Why Pro-Life?/Is the Unborn Really a Human Being?

From Gospel Translations

Pro-choice advocates once commonly stated, “It’s uncertain when human life begins; that’s a religious question that cannot be answered by science.” Most have abandoned this position because it’s contradicted by decades of scientific evidence. However, this out-of-date belief is so deeply engrained in our national psyche that it’s still widely believed.

The only way pro-choice logic can prevail is if people believe the unborn are less than fully human.

Are they?

WHAT SCIENCE SAYS

Dr. Alfred M. Bongioanni, professor of obstetrics at the University of Pennsylvania, stated, “I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception…human life is present throughout this entire sequence from conception to adulthood…any interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of human life.”

Speaking of the early stages of a child’s development in the womb, Professor Bongioanni said, “I am no more prepared to say that these early stages 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.”1

Dr. Jerome LeJeune, then genetics professor at the University of Descartes in Paris, stated, “After fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being.” He said, this “is no longer a matter of taste or opinion. Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception.”2

Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth of Harvard University Medical School said, “It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception.”3

The moment of each person’s creation is the moment of his conception. Before that moment the individual (with his unique DNA) did not exist.

From that moment he does exist. It’s not merely pro-life people who believe this. The owner of Oregon’s largest abortion clinic testified under oath, “Of course human life begins at conception.”4 The award-winning secular book From Conception to Birth documents the child’s beginning at conception and his movement toward birth.5

How clear is the proof that human life begins at conception? So clear that the Missouri General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a 2003 bill which stated, “The general assembly of this state finds that: (1) The life of