Posted on 12/04/2008 1:37:22 PM PST by NYer
Almost anyone with a high school education can correctly answer the question “When does human life begin?” by responding “at conception” or at “fertilization” of a human egg by a sperm cell. While we may not understand, or only vaguely recall, the precise process by which an egg and sperm combine to create a new unique human being, this basic truth about human life falls into the category of things we can’t not know.
Yet today, many educated people who do know better assert that human life begins at some later stage of development.
They arbitrarily push forward the starting point to implantation or viability, or even birth and beyond, to accommodate their approval of abortifacient drugs and devices, in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures, lethal embryo research (including embryonic stem-cell research), chemical and surgical abortion, and eugenic infanticide.
Because such confusion arises more from muddled values than a misunderstanding of basic science, one might think that the white paper “When Does Human Life Begin?: A Scientific Perspective” would have limited usefulness. To the contrary, the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person in Thornwood, N.Y., has done a great service to the public debate and to policymakers by publishing such a paper, authored by Maureen Condic, associate professor of neurobiology and anatomy at the University of Utah School of Medicine.
Based on her objective review of current scientific evidence in human embryology, Condic convincingly demonstrates that a new human organism (an embryo that is called a “zygote” in its one-celled form) comes into being at the moment when the sperm and egg fuse. This occurs mere seconds after the sperm has penetrated the thin layer of protein enveloping the egg.
Her evidence refutes the recent assertions of some scientists that a human life begins at the eight-cell stage when gene transcription begins, or four days post-fertilization when the inner cell mass forms distinct from placental cells, or at 5 to 6 days when the embryo implants in the uterine wall. Condic demonstrates that each of these events — like a baby’s first tooth or the onset of puberty — are simply milestones along life’s path and “not indicative of any fundamental change in the entity.”
And her proof also counters the claim of some scientists (reflected in many textbooks and even legal codes) that a human organism begins to exist only at “syngamy,” an event that occurs roughly 24 hours after the sperm enters the egg.
Recall that every cell has a nucleus where the cell’s DNA is located. A thin membrane separates the nucleus from the rest of the cell (cytoplasm). In a new human embryo, however, there are briefly two nuclei — one with dad’s DNA and one with mom’s. Before the first cell division takes place, the DNA from mom and dad (23 chromosomes each) have to match up and copy themselves.
To do that, the membranes surrounding their nuclei need to break down. That event is called syngamy.
Condic shows how the zygote is already behaving like an organism before syngamy because factors from the sperm and egg are “interact[ing] coordinately to orchestrate subsequent development.” The zygote already possesses DNA different from his or her mother and father and is “carry[ing] on the activities of life” with “organs that are separate … but mutually dependent.”
For example, within minutes after the sperm enters the cytoplasm of the egg, the new zygote sends out chemical signals that change the outer protein layer to prevent other sperm from entering the zygote.
Within 30 minutes of the sperm entering the egg, factors contributed by the sperm signal the nucleus of the egg to reduce its two sets of DNA to one. Within the first hour, proteins contributed by the sperm interact with chemicals in the zygote to create changes that will allow the zygote to begin dividing and growing. The nuclei are already being directed to line up across from each other for the first cell division.
Also, as Condic notes, the breakdown of the membranes separating the nuclei from the sperm and egg “is not a unique, ‘zygote-forming’ event, but rather it is part of every round of cell division that occurs through life.”
In this summary form I’ve just given, it may be difficult to follow the complex interplay of paternal and maternal factors within the newly formed zygote. Fortunately, Condic takes pains to walk us through these first essential “baby steps” of every new human life. The white paper also contains illustrations and a very helpful glossary to aid in understanding these intricate processes.
Writing as a scientist, Condic criticizes analogies comparing the development of human embryos to manufactured products, even when the embryos’ lives begin in a laboratory. Conceptualizing human procreation as a manufacturing process encourages erroneous thinking that the human being does not fully exist until viability or birth, when all the steps of the manufacturing process presumably are completed — in the case of a car, when it is fully assembled and ready to leave the factory.
But cars, unlike people, are built externally by others acting on them, building and assembling components. In contrast, she explains, the defining feature of the human zygote is that it has the power “both to generate all the cells of the body and simultaneously to organize those cells into coherent, interacting bodily structures.” Thus, from the first moment of fusion between sperm and egg, everything necessary to develop the adult human being is present, provided the new human embryo is allowed to develop in a safe environment and is able to access nutrition.
“When Does Human Life Begin” comes at a critical time. The new administration and many members of the next Congress are already championing policies that will put nascent human lives at even greater risk than they are today.
Federal funding and a vast expansion of human embryonic stem-cell research is almost a foregone conclusion. Our next president strongly supports such funding, and he can reverse the Bush moratorium with an executive order.
The president-elect also has cosponsored legislation to greatly increase government funding of contraception, including abortifacients, and mandate contraceptive coverage in health insurance policies.
Annually, over 100,000 children are born in the United States as a result of assisted reproductive technologies. Most people are unaware that in the process of making these children, hundreds of thousands of sibling-embryos die or are killed.
In addition, President-elect Obama has promised Planned Parenthood that his “first act” as president will be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), a law that will effectively wipe out 35 years’ of pro-life laws at the state and federal levels. Many of these laws have been shown to reduce abortions and, in their absence, we can expect abortion rates to increase.
Many Americans are weary of political battles and deeply concerned about the economy and other issues that touch their families. But we cannot turn a blind eye to the legalized killing that’s occurring in our country on an unprecedented scale. What lofty ideal does America still represent when its foundational principle — the inherent, God-given right to life of every human being — is violated by the very institutions entrusted with caring for the lives of vulnerable people: the family, the medical profession and the state?
We must urgently convey to our fellow citizens the inherent value and dignity of every human being. From the first moment of conception to one’s natural death, every human being, regardless of size, age, sex, race, mental or physical ability, is a unique and irreplaceable creature, made in God’s image and infinitely loved by God. Every life is, therefore, worthy of protection and concern. There are no exceptions. Laws that tolerate exceptions are unjust and must be opposed.
Condic and the Westchester Institute are to be applauded for rigorously defining the beginning point of each human life from the perspective of science. The white paper should prove to be an excellent tool in our pro-life arsenal to refute claims that entities destroyed by abortifacients, destructive embryo research, IVF procedures, and abortions are something less than fully human beings.
A better way to express that query is to ask, “If life doesn’t begin at union of sperm and ovum, why was contraception invented?” You see, the dead souls have been using abortion as a form of birth control for too long, and we don’t make sense by not opposing the wrong use of language in the issue. Precision is vital, especially now, with a ‘president-elect’ who manipulated language to cancel the Constitutional rights of newly born alive struggling infants in order to make absolutely legal the murder of these preemies as a means to protect the left’s precious Roe v Wade rites or slaughter. When up against such wickedness, precision is vital.
Notice as ‘exhibit A’ the post which followed yours, where a sycophant to murdering alive unborn children tried to play the word game over ‘life’ sperm and such. The poster can be negated instantly with the proper words, for the union of a cell (sperm) and an ovum (a cell from the female’s body), when conception occurs, bring into being a new ORGANISM. The poster was trying to exploit the ambiquity regarding organism and cell or subunit of an organ. That’s the typical dead soul approach and it works because of being imprecise with words. Pricks like that try to sow confusion and dissonance. [For reference, prick = niggling little nettle, an irritant, nothing more.]
Actually, an ovum can spontaneously become an organism on its own. And now scientists are achieving the transmogrification of a particular sperm cell, to transmogrify it into a totipotent zygote cell/organism.
Ever noticed how so many people will respond to:
-a little girl that has fallen down an abandoned well in Texas
-some men trapped underground in a coal mine in Wext Virginia
-people trapped under collapsed bridges after an earthquake in California
and they will root for the victims; and gather their resources
and go to extroidinary means; because there is just a chance
it is a slim chance, but still, yet there is a chance
they those people just might possibly be alive;
and if we try, we might possibly be able to save them...
But in the case of “when does life begin”, is this a life or not?
Many will say well maybe life begins here, and maybe there,
but we just don’t know for sure.
These two ways of thinking seem so at odds with one another to me.
If there is a chance, even a slim chance
that the fertilized egg is a new life, why not then
go to extroidinary means to save it?
You can spell it out in black and white and there will still be naysayers.
I can't wait to use that line.
With eight children, we don’t have a lot of food going begging, except meals people didn’t like. I usually greet announcements of “I’m hungry!” with “Great! Eat some leftovers!”
And each 2-year-old might grow to be an 80-year-old one day (actually, after 78 years of days), or might die tomorrow. I think the presumption ought to be in favor of letting both embryos and 2-year-old live as long as they're naturally going to, however long that is.
And tha tis why we need to protect it right from the beginning.
I think it is true and I absolutely know the second I became pregnant with my second child, it was as if a light had been switched on inside of me. A very startling feeling, but I somehow knew what it was. I’ve often wondered if any other women had this experience. Anybody out there?
My friend in Oklahoma, who’s expecting her 9th baby this month, says she knows she’s pregnant within hours of conception, and is throwing up her toenails within 2 days. Unusual hormonal reactions, perhaps.
Not me. I muddle around, thinking maybe I haven’t had my period for a while because I’m getting old, and then I take a deep breath to start a vocal solo and feel a kick!
An excellent question that bears repeating!
Please re read my post.
I am not disagreeing with your point, but I AM making a joke.
Legalistic pluralism! Great analogy. Thanks for the post.
And I'm willing to bet that the stork delivered you or, like a childhood friend, were found under a cabbage plant.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star .... :-)
It was, in my professional opinion as a notoriously humorless stick-in-the-mud, a mildly humorous quip, if only because of its predictability.
Oh, I see! Yes, I’m kinda slow sometimes.
Several years ago, I read an article from a British newspaper, that has haunted me ever since. As you noted, the ovum begins its cellular division while the woman is still in the womb. Scientists in GB were able to cull the ovaries from aborted fetuses with the intent of extracting these ovum for implantation into infertile women. Psychologists intervened at that point, noting that a birth resulting from such a procedure would present serious psychological consequences for the adult child in search of his or her biological mother. Mercifully, they shelved this option "for future consideration". Can you imagine finding out your mother was never born!
After that question, you no longer can even try to POSE as someone of intelligence.
Horrifying. But it will happen, "upon future consideration," because the "rights" of those who want to acquire a child, and can pay for it, will take top priority. Biological mother who died before birth, biological father a random or genetically-selected sperm donor, rent-a-womb (er) surrogate mother ... and Ms. Rich Person has "her" dream baby ... until it cries or throws up or flunks algebra, or something.
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