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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