"Every baby begins life within the tiny globe of the mother's egg... It is beautifully translucent and fragile and it encompasses the vital links in which life is carried from one generation to the next. Within this tiny sphere great events take place. When one of the father's sperm cells, like the ones gathered here around the egg, succeeds in penetrating the egg and becomes united with it, a new life can begin."
Some of the world’s most prominent scientists and physicians testified to a U.S. Senate committee that human life begins at conception:
A United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee invited experts to testify on the question of when life begins. All of the quotes from the following experts come directly from the official government record of their testimony.
Dr. Alfred M. Bongiovanni, 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. Dr. LeJeune testified to the Judiciary Subcommittee, “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.”
A prominent physician points out that at these Senate hearings, “Pro-abortionists, though invited to do so, failed to produce even a single expert witness who would specifically testify that life begins at any point other than conception or implantation. Only one witness said no one can tell when life begins.”
Many other prominent scientists and physicians have likewise affirmed with certainty that human life begins at conception:
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.”
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, internationally known obstetrician and gynecologist, was a cofounder of what is now the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). He owned and operated what was at the time the largest abortion clinic in the western hemisphere. He was directly involved in over sixty thousand abortions.
Dr. Nathanson’s study of developments in the science of fetology and his use of ultrasound to observe the unborn child in the womb led him to the conclusion that he had made a horrible mistake. Resigning from his lucrative position, Nathanson wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that he was deeply troubled by his “increasing certainty that I had in fact presided over 60,000 deaths.”
In his film, “The Silent Scream,” Nathanson later stated, “Modern technologies have convinced us that beyond question the unborn child is simply another human being, another member of the human community, indistinguishable in every way from any of us.” Dr. Nathanson wrote Aborting America to inform the public of the realities behind the abortion rights movement of which he had been a primary leader. At the time Dr. Nathanson was an atheist. His conclusions were not even remotely religious, but squarely based on the biological facts.
Dr. Landrum Shettles was for twenty-seven years attending obstetrician-gynecologist at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. Shettles was a pioneer in sperm biology, fertility, and sterility. He is internationally famous for being the discoverer of male- and female-producing sperm. His intrauterine photographs of preborn children appear in over fifty medical textbooks. Dr. Shettles states,
I oppose abortion. I do so, first, because I accept what is biologically manifest—that human life commences at the time of conception—and, second, because I believe it is wrong to take innocent human life under any circumstances. My position is scientific, pragmatic, and humanitarian.
The First International Symposium on Abortion came to the following conclusion:
The changes occurring between implantation, a six-week embryo, a six-month fetus, a one-week-old child, or a mature adult are merely stages of development and maturation. The majority of our group could find no point in time between the union of sperm and egg, or at least the blastocyst stage, and the birth of the infant at which point we could say that this was not a human life.
The Official Senate report on Senate Bill 158, the “Human Life Bill,” summarized the issue this way:
Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being—a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings.
"The most authoritative scientific conclusion on when human life begins that has been made in recent years, was the conclusion from The First International Conference on Abortion, held in Washington DC, October 1967. Approximately 60 major scientific authorities from the field of medicine, ethics, law and social sciences participated as consultants in this symposium. Carefully chosen for their scientific knowledge and integrity, they presented a cross-section of race, religion, culture, and geographic backgrounds. After several days of “think tank” discussions, the medical group, made up of geneticists, biochemists, physicians, professors, research scientists, etc., came to a near unanimous conclusion (one dissension):
“The majority of our group could find no point in time between the union of sperm and egg, or at least the blastocyst stage, and the birth of the infant at which point we could say that this was not a human life [blastocyst stage occurs approximately one week after fertilization, and would account for twinning]”.… The changes occurring between implantation, the 6 week embryo, six-month fetus, a one week-old child, or mature adult are really stages of development and maturation.”
-“Five Ways to Kill an Unborn Child” from the Knights of Columbus
"Human development begins after the union of male and female gametes or germ cells during a process known as fertilization (conception).
"Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm (spermatozoon) with a secondary oocyte (ovum) and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei (the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum) and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being."
[Moore, Keith L. Essentials of Human Embryology. Toronto: B.C. Decker Inc, 1988, p.2]
"Embryo: the developing organism from the time of fertilization until significant differentiation has occurred, when the organism becomes known as a fetus."
[Cloning Human Beings. Report and Recommendations of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. Rockville, MD: GPO, 1997, Appendix-2.]
"The development of a human begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote."
[Sadler, T.W. Langman's Medical Embryology. 7th edition. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins 1995, p. 3]
"The question came up of what is an embryo, when does an embryo exist, when does it occur. I think, as you know, that in development, life is a continuum.... But I think one of the useful definitions that has come out, especially from Germany, has been the stage at which these two nuclei [from sperm and egg] come together and the membranes between the two break down."
[Jonathan Van Blerkom of University of Colorado, expert witness on human embryology before the NIH Human Embryo Research Panel -- Panel Transcript, February 2, 1994, p. 63]
"Zygote. This cell, formed by the union of an ovum and a sperm (Gr. zyg tos, yoked together), represents the beginning of a human being. The common expression 'fertilized ovum' refers to the zygote."
[Moore, Keith L. and Persaud, T.V.N. Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects. 4th edition. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1993, p. 1]
"The chromosomes of the oocyte and sperm are...respectively enclosed within female and male pronuclei. These pronuclei fuse with each other to produce the single, diploid, 2N nucleus of the fertilized zygote. This moment of zygote formation may be taken as the beginning or zero time point of embryonic development."
[Larsen, William J. Human Embryology. 2nd edition. New York: Churchill Livingstone, 1997, p. 17]
"Development of the embryo begins at Stage 1 when a sperm fertilizes an oocyte and together they form a zygote."
[England, Marjorie A. Life Before Birth. 2nd ed. England: Mosby-Wolfe, 1996, p.31]
"A human being at an embryonic age and that human being at an adult age are naturally the same. The biological differences are due only to the differences in maturity. Changes in methylation of cytosine demonstrate that the human being is fully programmed for human growth and development for his or her entire life at the one cell stage."
-Dr. David Fu-Chi Mark, a distinguished molecular biologist. Report of the South Dakota Task Force to Study Abortion, pp.21-25. quoted in United Families International Guide to Family Issues: Abortion (Gilbert, Arizona: United Families International, 2007) 24
“Every human embryologist, worldwide, states that the life of the new individual human being begins at fertilization (conception).… We exist as a continuum of human life, which begins at fertilization and continues until death.”
-Christine Watkins, editor The Ethics of Abortion (New York: Greenhaven press, 2005) 5
“Reproduction depends on the union of male and female gametes (reproductive, or germ, cells) each with a half set of chromosomes, to form a new individual with a full, unique set of chromosomes.”
-Human Physiology: From Cells to Systems 2nd Cd Ed,Sherwood, Kell & Ward, 2013, 2010, Nelson Education Ltd. 709
"ABSTRACT: The predominance of human biological research confirms that human life begins at conception—fertilization. At fertilization, the human being emerges as a whole, genetically distinct, individuated zygotic living human organism, a member of the species Homo sapiens, needing only the proper environment in order to grow and develop. The difference between the individual in its adult stage and in its zygotic stage is one of form, not nature. This statement focuses on the scientific evidence of when an individual human life begins. "
-American College of Pediatricians – March 2017
“[T]here is nothing in the entire phenomenon of the transmission of life that deserves more to be called an event, scientifically speaking, that does fertilization. It is the natural and scientific boundary at which a new and genetically unique human individual can be said to begin his existence. We conclude, therefore, that by objective and scientific criteria the individual human being is a person throughout his [or her] entire biological development from conception, which is synonymous with fertilization, to natural death… Any other conclusion would be arbitrary, unsupportable by scientific fact or rational argument, divorced from objective reality, and based on a particular ideology, philosophy or creed.”
-Direct report on S. 158 by Dr. Sean O’Reilly, Director of the Neurobiology Research Training Program at George Washington University, dated July 2, 1981
Quoted on page 28 – 29 of Randall J Hekman Justice for the Unborn (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Servant Books, 1984)
“The task force finds that the new recombinant DNA technologies indisputably prove that the unborn child is a whole human being from the moment of fertilization, that all abortions terminate the life of a living human being, and that the unborn child is a separate human patient under the care of modern medicine.”
“The task force cited scientific advances since 1973 as showing an embryo to be a “whole, separate, unique, living, human being” from the moment of conception. The advances in question include DNA fingerprinting, which shows a pattern of DNA that can identify an individual, and the polymerase chain reaction, which makes it possible to amplify and extract that information from a single cell. Techniques that show an embryo has a complete set of DNA “have proven that each human being is totally unique immediately at fertilization”, the panel’s report says. The task force also cited findings that control of growth and development are established by the embryo’s DNA after the third division of the fertilized egg: this stage is reached long before the embryo is implanted in the womb, which has previously been cited as signifying when personhood began.”
-“When does life begin?” New Scientist 3/18/2006, Vol. 189, Issue 2543
"Birth may be a grand occasion, says the Johns Hopkins University psychologist [Janet DiPietro], but “it is a trivial event in development. Nothing neurologically interesting happens.”
-Janet L. Hopson “Fetal Psychology” Psychology Today, Sep/Oct98, Vol. 31 Issue 5, p44, 6p, 4c.
“A composite, unified, sacrosanct, unanimity of thought as to when life begins can be determined by studying embryologic physiology. Scientifically acknowledged pronouncements should be more acceptable in determining the onset of human life than legal opinion.”
-Bernard J Ficarra, M.D. Abortion Analyzed (Laurel, MD: Health Educator Publications, Inc., 1989) 9
“the fertilized egg (zygote) is the beginning of a new diploid individual.”
Jones, R. E. Human Reproductive Biology, 4th edition. Waltham, MA.
Elsevier, Academic Press, 2014, p. 169.
“Human development begins at fertilization when an oocyte (ovum) from a
female is fertilized by a sperm (spermatozoon) from a male…Embryology is
concerned with the origin and development of a human being from a zygote
to birth.”
Keith L. Moore, Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology, 9th edition.
Philadelphia, PA: Saunders, 2016. p. 1.
“The main results of fertilization are as follows: Restoration of the diploid
number of chromosomes, half from the father half from the mother. Hence,
the zygote contains a new combination of chromosomes different from both
parents. Determination of the sex of the new individual. An X-carrying
sperm produces a female (XX) embryo and a Y-carrying sperm produces a
male (XY) embryo. Therefore, the chromosomal sex of the embryo is
determined at fertilization.”
Sadler, T. W. Langman's Medical Embryology, 13th edition. Philadelphia, PA:
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2015. p. 42.
“Sexual reproduction occurs when female and male gametes (oocyte and
spermatozoon, respectively) unite at fertilization.”
Dudek, R. W. Embryology, 4th edition. Philadelphia, PA. Lippincott Williams
and Wilkins, 2008, p. 1.
“Fertilization is the sum of the cellular mechanisms that pass the genome
from one generation to the next and initiate development of a new
organism.”
Penetration, adhesion, and fusion in mammalian sperm-egg interaction.
Primakoff P, Myles DG. Science. 2002. 296(5576):2183-5.
“Ca2+ signaling plays a crucial role in virtually all cellular processes, from
the origin of new life at fertilization to the end of life when cells die.”
The cell cycle: a new entry in the field of Ca2+ signaling. Santella L, Ercolano
E, Nusco GA. Cell Mol Life Sci. 2005. 62(21):2405-13.
“Representing the 60 trillion cells that build a human body, a sperm and an
egg meet, recognize each other, and fuse to form a new generation of life.”
The immunoglobulin superfamily protein Izumo is required for sperm to fuse
with eggs. Inoue N, Ikawa M, Isotani A, Okabe M. Nature. 2005.
434(7030):234-8.
“At fertilization, eggs unite with sperm to initiate developmental programs
that give rise to development of the embryo. Defining the molecular
mechanism of this fundamental process at the beginning of life has been a
key question in cell and developmental biology.”
Signal transduction pathways leading to Ca2+ release in a vertebrate model
system: lessons from Xenopus eggs. Sato K, Fukami Y, Stith BJ. Semin Cell
Dev Biol. 2006. 17(2):285-92.
“Most readers of this review originated from a sperm-egg fusion event.”
Cell fusion during development. Oren-Suissa M, Podbilewicz B. Trends Cell
Biol. 2007. 17(11):537-46.
“As representatives of the 60 trillion cells that make a human body, a sperm
and an egg meet, recognize each other, and fuse to create a new generation.”
Sperm-egg fusion assay in mammals. Inoue N, Okabe M. Methods Mol Biol.
2008. 475:335-45.
“Sperm are remarkably complex cells with a singularly important mission:
to deliver paternal DNA and its associated factors to the oocyte to start a
new life.”
-Sperm chromatin: fertile grounds for proteomic discovery of clinical tools. Wu
TF, Chu DS. Mol Cell Proteomics. 2008. 7(10):1876-86.
“A proper dialogue between spermatozoa and the egg is essential for
conception of a new individual in sexually reproducing animals. Ca(2+) is
crucial in orchestrating this unique event leading to a new life.”
Calcium channels in the development, maturation, and function of spermatozoa.
Darszon A, Nishigaki T, Beltran C, Treviño CL. Physiol Rev. 2011.
91(4):1305-55.
“In higher animals, the beginning of new life and transfer of genetic material
to the next generation occurs in the oviduct when two distinct gametes cells
unite resulting in the formation of a zygote.”
Oviductal, endometrial and embryonic gene expression patterns as molecular
clues for pregnancy establishment. Salilew-Wondim D, Schellander K, Hoelker
M, Tesfaye D. Anim Reprod Sci. 2012. 134(1-2):9-18.
“The egg-to-embryo transition marks the initiation of multicellular
organismal development and is mediated by a specialized Ca(2+) transient at
fertilization.”
How to make a good egg!: The need for remodeling of oocyte Ca(2+) signaling
to mediate the egg-to-embryo transition. Nader N, Kulkarni RP, Dib M,
Machaca K. Cell Calcium. 2013. 53(1):41-54.
“It is intuitive that fertilization-the start of life-involves communication
between a sperm cell and an egg.”
Membrane rafts regulate phospholipase B activation in murine sperm. Asano A,
Nelson-Harrington JL, Travis AJ. Commun Integr Biol. 2013. 6(6):e27362.
"Fertilization occurs when sperm and egg recognize each other and fuse to
form a new, genetically distinct organism."
Juno is the egg Izumo receptor and is essential for mammalian fertilization.
Bianchi E, Doe B, Goulding D, Wright GJ. Nature. 2014. 508(7497):483-7.
“Fertilization is the culminating event in sexual reproduction and requires
the recognition and fusion of the haploid sperm and egg to form a new
diploid organism.”
Cross-species fertilization: the hamster egg receptor, Juno, binds the human
sperm ligand, Izumo1. Bianchi E, Wright GJ. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol
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“Since a new individual is derived from the fusion of a single sperm and
egg, we tested…”
Maternal non-Mendelian inheritance of a reduced lifespan? A hypothesis.
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“The fusion of a sperm with an oocyte to form new life is a highly regulated
event.”
An update on post-ejaculatory remodeling of the sperm surface before
mammalian fertilization. Gadella BM, Boerke A. Theriogenology. 2015.
85(1):113-24.
“The time of our conception is when we are most vulnerable to survival and
growing as a healthy human being.”
2015 RANZCOG Arthur Wilson Memorial Oration 'From little things, big
things grow: The importance of periconception medicine'. Norman RJ. Aust N
Z J Obstet Gynaecol. 2015. 55(6):535-40.
“Mammalian life begins with a cell-cell fusion event, i.e. the fusion of the
spermatozoid with the oocyte”
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“Mammalian life, with all its complexity comes from a humble beginning of a
single fertilized egg cell.”
Mapping the journey from totipotency to lineage specification in the mouse
embryo. Leung CY, Zernicka-Goetz M. Curr Opin Genet Dev. 2015. 34:71-6.
“As the start of a new life cycle, activation of the first division of the zygote
is a critical event in both plants and animals.”
The anaphase-promoting complex initiates zygote division in Arabidopsis
through degradation of cyclin B1. Guo L, Jiang L, Zhang Y, Lu XL, Xie Q,
Weijers D, Liu CM. Plant J. 2016. 86(2):161-74.
"Human life begins with sperm and oocyte fusion."
The role of syncytins in human reproduction and reproductive organ cancers.
Soygur B, Sati L. Reproduction. 2016. 152(5):R167-78.
“New parents anticipate their job begins at birth. Little do they know they
have been exerting control within the baby’s first cell since fertilization.”
Parental Control Begins at the Beginning. Chu D. Genetics. 2016. 204(4):1377-
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“In sexual organisms, division of the zygote initiates a new life cycle.”
ZYGOTE-ARREST 3 that encodes the tRNA ligase is essential for zygote
division in Arabidopsis. Yang KJ, Guo L, Hou XL, Gong HQ, Liu CM. J Integr
Plant Biol. 2017. 59(9):680-692.
“Aging is a developmental process that begins with fertilization and ends up
with death involving a lot of environmental and genetic factors.”
Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome: A Premature Aging Disease. Ahmed
MS, Ikram S, Bibi N, Mir A. Mol Neurobiol. 2017. doi: 10.1007/s12035-017-
0610-7. [Epub ahead of print]
“At the end of oogenesis and spermatogenesis, both haploid gametes contain
a single set of chromosomes ready to form the zygote, the first cell of the
newly developing individual.”
“This is where it all started” - the pivotal role of PLCζ within the sophisticated
process of mammalian reproduction: a systemic review. Gat I, Orvieto R. Basic
Clin Androl. 2017. 21;27:9.
“Pronuclear/zygotic stage is the very first stage of life.”
.Epigenetic modifications and reprogramming in paternal pronucleus: sperm,
preimplantation embryo, and beyond. Okada Y, Yamaguchi K. Cell Mol Life
Sci. 2017. 74(11):1957-1967.
“Recognition between sperm and the egg surface marks the beginning of life
in all sexually reproducing organisms.”
Structural Basis of Egg Coat-Sperm Recognition at Fertilization. Raj I, Sadat Al
Hosseini H, Dioguardi E, Nishimura K, Han L, Villa A, de Sanctis D, Jovine L.
Cell. 2017. 169(7):1315-1326.e17.
Timeline of major events:
The brain is there at 2 - 3 weeks after conception, the heart starts beating at 2 - 3 weeks after conception, this is before women even know they are pregnant, limb buds form at 3 - 4 weeks, the cerebral hemispheres and cerebellum are there and begin rapid growth by 4 and a half weeks, eyes are there at 4 and a half weeks, movements start by 5 and a half weeks, brain waves are detectable to us by 6 weeks, the face withdraws from light touch around the mouth at 6 weeks, eyelids are present by 6 weeks, they hiccup by 7 weeks, females have ovaries at 7 weeks, the testes begin to differentiate in males at 7 weeks, all the organs are there at 8 weeks, they roll over and open and close their mouths and squint and have complex responses to touch by 8 weeks, male fetuses make testosterone in their testes at 8 weeks, the neurons synapse in the cerebral cortex by 8 and a half weeks (meaning the cerebral cortex is there before), female fetuses have identifiable uteruses and early reproductive cells in their ovaries at 9 weeks, they yawn by 9 and a half weeks, and fingerprints are visible by 10 weeks. Most abortions happen at 8 weeks on up. You can watch the heart beating at 4 and a half weeks after conception right here.
http://www.ehd.org/movies.php?mov_id=21
Here is the development timeline: (or go to
ehd.org and hit the prenatal timeline button)
