“… I submit that religion, philosophy, and private opinion have nothing to do with this issue. I further submit that it is a commonplace of modern biology, known to every high-school student and no doubt to you the reader as well, that the life of every individual organism, human or not, begins when the chromosomes of the sperm fuse with the chromosomes of the ovum to form a new DNA complex that thenceforth directs the ontogenesis of the organism…. [T]he onset of individual life is not a dogma of the Church but a fact of science.”
Walker Percy, “A View of Abortion, With Something to Offend Everybody, ” in Jeff McMahan The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003)3-4
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