Conservatism needs a serious image makeover when it comes to science.  We currently have a president who likes to deride anyone who dares to disagree with him on “climate change” as “flat earthers.”  His own Twitter feed declares that “Climate change is real” with the hashtag #ScienceSaysSo.

However, as many responded to the tweet, science used to say a lot of things that were eventually proven wrong.  Galileo was punished by the Catholic Church for daring to hypothesize that the earth revolved around the sun.  I recently finished reading a history of the Wars of the Roses in England, where women frequently died post-childbirth – mostly from infection due to lack of sanitation, children often falling ill and dying before their first birthday, and where doctors were often reduced to cutting people to “bleed out evil humors” and the like.

A fundamental part of science is the ability to prove a hypothesis with facts, and to challenge current theories as more facts appear.  However, the media has no interest when many try to expose the fallacy of “climate change” (the new euphemism that was coined to compensate for the face that “global warming” wasn’t really happening in the way certain scientists had claimed it would).  “Climate change” now covers everything that Al Gore and the media think that human beings could possibly do to affect weather.  And we have a media who no longer seems to care about real facts in these environmental stories.

Conservatives need to reclaim science.  We often get mocked for religious and spiritual beliefs, and if one person who happens to be conservative says something incredibly stupid that isn’t supported by science (example: Todd Akin), all conservatives get tarred with the mockery that follows.  (Don’t get me started on the double standard that exists between right and left there.)  However, science is actually on our side in several issues.  The most significant issue where science is changing minds is abortion.  In looking at the current poll numbers, there is a staggering shift in how people perceive abortion after 20 weeks gestation.  According to Gallup’s numbers from last December, a majority still believes in abortion being legal in the first trimester (61% to 31%).  When asked about the second trimester, there is a huge flip in numbers, with 64% in favor of banning abortion, to 27% in favor of allowing it.  And in the third trimester, the numbers are even more overwhelming, with 80% against and only 14% for it.

What has changed?  How have people come around to a more conservative mindset?  It wasn’t the moral argument – I truly believe it was the cumulative effect of science changing people’s minds.  More people now know children who were preemies, spent time in a NICU, or had some kind of prenatal diagnosis that allowed for treatment immediately after birth.  As the science of caring for preemies has advanced, and the window of viability continues to increase, people are no longer comfortable with simply dismissing a pregnancy in the later stages of gestation.  Nowadays, only the truly hardened or those with a political agenda can even try and defend a late-term abortion, or something like Gosnell’s house of horrors.

We need to get more conservatives into the sciences.  We need to listen to those voices that are already there, like Dr. Ben Carson.  We can try persuading people on moral grounds, but using real facts and real science is always going to be more persuasive.  As the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan was quoted as saying, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”  The more facts that we use, the more minds we can change.  Their hearts can come later.  But the conservative movement needs to appeal to the mind, not the heart.  The left already has the corner on appealing to the heart.  The right needs to remind everyone that they have brains that, when given honest facts, can think for themselves, no matter what any president claims.