Category: Textbooks and Scientists

Writer Scott Klusendorf cited the following:

During the Clinton Administration, The National Bioethics Advisory Commission described the human embryo from its earliest stages is a living organism and a “developing form of human life.”

Cloning Human Beings cited in “On Human Embryos and Stem Cell Research.”

Scott Klusendorf. The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2009) On page 83

For science textbooks and renowned scientist’s statements on when life begins, go here.

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Dr. Hymie Gordon, professor of medical genetics and physician at the Mayo Clinic:

“I think we can now also say that the question of the beginning of life – when life begins – is no longer a question for theological or philosophical dispute. It is an established scientific fact. Theologians and philosophers may go on to debate the meaning of life or purpose of life, but it is an established fact that life, including human life, begins at the moment of conception…

I have never ever seen in my own scientific reading, long before I became concerned with issues of life of this nature, that anyone has ever argued that life did not begin at the moment of conception and that it was a human conception if it resulted from the fertilization of the human egg by a human sperm. As far as I know, these have never been argued against.”

The Human Life Bill – S. 158, Report Together with Additional and Minority Views To the Committee of the Judiciary, United States Senate, Made by Its Subcommittee on Separation of Powers, 97th Congress, 1st Session : 9

Found by the subcommittee:

report also said:

“No witness [who testified before the subcommittee] raised any evidence to refute the biological fact that from the moment of conception there exists a distinct individual being who is alive and is of the human species. No witness challenged the scientific consensus that unborn children are “human beings” in so far as the term is used to mean living beings of the human species….Those witnesses who testified that science cannot say whether unborn children are human beings were speaking in every instance to the value question rather than the scientific question… These witnesses invoked their value preferences to redefine the term “human being”… [The witnesses] took the view that each person may define as “human” only those beings whose lives that a person wants to value. Because they did not wish to accord intrinsic worth to the lives of unborn children, they refused to call them “human beings” regardless of the scientific evidence.”

Quoted in Francis J  Beckwith. Defending Life: a Moral and Legal Case against Abortion Choice (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 68

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Keith L. Moore, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, 7th edition. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2003. pp. 16, 2.

“Human life begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoo developmentn) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” “A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo).”

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T.W. Sadler, Langman’s Medical Embryology, 10th edition. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2006. p. 11.

“Development begins with fertilization, the process by which the male gamete, the sperm, and the femal gamete, the oocyte, unite to give rise to a zygote.”

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Keith L. Moore, Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology, 7th edition. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2008. p. 2.

“[The zygote], formed by the union of an oocyte and a sperm, is the beginning of a new human being.”

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Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Miller, Human Embryology and Teratology, 3rd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 2001. p. 8.

“Although life is a continuous process, fertilization… is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte.”

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“[All] organisms, however large and complex they might be as full grown, begin life as a single cell. This is true for the human being, for instance, who begins life as a fertilized ovum.”

Dr. Morris Krieger “The Human Reproductive System” p 88 (1969) Sterling Pub. Co

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“The first cell of a new and unique human life begins existence at the moment of conception (fertilization) when one living sperm from the father joins with one living ovum from the mother. It is in this manner that human life passes from one generation to another. Given the appropriate environment and genetic composition, the single cell subsequently gives rise to trillions of specialized and integrated cells that compose the structures and functions of each individual human body. Every human being alive today and, as far as is known scientifically, every human being that ever existed, began his or her unique existence in this manner, i.e., as one cell. If this first cell or any subsequent configuration of cells perishes, the individual dies, ceasing to exist in matter as a living being. There are no known exceptions to this rule in the field of human biology.”

James Bopp, ed., Human Life and Health Care Ethics, vol. 2 (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1985)

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Rand McNally, Atlas of the Body (New York: Rand McNally, 1980) 139, 144

“In fusing together, the male and female gametes produce a fertilized single cell, the zygote, which is the start of a new individual.”

Quoted in Randy Alcorn “Pro-life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments” (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, 2000)

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“Your baby starts out as a fertilized egg…For the first six weeks, the baby is called an embryo.”

Prenatal Care, US Department of Health and Human Services, Maternal and Child Health Div 1990

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