The first heartbeat of a child, the first swirls of fingerprints, the first strand of hair, or the first movement in the womb – when does life begin? Almost all elements of the pro-life, pro-choice debate come down to when life begins. At what point in life does a human gain her right of personhood?
Under the fourteenth amendment, a child born in the United States is a citizen and therefore gains fundamental rights. If the government were to assume the beginning of life is at conception, the sea of debates would cease. Conception creates a zygote, the first human cell. This cell would be recognized as the first stage of human life and would then be protected as a newborn child. In science, it is an established fact that pregnancy begins at conception.[1] As authors John Ankerberg and John Weldon claim, “This is a matter of scientific fact, not a matter of philosophy or speculation, conjecture or theory… Today, the evidence that human life begins at conception is a scientific fact so well documented that no intellectually honest and informed scientist or physician can dare deny it.” [2] Conception is when a male sperm and female ovum combine.[3] Over a twenty-four to thirty-six hour period, “the nuclei of the sperm and ovum dynamically interact and in so doing, they cease to be.”[4] Ankerberg and Weldon explain that this interaction (the forming of a zygote) is the first stage of human life.
This combination is miraculous because the zygote is not a part of the mother and father combined, but its very own entity. Many imagine this combining of the sperm and egg as machine parts combining together, but that is extremely inaccurate because the distinct parts of the father and mother –the sperm and egg- completely cease to be. Unlike a car whose parts remain separate, identifiable parts throughout their existence, the zygote is its own being, distinct from the sperm and egg from which it originated. The truly remarkable thing is that this new being is made of her own genetic code and her own genomic sequence.[5] She is her own being who does not need any new genetic information to make her a human. Everything about her genetic makeup is established at the moment of conception. All she needs is nutrients from her mother to grow into the young lady she has the potential of becoming. As Francis J. Beckwith states, “Just like all organisms the only thing necessary for growth and development, as with the rest of us, is oxygen, food, water, and a healthy interaction with its natural environment because this organism, like the newborn, the infant, the adolescent, needs only to develop in accordance with her given nature that is present at conception.”[6] In all the stages of human development, from zygote to adulthood, not one specific stage will “impart to the human being her humanity.”
If the beginning of life is established at conception, then what could ever justify the killing of a human being? I leave it to you to raise any possible reason.
[1] Francis J. Beckwith, Defending Life (New York, NY. Cambridge University Press, 2007), 66 [2] John Ankerberg and John Weldon, When Does Life Begin? (Brentwood, TN. Wolgemuth and Hyatt, Rab Inc, 1990), 7 [3] Francis J. Beckwith, Defending Life (New York, NY. Cambridge University Press, 2007), 66 [4] Robert Joyce, Natural Rights and the Right to Choose (New York, NY. Cambridge University Press, 2002), 66 [5] Francis J. Beckwith, Defending Life (New York, NY. Cambridge University Press, 2007), 67 [6] Francis J. Beckwith, Defending Life (New York, NY. Cambridge University Press, 2007), 68