8mm
Posted on 01/12/2008 8:19:46 AM PST by CharlesWayneCT
What does modern science conclude about when human life begins? (Excerpts)
By Dr. John Ankerberg and John Weldon
http://www.ankerberg.com/Articles/apologetics/AP0805W3.htm The complete article is available in print friendly PDF format at: http://www.ankerberg.com/Articles/_PDFArchives/apologetics/AP3W0805.pdf
The scientific authorities on when life begins are biologists. But these are often the last people consulted in seeking an answer to the question. What modern science has concluded is crystal clear: Human life begins at conception. This is a matter of scientific fact, not philosophy, speculation, opinion, conjecture, or theory. Today, the evidence that human life begins at conception is a fact so well documented that no intellectually honest and informed scientist or physician can deny it.
In 1973, the Supreme Court concluded in its Roe v. Wade decision that it did not have to decide the “difficult question” of when life begins. Why? In essence, they said, “It is impossible to say when human life begins.” The Court misled the public then, and others continue to mislead the public today.
Anyone familiar with recent Supreme Court history knows that two years before Roe V. Wade, in October 1971, a group of 220 distinguished physicians, scientists, and professors submitted an amicus curiae brief (advice to a court on some legal matter) to the Supreme Court. They showed the Court how modern science had already established that human life is a continuum and that the unborn child from the moment of conception on is a person and must be considered a person, like its mother. The brief set as its task “to show how clearly and conclusively modern science—embryology, fetology, genetics, perinatology, all of biology—establishes the humanity of the unborn child.” For example,
In its seventh week, [the pre-born child] bears the familiar external features and all the internal organs of the adult.... The brain in configuration is already like the adult brain and sends out impulses that coordinate the function of other organs…. The heart beats sturdily. The stomach produces digestive juices. The liver manufactures blood cells and the kidneys begin to function by extracting uric acid from the child’s blood.... The muscles of the arms and body can already be set in motion. After the eighth week… everything is already present that will be found in the full term baby.
This brief proved beyond any doubt scientifically that human life begins at conception and that “the unborn is a person within the meaning of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.”
Thus, even though the Supreme Court had been properly informed as to the scientific evidence, they still chose to argue that the evidence was insufficient to show the pre-born child was fully human. In essence, their decision merely reflected social engineering and opinion, not scientific fact. Even during the growing abortion debate in 1970, the editors of the scientific journal California Medicine noted the “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.”
In 1981, the United States Congress conducted hearings to answer the question, “When does human life begin?” A group of internationally known scientists appeared before a Senate judiciary subcommittee.
The U.S. Congress was told by Harvard University Medical School’s Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, “In biology and in medicine, it is an accepted fact that the life of any individual organism reproducing by sexual reproduction begins at conception....”
Dr. Watson A. Bowes, Jr., of the University of Colorado Medical School, testified that “the beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter—the beginning is conception. This straightforward biological fact should not be distorted to serve sociological, political or economic goals.”
Dr. Alfred Bongiovanni of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School noted: “The standard medical texts have long taught that human life begins at conception.”
He added: “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. This is human life at every stage albeit incomplete until late adolescence.”
Dr. McCarthy De Mere, who is a practicing physician as well as a law professor at the University of Tennessee, testified: “The exact moment of the beginning [of] personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception.”
World-famous geneticist Dr. Jerome Lejeune, professor of fundamental genetics at the University of Descarte, Paris, France, declared, “each individual has a very unique beginning, the moment of its conception.”
Dr. Lejeune also emphasized: “The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence.”
The chairman of the Department of Medical Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, Professor Hymie Gordon, testified, “By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.”
He further emphasized: “now we can say, unequivocally, that the question of when life begins is an established scientific fact . It is an established fact that all life, including human life, begins at the moment of conception.”
This Senate report concluded:
Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being—a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings.
In 1981, only a single scientist disagreed with the majority’s conclusion, and he did so on philosophical rather than scientific grounds. In fact, abortion advocates, although invited to do so, failed to produce even one expert witness who would specifically testify that life begins at any other point than conception.
Again, let us stress that this is not a matter of religion, it is solely a matter of science. Scientists of every religious view and no religious view—agnostic, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, Christian, Hindu, etc.—all agree that life begins at conception. This explains why, for example, the International Code of Medical Ethics asserts: “A doctor must always bear in mind the importance of preserving human life from the time of conception until death.”
This is also why the Declaration of Geneva holds physicians to the following: “I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception; even under threat, I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity.” These statements can be found in the World Medical Association Bulletin for April 1949 (vol.1, p. 22) and January 1950 (vol. 2, p. 5). In 1970, the World Medical Association again reaffirmed the Declaration of Geneva.
What difference does it make that human life begins at conception? The difference is this: If human life begins at conception, then abortion is the killing of a human life.
To deny this fact is scientifically impossible.
If we are going to cover this well, it needs to be defined well enough to shut out the abortefacients as well, or babies are still being killed. PP, pharmacists and doctors are not required to track this type of abortion so there is no real record of how many babies a year die from this method. Yet it is still abortion.
It does not follow logically, that if life begins at conception, one of your two identical twin granddaughters is not "alive." Even if the split between the two girls happened days after conception, we know that human life came into being at conception, meaning that human life was transmitted to a new generation.
Each individual girl shares in that new life--- the life that began at conception. Technically, you might want to consider the smaller girl as either a clone-offspring of the larger one, or posit that both individuals were present in the zygote in some undetectable way.
That is a technicality. The point is that Human life "began" perhaps a 1,750,000 years ago with Adam & Eve, or protohominid Lucy and her mate Mr. Australopithecus, or whatever --- and dthereafter, human life is "transmitted" every time another generation is conceived.
BTTT
PING!
During the past 40 years or so, Planned Parenthood et al have redefined "conception" to mean "implantation." (Implantation is the moment, approximately 7-10 days after fertilization/conception, when the embryo attaches to the uterine wall.) By using the new, revised definition of pregnancy = implantation, the morning-after pill, RU-486, embryonic stem cell research, and early abortions are permitted because "it" is not a pregnancy and she is not pregnant. Words mean things.
I repeat: if life does not begin at fertilization, then what is that "thing" and why is it growing? If it is not life, how can it be growing?
Words mean things. We may not agree with the definition of a word, but everyone must be talking from the same definition - or they're talking past each other. (Have you and your teen ever battled over curfew because each of you understood "be home by" differently?!)
Conception precedes fertilization. It is the instant the baby comes into being. Planned Parenthood can redefine all it wants. It will always do so every time they want the situation to suit their purposes. What I’m saying is that life begins BEFORE fertilization, or conception. Planned Parenthood and others of their ilk keep moving the goal posts. In fact, the pro-death crowd doesn’t care when life begins anyway, or they wouldn’t argue that partial birth abortion is OK to spare the health of the mother.
If we keep playing the word games to keep Planned Parenthood happy, then next we’ll be saying that life begins after the birth of the baby, or even several hours later, because that is where they are heading. There are some places that kill the babies now if they are found to have Downs Syndrome or some deformity.
That is already happening. Consider Peter Singer. He's an Australian ethicist who works/teaches at Princeton, if I remember correctly. He believes it should be permissable to kill newborns up to 28 days old because they "don't have a sense of their own existence" until at least that age. Really scary stuff!
It’s the slippery slope that we’ve all feared.
Its now May 11. Will a "Life Begins at Conception" act be up for vote between, say now and November?
I believe they are still trying, but I don’t know how they get it past Nancy Pelosi.
To the best of my knowledge, Steve King is a rock-ribbed conservative, across the board, not just on life, but everything?
Is that correct?
Can someone post specifics about where he is on taxes, 2nd amendment, etc.? I would like to know more about him.
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