The beginning of human life is really a matter of simple biology. Scientific evidence shows that each human life has the same starting point at conception. Consider:
1- “A new individual is created when the elements of a potent sperm merge with those of a fertile ovum, or egg.”
From Encyclopedia Britannica,”Pregnancy”, page 968, 15th edition, Chicago 1974.
2-“Development begins at fertilization when a sperm fuses with an ovum to form a zygote; this cell is the beginning of a new human being.”
From: Moore, Keith L. The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, page 12, W.B. Saunders Co., Philadelphia, 1974.
3- “The development of a new human being begins when a male’s sperm pierces the cell membrane of a female’s ovum, or egg…The villi become the placenta, which will nourish the developing infant for the next eight and a half months.”
From: Scarr, S., Weinberg, R.A., and Levine, A. Understanding Development, page 86, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1986.
4- “Conception. A new child is coming to life. The child was conceived when a sperm from the father united with an egg from the mother. The union of a sperm with an egg is called fertilization.”
From: Coming to Life. Health and Welfare Canada, Medical Services Branch, 1987, page 3.
Still some prefer to pretend that they do not know when human life begins in order to defend their support of abortion. An editorial from California Medicine in 1970 had this to say on the topic:
“…Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra- or extra-uterine until death… The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life would be ludicrous if they were not put forth under socially impeccable auspices.
From : California Medicine, Editorial, “A new Ethic for Medicine and Society,”page 67, September, 1970.
