ii. Scientific EvidenceIn the scientific community we find an overwhelming consensus that life begins at conception. From individual doctors to scientific committees and medical textbooks the belief is the same.
Let us have a look at what they say:
"It is the penetration of the ovum by a spermatozoan and the resultant mingling of the nuclear material each brings to the union that constitutes the culmination of the process of fertilization and marks the initiation of the life of a new individual." - Dr. Bradley M. Patten, Human Embryology
"A new individual is created when the elements of a potent sperm merge with those of a fertile ovum, or egg." - Encyclopaedia Britannica
"...after fertilisation has taken place a new human has come into being... it is no longer a matter of taste or opinion... Each individual has a very neat beginning at conception." - Dr. Jerome LeJeune, professor of genetics at the University of Descartes in Paris, discoverer of the chromosome pattern of Down syndrome.
"By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception." - Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo Clinic
"It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive... It is scientific to say that an individual human life begins at conception... Our laws, one function of which is to help preserve the lives of our people, should be based on accurate scientific data." - Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School
"The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straight forward matter - the beginning is conception. This straight forward biological fact should no be distorted to serve sociological, political or economic goals." - Dr. Watson A. Bowes, University of Colorado Medical School.
"I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception... I submit that human life is present throughout this entire sequence from conception to adulthood and that any interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of human life...
I am no more prepared to say that these early stages [of development in the womb] 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." - Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni, professor of paediatrics and obstetrics at the University of Pennsylvania.
"[The Zygote] results from the union of an oocyte and a sperm. A zygote is the beginning of a new human being. Human development begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm ... unites with a female gamete or oocyte ... to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual." - The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 6th ed. Keith L. Moore, Ph.D. & T.V.N. Persaud, Md., (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1998), 2-18.
Before drawing any conclusions about the established Scriptural and Scientific fact that life begins at conception I want us to consider the life of the baby in the womb, its development and experience.
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