After finishing meetings in DC recently, I stopped by NASA HQ before leaving town. I’m a bit of a space nerd and I couldn’t pass up the chance to walk inside. The gift shop was full of swag containing various depictions of Martians and references to extraterrestrial life. The nerd community is obsessed with aliens.

That’s every space nerd’s dream: to find alien life. Just look at War of the Worlds, Star Trek, Star Wars, Andromeda, Stargate, and a hundred other sci-fi icons; popular culture has been fixated on discovering alien life for more than a hundred years. And what’s better? NASA says they’ll find life outside of Earth within the next 10 years.

NASA’s search for alien life isn’t what you would expect, however. When you and I hear “alien life,” we think of little green men. NASA, on the other hand, simply means some trace of organic material outside of Earth. It doesn’t even have to be very big or complex – a simple microbe would do the trick.

This got me thinking.

If, during a science experiment on a deep space asteroid, NASA found a speck of organic goo, it would change the world. Scientists would praise the incredible discovery and begin deriving new theories for the origins of human life on Earth. My grandchildren would read in school about the greatest human accomplishment to date: discovering alien life in that glorious speck of goo.

And yet, despite science’s uncontested and irrefutable evidence that the human lifespan begins at the moment of conception, we hear a growing cry from the abortion industry that the child in the womb is merely a clump of cells. Just this year, we heard pro-abortion activists line up in testimony against Georgia’s Heartbeat Bill to argue that the rhythmic sound of a beating heart, complex genetic code, and intricate physiological structure of a child in the womb are somehow antonymous with life.

It makes little sense that the most technologically advanced species on the planet, which heralds itself for its vast knowledge and wisdom, can look to the stars for mere traces of alien life while it denies the existence of human life right under our noses.

But the abortion industry and the #fakenews media have worked hard together to ensure the science of life in the womb is obscured, misrepresented, and suppressed from the general public – just look at NPR’s recent memo in response to our extensive coverage of the Georgia Heartbeat Bill demanding their surrogates never say “heartbeat,” “unborn,” or “baby.”

That’s because if more people knew that from the very moment of conception, the tiny human embryo contains every strand of DNA to determine her hair color, eye color, and even her fingerprints, they might view that clump of cells more accurately. And if Planned Parenthood spent less time suppressing the knowledge that the baby’s heart is already beating by 6 weeks, that the brain and all major organs are developed by 10 weeks, and that she is already fully formed by 12 weeks, they would have to defend the horrific fact that nearly 90% of abortions take place by this time.

And by doing such, abortion advocates have created a discrepancy in our culture’s value system when it comes to human life in the womb. When a fetus is wanted, it’s a baby. When it’s inconvenient, it’s a clump of cells. When we detect a strand of extraterrestrial goo, it’s alien life. When we detect a beating heart, it’s a product of conception.

Thankfully, the wave of pro-life legislation sweeping our nation this year indicates that the abortion industry’s misinformation and deliberate suppression of science is finally failing. A majority of Americans are putting two and two together, science is winning, and we are once again viewing the precious child in the womb is indeed a life worth protecting.

For the first time, we are realizing that if we were to conquer every corner of the solar system yet deny the personhood to our most vulnerable members of our species, we’ll merely become spacefaring barbarians.

It is increasingly clear that Americans now recognize the most monumental life that could be discovered is not the search for speck, but the precious child sheltered in her mother’s womb awaiting her turn to look to the stars with wonder.

Joshua Edmonds is the Executive Director of Georgia Life Alliance, the state affiliate for National Right to Life.