When Does Human Life Begin?
Contrary to popular belief, there is a tremendous consensus in the scientific community about when life begins. This is hardly controversial. If the claim was made that life was discovered on another planet, for example, there are well-defined criteria to which we could refer to conclusively determine whether the claim was accurate. How do scientists distinguish between life and non-life?
A scientific textbook called "Basics of Biology" gives five characteristics of living things; these five criteria are found in all modern elementary scientific textbooks:
- 1. Living things are highly organized.
- 2. All living things have an ability to acquire materials and energy.
- 3. All living things have an ability to respond to their environment.
- 4. All living things have an ability to reproduce.
- 5. All living things have an ability to adapt.
According to this elementary definition of life, life begins at conception, when a sperm unites with an oocyte (life created through cloning excepted). From this moment, the being is highly organized, has the ability to acquire materials and energy, has the ability to respond to the environment, has the ability to adapt, and has the ability to reproduce (the cells divide, then divide again, etc., and barring pathology and pending reproductive maturity has the potential to reproduce other members of the species). Non-living things do not do these things. Even before the mother is aware that she is pregnant, a distinct life has begun to live inside her.
Furthermore, that life is unquestionably human. A human being is a member of the species homo sapiens. Human beings are products of conception, which is when a human male sperm unites with a human female oocyte (egg). When human procreate, they don't make non-humans like slugs, monkeys, cactuses, bacteria, or any such thing. Emperically-verifable proof is as close as your nearest abortion clinic: send a sample of an aborted fetus to a laboratory and have them test the DNA to see if its human or not. Genetically, a new human being comes into existence from the earliest moment of conception.
Genetically and biologically, from the moment of conception this new human being is not a part of the mother's body. Since when does a mother's body have male genitals, two brains, four kidneys? The preborn human being may be dependent upon the mother for nutrition, but this is no capital crime.
At the average time when a woman is aware that she is pregnant (the fifth to sixth week after conception), the preborn human being living inside her is metabolizing nutrition, excreting waste, moving, sucking his or her thumb, growing, and doing many other things that non-living things just do not do. Furthermore, at 21 days after conception, the baby's heart has begun to begin his or her own unique blood-type, often different than the mother's (Moore & Persaud, The Developing Human, p.310; Nilsson & Hamberger, A Child is Born, p.86; Rugh & Shettles, From Conception to Birth, p.217). At 40 days after conception, brain waves can be read on an EEG (electroencephalogram) (Dr. Hannibal Hamlin, Life or Death by EEG, JAMA, Oct.12, 1964, p.113). Medical science already refers to a spontaneous heart rhythm and the presence of brain waves to determine whether someone is alive at the other spectrum of human existence. In simplistic terms, if an organ donor is in an automobile accident and is on life support in a hospital, the physician cannot "pull the plug" and scavenge his organs unless the patient is "brain dead" and his heart is not beating on its own. If the medical community maintained consistency with this generally-accepted medical definition of human life, then we would condemn every abortion after the time when the woman discovers she is pregnant. Every abortion, by the generally-accepted standards of medical science, kills an innocent human life.
One of the most amazing photographs I have ever seen is of a surgery being performed on a 21 week-old fetus named Samuel Armas. The boy is having surgery performed in utero for his spina bifida. In the photograph, the unconscious boy's hand is poking through the surgical incision in the uterus and is resting on the finger of the surgeon. You can see the photo at . I want to draw attention to the fact that the surgeon is not a veterinarian. Nor is he a tree surgeon. Neither is he a mortician. He's a human physician, who takes care of living human beings.
"Yeah," the pro-choice attorney rebuts, "but is it a person?"
In Roe vs. Wade, Justice Harry Blackmun noted, "The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a 'person' within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the (Fourteenth) Amendment." Proving the humanity and vitality of the preborn human being wasn't enough for Justice Blackmun, "the suggestion of personhood" must be established for the right of the fetus to live to supercede the right of the pregnant woman to get an abortion.
According Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, a person is "a human being." Attempts to render an entire class of human beings as "non-persons" based upon arbitrary qualities such as age and place of residence in order to discriminate them is intrinsically immoral and unjust, akin to the Nazis' attempts to render Jews "non-humans" or the colonial slaveowners' attempts to make African Americans "property". As a matter of fact, Justice Blackmun's wording is strikingly similar to the wording of the Supreme Court of 1857, which ruled that Dred Scott, a black slave, was not a "person" with rights but the "property" of his master (http://www.conservativetruth.org/article.php?id=1386). As our nation's founding documents make clear, the right to life is God-given and inalienable. The right to live cannot be legitimately usurped by men. No man, no government has the right to deprive one of life or liberty without due process of law, regardless of skin color, age, stage of development, level of dependence upon others for survival, or place of residence.
Abortion is the killing of an innocent person, and the intentional killing of an innocent person is murder.
Williams Obstetrics, Sixteenth Edition
The Preface reads: "Happily, we have entered an era in which the fetus, can be rightfully considered and treated as our second patient. Who would have dreamed - even a few years ago - that we could serve the fetus as a physician."
________________________________"WHEN DOES LIFE BEGIN?"
On April 23-24, 1981, a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee held hearings on this very question? Appearing to speak on behalf of the scientific community was a group of internationally-known geneticists and biologists who all affirmed that human life begins at conception - and they told their story with a profound absence of opposing testimony.
__________________________________________Dr. Micheline M. Mathews-Roth, Harvard medical School, gave confirming testimony, supported by references from over 20 embryology and other medical textbooks that human life began at conception.
Dr. McCarthy de Mere, medical doctor and law professor, University of Tennessee, testified: "The exact moment of the beginning of personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception."
Dr. Hymie Gordon, Chairman, Department of Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, added: "By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception."
"Father of Modern Genetics" Dr. Jerome Lejeune told the lawmakers: "To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion ... it is plain experimental evidence."
Dr. Alfred Bongiovanni, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, concluded, "I am no more prepared to say that these early stages represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty ... is not a human being."
Dr. Landrum Shettles, sometimes called the "Father of In Vitro Fertilization" notes, "Conception confers life and makes that life one of a kind."
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, M.D., co-founder of NARAL, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, Ob/Gyn, co-founder of NARAL and renown abortionist who killed 60,000 babies, performed his last of countless abortions when he watched it on ultrasound. This shocking video with his commentary is called, "The Silent Scream", and can be seen at http://www.silentscream.org/video1.htm. His book, "The Hand of God", can be ordered at http://www.prolife.com/NATHAN.html.
The Greek physician Hippocrates in about 380 B.C., wrote the Oath that American doctors took upon graduating from medical school for generations. It contains the words: "I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly, I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy."
___________Helpful links:
Photographic, ultrasound, and video evidence of life before birth: http://www.justthefacts.org/continue.html http://www.w-cpc.org/fetal.html http://www.unborn.com/
Dr. John Wilke's very informative book online http://www.abortionfacts.com/
Graphic photographic and video evidence that abortion kills an innocent human being: http://www.justthefacts.org/continue.html
"Ethical Considerations In Elective Abortions - From a Physician's Perspective" - An informative photograph-laden lecture by APP member, Dr. James P. Johnston, D.O. - to see this lecture that was given during Dr. Johnston's residency, click the title at the bottom of this page: http://www.wherethetruthhurts.org/prochoicers.htm