the fetus and the mother” was declared by Alito et al. (2022) to be no longer any business of the Supreme Court, nor any business of the mother, but only the business of politicians.

The belief that one-celled embryos have rights is a religious belief not based on science or logic. Religious leaders and politicians may believe that an embryo has a soul created by God that they must protect, but a woman may believe that that embryos or politicians should not control or risk her life. Do embryos created in a laboratory or frozen embryos also have rights? U.S. fertility clinics have performed > 1 million in vitro fertilizations (IVF) to help people have about 400,000 babies that they otherwise could not conceive. Can politicians have you fined or arrested for not implanting an embryo that you froze? If you abort or do not implant a defective embryo that God would have aborted a few weeks or months later, can politicians charge you with murder? Do embryos in a laboratory that were donated, or IVF, or frozen have a right to life? And if so, whose uterus do they have a right to enter and live in?

Politicians can now force you to ignore your own religious belief and instead accept their religious belief. Justices Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Roberts ruled in 2022 that local, state, or national politicians may impose their religious beliefs on everyone else. After further studying genetics, biology, and the laws of nature, those Justices could change their minds, like earlier Justices did. In 1940 the Supreme Court decided that all children could be forced to pledge loyalty to the US flag, but in 1943 those same Justices realized that they had violated the students’ religious rights for no reason (see West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624). They overturned their own decision after rethinking the logic and the law.

Justice Thomas understands genetics and wrote the excellent opinion in Myriad Genetics case that was very helpful to my own research on defective embryos. The current Justices could reverse course and quickly restore the Roe vs. Wade decision. If not, they eventually will retire or die of old age over the next 50 years and should be replaced by new Justices more like Burger, Blackmun, Brennan, Douglas, Stewart, Marshall, and Powell. They better understood the laws of nature, the rights of females, and put limits on government control over females. Since 2022, in most states that asked, voters have favored allowing abortions, including several conservative states such as Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, Montana, and Florida. For example, 76% of voters said yes to a constitutional right to abortion in my previous home state of Maryland and 57% said yes in my new home state of Florida:

2023 and 2024 abortion-related ballot measures - Ballotpedia

The 2022 Dobbs vs. Jackson decision is both unpopular and wrong. The Justices are way out of step with voter beliefs because the Justices were selected and confirmed by Presidents and Senators who did not represent most voters. The Supreme Court now allows Congress and States to pass laws establishing the religion that an embryo has a right to end or risk its mother’s life, but pregnant women have no right to abort even the defective embryos that can never become children. Defective embryos are as common as normal embryos but risk the health of the mother for no purpose, and after some distress to their mother, God aborts the embryos anyway.

Lawmakers may believe that embryos have more rights than women but should not force their religious beliefs on the rest of us. The Supreme Court should follow the Constitution and its 1^st Amendment and get in step with the modern beliefs of most people. Numbers of US abortions have increased in the last 3 years because more women are choosing the abortion pill and ordering those from doctors in other states.

The 1973 Roe v. Wade decision stated that a main issue about abortion is “the point at which the embryo or fetus became ‘formed’ or recognizably human, or in terms of when a ‘person’ came into being, that is, infused with a ‘soul’ or ‘animated’.” Plants, animals, and humans have no souls, only bodies, as known from basic biology and in major religions that I and billions of others believe. Humans are just another species of animal, a fact that has been known and accepted in science since 1874 after Darwin published The Descent of Man. Embryos of all species look alike, based on their common biology, and none have a soul that needs protecting. As humans evolved from apes, in which year did God start giving them souls? In Europe, <50% believe in a soul, and in China, only 12%.

The Supreme Court ruled that politicians in each State should decide how and when to force women to gestate embryos against their will. Gestating and raising a new human takes a big investment over many years, whereas creating a new human embryo may take only a few minutes and no investment. The Dobbs decision now allows States or Congress to force rape victims to invest much time and energy raising instead of aborting a potential tiny embryo that their rapist created against their will. To enhance this political process, the Court could have ruled that politicians in each county or city should decide how and when to force women to gestate against their will. For example, abortion could be legal in Chicago but illegal in the rest of Illinois, allowing each part of each State to decide how much to control the lives of their female voters. Or the Supreme Court could reread and finally understand the more carefully reasoned logic of Roe v Wade and allow each voter or each family their privacy to decide to gestate or not to gestate, since their decision affects only their potential family and nobody else’s. Nobody else has standing in their abortion decision, not even the embryo.

Forcing females to gestate is like forcing men to fight in wars. In earlier centuries and decades, kings and politicians often forced young males to fight in their armies. Until 1973, the United States drafted young men against their will into its armed forces, but since then we let each person choose whether to become a soldier, a sailor, or any other occupation. The Supreme Court unanimously decided not to jail Muhammad Ali for his religious belief to not fight in a war. Each person can now make that important life decision by balancing the risks and the rewards for them.

In 1973, the U.S. government gave both males and females more direct control over their own bodies. Roe v Wade let females choose to become or not to become mothers. Both of those 1973 government decisions were correct and both are still widely supported. The 2022 Supreme Court decision to take bodily control away from females is obviously, egregiously wrong by letting politicians enforce their religious beliefs on everyone else. The Supreme Court should now admit their mistake and restore Roe.

1-Child Policy

About 12 million babies were born, about 15 million embryos were aborted by nature, and about 10 million unborn babies were aborted in China each year to comply with that government’s 1-child policy. While it was in effect from 1980-2014, the Chinese government also forced >300 million women to use intrauterine devices (IUDs) for birth control and > 100 million other women to be sterilized. For the crime of having a second child without a permit, mothers were legally forced to be sterilized unless they could convince their husband to be sterilized instead. Millions of women also were forced to abort for the crime of getting pregnant a second time. The parents who had more than 1 child also had to pay large fines that were used by the government to provide better health care and retirement for parents with only 1 child.

Of the 10 million annual abortions in China, about 1 million more unborn girls than boys were aborted each year because parents wanted to have a son instead who might earn more to better support them in their old age. Many other parents abandoned or murdered their newborn girls in hopes of having 1 son in the future. Many abandoned girls were taken to orphanages and about 100,000 were adopted by families outside of China. Other Chinese parents adopted the extra girls until 1991 when the government made adoption illegal for Chinese parents who wanted to exceed the 1-child limit. Many other Chinese couples used fertility treatments to conceive twins because the government’s 1-child policy did not penalize parents for having twins. A 2-child policy was implemented from 2015-2021. Since then, the Chinese government reversed its policy and now encourages parents to have more children. China’s population began to shrink and now they need more future taxpayers to support the previous generations as they retire.

God

God believes in abortion. Each year, to protect the health and the life of their mothers, God or nature aborts about 4 million unborn babies in the United States, about 15 million in China, and about 160 million in the world population of 8 billion people.

God-fearing Christian Republican governments sometimes believe in total control over women’s reproduction and ban abortion at any stage and may also ban some birth control methods to preserve the souls of embryos.

Godless Communist governments sometimes believe in total control over women’s reproduction and ban carrying a second embryo to term. Such governments may also sterilize women against their will or force them to use birth control.

Reverend Malthus might be surprised that birth control and abortion are now so important >200 years later. He might ask if more governments should allow women more freedom to decide how many and which embryos to gestate to become children.

Summary

Abortions are a very common, very important part of nature.

Potential mothers, with advice from families or doctors, can best choose when to give an embryo the chance to become a child.

Lawmakers should let individuals choose when to raise children and instead of penalties, can provide rewards for life choices that benefit society.

Courts should not jail people whose beliefs, values, and life choices differ from the politician’s or judge’s religious desire to save the souls of other people’s embryos.

References

Malthus, T.R. 1798. An Essay on the Principle of Population - Wikipedia

Jarvis, 2016. Misjudging early embryo mortality in natural... | F1000Research

Daniels, Kimberly, and Joyce C. Abma. 2018. Current Contraceptive Status Among Women Aged 15–49: United States, 2015–2017. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Jones, Rachel K., Marielle Kirstein, and Jesse Philbin. 2022. Abortion incidence and service availability in the United States, 2020. Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.

Groth, K.A., A. Skakkebæk, C. Høst, C.H. Gravholt, and A. Bojesen. 2013. Klinefelter Syndrome—A Clinical Update. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 98:20–30.

Lee, Amy, and Ann A. Kiessling. 2017. Early human embryos are naturally aneuploid—can that be corrected? J. Assist. Reprod. Genet. 34:15–21.

Martin, R.H. 2008. Meiotic errors in human oogenesis and spermatogenesis. Reprod BioMed Online. 16:523–531.

Pacchierotti, I.-D. Adler, U. Eichenlaub-Ritter, J.B. Mailhes. 2007. Gender effects on the incidence of aneuploidy in mammalian germ cells. Environmental Research 104:46-69.

Donald Trump signs executive order recognizing only 2 sexes.

Alito, S. 2022. 19-1392 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (06/24/2022) (supremecourt.gov)

2020 election: America’s anti-democratic Senate, by the numbers - Vox

https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/RL33225.pdf Supreme Court Justice confirmations

One-child policy - Wikipedia

Abortion in Muslim Countries 2023 (worldpopulationreview.com)

Essers et al. 2023. Prevalence of chromosomal alterations in first-trimester spontaneous pregnancy loss - PubMed (nih.gov)

Blue et al., 2019. Genetic abnormalities and pregnancy loss - PubMed (nih.gov)

How Much Of The World's Population Believes In Life After Death - Vivid Maps

Clay v. United States - Wikipedia

Abortions rose in 2024 due to pills available through telehealth, report finds | PBS News

VanRaden references on abortions in cattle: