Leadership Quote by Todd Akin

Akin opens by pretending to translate jargon into humanity, but the move is rhetorical sleight of hand. “Embryo” is framed as cold, clinical, almost suspect - a “scientific or laboratory term” that supposedly distances us from moral stakes. Then he flips it: not only is it not impersonal, it’s already a “person,” because it “contains the unique information that defines” one. The emotional payload is smuggled in through a technical-sounding bridge.

The key phrase is “unique information.” It borrows the authority of genetics and data - the contemporary gospel of identity - while eliding what that information can and can’t do. DNA is treated as destiny: as if a genome doesn’t just describe potential but confers full moral status. It’s a neat maneuver for a politician: it sounds evidence-based without needing to cite evidence, and it converts a complex ethical debate into a simpler one about classification. If an embryo is “a person,” then abortion becomes less a question of autonomy, health, or circumstance and more a question of harm.

Subtext: distrust the language of medicine, trust the language of essence. “Laboratory” evokes manipulation; “defines a person” evokes a stable, almost sacred core. It’s also a coalition-building line, aimed at listeners who want their moral intuition backed by something that resembles science. Context matters because Akin’s public brand included hardline positions on reproductive rights; this kind of phrasing functions as policy argument and identity signal at once. It reassures supporters that their stance is not only righteous, but rational - encoded, like the claim itself, in “information.”