Well, prior to conception, the Egg is undeniably alive, and human, as is the Sperm. There is no "death" or "non life" that precedes conception, nor does conception result in the "Death" of either the sperm or egg. To claim "New" human life begins at conception is erroneous.
This is simply not true, and not accepted by any scientific or medical mind that I am aware of. Neither a sperm nor an ovum have any potential on their own to become anything more than what they are. Sperm and Ovum are things that the body produces, which are not new human beings.
Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni, professor of pediatrics and obstetrics at the University of Pennsylvania, stated:
“I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception…. I submit that human life is present throughout this entire sequence from conception to adulthood and that any interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of human life….
I am no more prepared to say that these early stages [of development in the womb] represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty…is not a human being. This is human life at every stage.”
Dr. Jerome LeJeune, professor of genetics at the University of Descartes in Paris, was the discoverer of the chromosome pattern of Down syndrome. He said:
“after fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being.” He stated that this
“is no longer a matter of taste or opinion,” and
“not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence.” He added
, “Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception.”
Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo Clinic:
“By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.”
Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School:
“It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive…. It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception…. Our laws, one function of which is to help preserve the lives of our people, should be based on accurate scientific data.”
Dr. Watson A. Bowes, University of Colorado Medical School:
“The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter—the beginning is conception. This straightforward biological fact should not be distorted to serve sociological, political, or economic goals.”
Ashley Montague, a geneticist and professor at Harvard and Rutgers, is unsympathetic to the prolife cause. Nevertheless, he affirms unequivocally,
“The basic fact is simple: life begins not at birth, but conception.
Conception is merely a phase of human life, which carries the potential to become a human being.
If you reject the basic and accepted scientific position on when a new human being comes into existence, what argument would you make? Can you support it?
If the egg splits into twins, then what do we call them?
Did they have the Moral worth of two Human lives at the moment of conception? Is only one of them Human now, since one (or both) of them was NOT a human life before the split? Are they each half a human life after the split??
Can we agree that the individual twin's human life began sometime AFTER conception?
This question too has come up ad nauseum in the abortion threads here. I'll just copy/paste my response from another thread.
As for your examples of difficult situations, there is an answer to each one. When we say that "life begins at conception", we are using the term "conception" to mean simply "at its very beginning". For a long time, conception was seen as the ultimate beginning of new human life. But as you've rightly pointed out, sometimes conception (it's very beginning) is different, ie - identical twins.
In the case of identical twins, there was only one human life at conception, but then another human life was formed. In this case, God brought into existence the younger twin by a different method than conception. But it's not a problem. Both their lives as humans had a beginning, and from that beginning they are morally valuable and created in the image of God.
In the case of the Chimera that you describe, such as fraternal twins that end up being one. This is also very simple so long as we hold onto our foundation. The fraternal twins were each unique individuals created in the image of God. Something went wrong. This would happen because there is sin in the world, and things don't always work out perfectly. In your chimera example, we would simply say that one of the humans died, and one of the humans made it. Now, certainly the human that came out was changed and affected by the death of the other, but they still have the same soul they did when they were conceived. Which one made it and which one died? I don't know, and you don't know, but that doesn't affect the principle.
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So again, I agree with the Catholic teaching that abortion is a grave evil, that it is immoral, that it is sin. Human life is inherently morally valuable because we are all created in the image of God.
