The conclusion of scientist Maureen L. Condic that human life begins at the moment of conception is not an opinion but a scientific one.
Dr Condic is a Senior Fellow of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person and an Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Utah School of Medicine. She directs the University of Utah School of Medicine’s course in human embryology. She published her conclusions in a White Paper entitled When Does Human Life Begin? In this paper, which can be downloaded from the internet, she used current scientific data in human embryology.
The moment when human life begins is an important question, with significant biological, ethical and philosophical dimensions and implications for public policy on matters regarding a number of topics, including abortion, in vitro fertilisation and human embryonic stem cell research.
According to Dr Condic, it takes only a second for the sperm and egg to fuse and form a zygote. So the central question of “when does human life begin” can be stated in a somewhat different way: When do sperm and egg cease to be, and what kind of thing takes their place once they cease to be?
Scientists make distinctions between different cell types (for example, sperm, egg and the cell they produce at fertilisation) based on two simple criteria: a) they are made of different components and b) they behave in distinct ways.
These two criteria are used throughout the scientific enterprise to distinguish one cell type from another, and they are the basis of all scientific distinctions. Dr Condic has applied these two criteria to the scientific data concerning fertilisation, and they are the basis for her conclusion that a new human organism comes into existence at the moment of sperm-egg fusion.
All sound scientific analyses do not support the mistaken idea that fertilisation is a process but that it is an event that takes less than a second to complete. The events of the first 24 hours following sperm-egg fusion are acts of a human organism, not acts of a mere human cell.
If we do not know what a human embryo is and when it comes into existence, we cannot make sound judgments regarding any of the issues surrounding the human embryo.
Par. 2274 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “Since it must be treated from conception as a person, the embryo must be defended in its integrity, cared for, and healed, as far as possible, like any other human being.
“Prenatal diagnosis is morally licit if it respects the life and integrity of the embryo and the human foetus and is directed towards its safeguarding or healing as an individual... It is gravely opposed to the moral law when this is done with the thought of possibly inducing an abortion, depending upon the results: a diagnosis must not be the equivalent of a death sentence.”
And par.366 of the same Catechism runs: “The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God – it is not “produced” by the parents – and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection”.
Along with the above I would like to point out that a protocol on abortion was annexed to Malta’s Accession Treaty, giving legal certainty that EU law, present and future, could not change Maltese law on abortion.
All our political parties have declared themselves against abortion. Why have their MPs, who are our MPs, not yet taken the necessary steps to qualify the constitutional right to life with the entrenched clause “from conception to natural death”?