If you are around young children very often, you’re probably familiar with the Olivia the Pig series. My niece loves those books. But you’re probably not as familiar with Oliver the Egg. Let me tell you about him. Christopher Franceschelli has written a cute book about Oliver, who is really a chick growing inside of an egg.
Since I’d really not enjoy being sued for copyright violations, I won’t quote this entire six sentence book. Suffice it to say that Mr. Franceschelli describes the very few things that Oliver could do as an egg. He says, “But he was simply an egg and that was that.”
This little book (while very cute) completely misses the boat on science. It’s final pages say, “until one day” (with a picture of an egg) “everything changed” (with a picture of a chick). While rather entertaining for a small child, this book lacks any scientific or accurate value. It’s patently untrue to say that, before hatching, a chick is “simply an egg.” Uh, no. It’s an unhatched chick inside an egg.
Oliver serves to illustrate the general lack of scientific and medical knowledge that many people and some pro-lifers have about the beginning of human life. When exactly does human life begin? Is there such a thing as a “fertilized egg”? What’s the accurate term to call a new human being at the earliest stages? Can we really prove from science that we should defend all human life? What do medical experts say about this issue? Pro-lifers need to be more knowledgeable about what we are for and why we believe what we believe.
1. When exactly does human life begin? What do the medical experts say?
Well, the very simplest way to answer this question is to say “at the beginning.” What a novel thought. Honestly, though, pick up any embryology textbook (yes, doubters, please go do this), and you will find that these textbooks teach that a new, unique human being (i.e., not the potential for life, but an actual life) begins at the moment of fertilization; the moment the sperm meets the egg.
To clarify even further, an egg or a sperm are “potential life” because, under the right circumstances, they can combine to create a new, unique human being. However, once that combination (fertilization) occurs, we are talking about an actual human being.
Human Fertilization
Don’t want to take my word for it? I don’t blame you. Read from these experts:
“(Fertilization is) that wondrous moment that marks the beginning of life for a new unique individual.” Dr. Louis Fridhandler, in Biology of Gestation Volume One
“A new individual is created when the elements of a potent sperm merge with those of a fertile ovum, or egg.”Encyclopedia Britannica
“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. Alfred M. Bongioanni—professor of pediatrics and obstetrics at the U. of Penn
Read more -->HERE.
