The Facts of Science Prove That Each Human Life Begins at Fertilization

[Michie]

iStock.com/Raycat
An artist's depiction of human fertilization, which generates a microscopic flash of light.


On Wednesday Dec. 1, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson. This case involves a Mississippi law that limits abortion to 15 “weeks’ gestation except in medical emergency and in cases of severe fetal abnormality.”

During the hearing, Mississippi Solicitor General Scott G. Stewart defended the law by asserting that the State of Mississippi has an interest in preventing “the purposeful termination of a human life,” but Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor challenged him and declared:

How is your interest anything but a religious view? The issue of when life begins has been hotly debated by philosophers since the beginning of time. It’s still debated in religions. So, when you say this is the only right that takes away from the state the ability to protect a life, that’s a religious view.

Contrary to Sotomayor and regardless of what any philosopher or religious leader may think, the facts of science are clear that each human life begins at fertilization. As documented below, these facts are from credible science publications that don’t argue for or against abortion. In other words, they are not polemics from people with science degrees but facts from neutral scientific authorities.

The American Heritage Dictionary of Science — which was written by nine highly credentialed scientists under a “precise editorial review” to maintain “a standard of excellence” — defines “life” as:

Continued below.
The Facts of Science Prove That Each Human Life Begins at Fertilization - The Stream

 

[Trusting in Him]

These are also facts which are also very hard to explain from a evolutionary purpective. if it is argued that all life started from single cell organisms, where did sexual reproduction come from. It's just not logical, or reasonable. God made man to be in a one to one relationship with his opposite. Why are man and woman so different on many different levels.

They don't even think the same! How is that due to evolution? God created them male and female. Is not that so obvious! Women even have breasts to feed their young, that are so obviously created for a definite purpose. One of the first things that a new born baby does is to look for it mothers beasts in order to feed, how does it know to do that? The mother gives of herself to care for her baby and loves that baby, how does evolution explain that.

We start to learn the meaning of love from the time that we are born and in time we also learn that God is love. John's gospel tells us that God is the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world and now it has been discovered that at the moment of futilisation, there is a sudden burst of light. how do you explain that? Is this not God, who is the true ight which lighteth every man that cometh into the world?

 

[Dustoff]

University of Chicago did a survey in 2018 in which biologists were asked "when does life begin" Overall, 95% of all biologists affirmed the biological view that a human's life begins at fertilization (5212 out of 5502). Most of them are still pro-choice though.

The point to the survey was "these findings can help Americans move past the factual dispute on when life begins and focus on the operative question of when a fetus deserves legal consideration."

Biologists' Consensus on 'When Life Begins' by Steven Andrew Jacobs :: SSRN

 

[Michie]

Those four defining characteristics of life are all present during or soon after fertilization, which occurs when a sperm and egg unite to form a zygote, or the earliest stage of a human embryo:

1. Growth: Per the textbook Essentials of Human Development: A Life-Span View, “Fertilization begins the period of the zygote,” and “the zygote grows rapidly through cell division.”
2. Reproduction: Per a paper in the Biochemical Journal, “Sexual reproduction in mammals results in the formation of a zygote, a single cell which contains all the necessary information to produce an entire organism comprised of billions of cells grouped into multitudinous cell types.”
3. Metabolism: Per the medical text Human Gametes and Preimplantation Embryos: Assessment and Diagnosis, “At the zygote stage,” the human embryo metabolizes “carboxylic acids pyruvate and lactate as its preferred energy substrates.”
4. Response to stimuli: The Oxford Dictionary of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology defines a “stimulus” as “any event or phenomenon, such as radiation, electrical potential, or addition of molecules that leads to excitation of a tissue or cell.” Experiments have found that human zygotes respond to such stimulants. For example, a paper in the journal Human Reproduction Updatedocuments that a compound called platelet-activating factor “acts upon the zygote” by stimulating “metabolism,” “cell-cycle progression,” and “viability.”

Nor is a zygote just a form of human life like a skin cell. It is an actual human life. As explained in Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia, “At the moment the sperm cell of the human male meets the ovum of the female and the union results in a fertilized ovum (zygote), a new life has begun.”

 

[Andrei D]

It is a problem. I've been watching various trials lately (don't ask, my personality predisposes me to brief but intense obsessions) and I was just thinking that the extreme science / tech illiteracy of officers of the court is neither cute, nor acceptable in this age.