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Posted on 02/24/2017 3:15:30 PM PST by NYer
Rep. Mike Moon had what was seemingly a simple question for his legislative colleagues.
“Is a sperm alive?” Moon, an Ash Grove Republican, asked during a hearing Tuesday night on a bill that would enshrine in the Missouri Constitution the statement that life begins at conception. “Have you ever seen a tadpole? Is a tadpole alive?”
For the second year in a row, Moon is championing legislation that would amend the state Constitution to expand the definition of “personhood” to include unborn fetuses from the moment of their conception.
It also would add language expressly stating that there is no constitutional protection for an abortion.
“That all persons have a natural right to liberty, pursuit of happiness and the gains of their own liberty,” Moon said. “Oh wait, I forgot life. The right to life is the first and most important of these natural rights.”
The House passed the bill last year, but the Senate never took it up.
If approved by the legislature, Moon’s bill would put the constitutional amendment on the statewide ballot next year. The ballot wording: “Should the Missouri Constitution be amended to protect pregnant women and unborn children by recognizing that an unborn child is a person with a right to life which cannot be deprived by state or private action without due process and equal protection of law?”
Those who oppose the bill say adding a personhood clause to the Missouri Constitution would severely limit women’s rights explicitly outlined by the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
M’Evie Mead, director of policy and organizing for Planned Parenthood Services Missouri, said the bill oversteps the role of the government.
“It’s the government getting in between a woman, her family and her doctor, and telling that family what they can do,” Mead said. “It’s a serious government intrusion into the most personal pieces of one’s life.”
But reversing Roe is the ideal outcome for many proponents, such as Ike Skelton, executive director of Missourians for the Unborn. (He is not related to the late Missouri congressman of the same name.)
“Since Roe v. Wade, this country has sort of had a culture of death when it comes to babies,” Skelton said. “We need to have a culture of life in the state of Missouri and in this country.”
Abortion rights advocates say a personhood clause could potentially have impact beyond the right to an abortion.
Alison Dreith, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, worries that the bill could severely restrict, or even outlaw, access to contraceptives, in-vitro fertilization procedures and stem-cell research.
The personhood bill is only one in a series of bills that would restrict abortion in Missouri.
The Senate is considering legislation that would mandate that women get a referral from a doctor before being allowed to seek an abortion in another state. The only clinic in the Kansas City area that performs abortions is a Planned Parenthood facility in Overland Park.
Another bill would place new restrictions on donation of fetal tissue, and yet another would make it illegal for someone to transport a minor across state lines to get an abortion.
In addition to Moon’s personhood bill, the House Children and Families Committee also debated legislation that would require both parents to be notified when a minor is seeking an abortion. Current law requires that only one parent be notified.
Rep. Rocky Miller, a Lake Ozark Republican, said he was inspired to sponsor the legislation after he and his wife were able to encourage their minor daughter to carry her pregnancy to term.
However, Dreith said many minors would be at risk if both of their parents knew about an abortion, especially women who were abused by their fathers.
Republican lawmakers also have proposed legislation that would ban local governments from enacting ordinances that would limit or interfere with the activity of a pregnancy resource center.
These centers provide services aimed to assist women in carrying their pregnancies to full term, such as counseling, housing and supplies for newborns.
They’ve been controversial among abortion rights supporters who say the centers do not inform women of their full range of reproductive options. Critics also say the centers often give false medical information, such as telling women that contraceptives and abortions increase the risk for infertility or that abortions increase the risk of breast cancer.
The legislation has been discussed in the Missouri statehouse for years, but seems to have gotten heightened urgency since St. Louis passed an ordinance that aims to protect women from discrimination on the grounds of abortion or pregnancy.
Gov. Eric Greitens on Thursday said he would lead the fight to repeal the St. Louis ordinance, according to a report in The Pathway, a publication of the Missouri Baptist Convention.
Karen Nolkemper, executive director of the Respect Life Apostolate of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, argued Tuesday that without laws that safeguard them, pregnancy resource centers might be mandated to hire people who refer abortions. Others worry that local governments could impede free speech rights of pregnancy resource centers.
“They should be free, free to operate in accordance with their mission and religious conviction,” Nolkemper said.
Yep.
Saw it about two months ago: instant hit.
I use that now.
Harvard University Medical School’s Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Principal Research Associate, stated, “In biology and in medicine, it is an accepted fact that the life of any individual organism, reproducing by sexual reproduction, begins at conception” (85; cf. 81:18; 72:149).
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” (100:114).
Dr. Alfred Bongiovanni of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School noted: “The standard medical texts have long taught that human life begins at conception” (100:114).
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” (100:114).
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” (100:114).
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” (85; cf. 81:18).
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” (85; cf. 72:149).
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” (85; cf. 72:149).
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” (85; cf. 72:149; 81:18).
At that time the U.S. Senate proposed Senate Bill #158, called the “Human Life Bill.” These hearings which lasted 8 days, involving 57 witnesses, were conducted by Senator John East. 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. (85:7)
In 1981, only one scientist disagreed with the majority’s conclusion, and he did so on philosophical and not scientific grounds. In fact, abortion advocates, although invited to so, failed to produce even one expert witness who would specifically testify that life begins at any other point than conception (100:113).*
* A few held that life may begin at implantation. However, implantation, while important, in no way defines life.
Many other biologists and scientists agree that life begins at conception. All agree that there is no point of time or interval of time between conception and birth when the unborn is anything but human.
Landrum B. Shettles, M.D., Ph.D., is one of the twentieth century’s titans in the field of embryology and reproductive science. He was the first scientist to consistently achieve in vitro fertilization of human eggs. This prominent scientist emphasizes, “The zygote is human life” (100:40).
G. L. Flanagan observes, “From their first hour the human cells are distinctly human” (71:12 in 90).
Dr. Margaret Liley and Beth Day state: “A human life begins with a single cell” (71:17 in 91).
Axel Ingelman-Sundberg and Claes Wirsen assert that, “It is a living being from the moment of conception” (71:17 in 92).
World famous geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky states: “A human begins his existence when a spermatozoon fertilizes an egg cell” (71:16 in 93).
Another leading scientist, Ashley Montagu, confesses, “Every human being starts off as a fertilized egg” (71:16 in 94).
Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia states, “At the moment the sperm cell of the human male meets the ovum of the female and the union results in a fertilized ovum (zygote) a new [human] life has begun” (96:1087).
All of this evidence is why Professor Jerome Lejeune has stated: “If a fertilized egg is not by itself a full human being, it could never become a man, because something would have to be added to it, and we know that does not happen” (71:18). Biologically, no one can deny that we are human from conception.
In all stages of our growth, whatever the developing child is called, we are human. At birth humans are called babies. Inside the womb, humans are called “fetuses.” Before that, humans are called “embryos.” Before that, humans are planted on the uterine wall and called “blastocysts,” and before that, humans are called “zygotes.” Before that, only an individual sperm and egg existed, and not a human being.
Professor Roth of Harvard University Medical School has emphasized, “It is incorrect to say that the biological data cannot be decisive. . . . it is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception, when the egg and sperm join to form the zygote, and that this developing human always is a member of our species in all stages of its life” (85; cf. 81:18; 72:149).
In conclusion, we agree with pioneer medical researcher, Landrum B. Shettles, M.D., Ph.D., that “. . . there is one fact that no one can deny: Human beings begin at conception” (24:16).
Again, let us stress that this is not a matter of religion, it is 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” (101:317).
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” (101:317). These statements can be found in the World Medical Association Bulletin for January, 1950 (Vol. 2, p. 5) and April 1949 (Vol. 1, p. 22). In 1970, the World Medical Association again reaffirmed the Declaration of Geneva (101:317).
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.*
*But to accept this fact and maintain that taking human life is not morally wrong is incredible. It is even reminiscent of Nazi Germany and yet today such arguments are increasingly accepted (e.g. 136:16).
FROM: When Does Life Begin And 39 Other Tough Questions About Abortion – John Ankerberg and John Weldon 1989
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