Those who argue for abortion maintain that the fetus is not a living person and that therefore, when "it" is destroyed, a human being is not killed. As a result, they hold that abortion is a morally neutral act. (Some hold that it is even a good act! They claim that it relieves the mother or family from the economic or emotional or psychological "burden" of another.) This position depends on the further assumption that no one, including scientists, can be certain about when human life (i.e. a human person) begins, and that it cannot be proved that it begins at conception.

       This is pure nonsense and disinformation. It is an erroneous presumption. Scientists do know at what point human life begins. What follows is NOT my opinion, but recognized fact.

       Those in biological science universally agree that any organism which exhibits the seven traits of life - metabolism, excitability, conductivity, contractility, differentiation, growth, and reproduction - is living, and is living according to its own kind.

       During each stage of development within the mother's body, the human zygote (the ovum immediately after fertilization), morula, blastocyst, embryo, and fetus all exhibit these traits of life. Merely because the intra-uterine organism is in a process of development and is unseen does not warrant the view that it does not possess life, life in accord with its nature (viz. the particular species of which it is a member), in this case human life.

       Since the zygote possesses all of the seven traits of life, all biological scientists who are free of thanatotic entanglements agree that life begins at conception. Actually, it is not really a matter of whether scientists agree with each other, for even universal consensus does not necessarily establish the objective reality of a pre-existing fact. What matters here, is that scientists recognize the already objective fact that life begins at conception. In fact, there is no other point at which life can begin. There is not some "non-life" stage that developes into a "life-stage" during a pregnancy. Such a concept is completely foreign to biological life. In other words, it is an established scientific fact (and a logical one as well) that there is no other developmental stage in which life begins other than the moment of conception. Whatever one's religious or non-religious presuppositions may be, these biological facts cannot be denied by any person of sound reason.

       Therefore, human life is not definable in terms of stages of development. At all stages of development - whether zygote, morula, blastocyst, embryo, or fetus - life, human life, is present. Destroying life at any of these stages is therefore to destroy a human life, a living person. Therefore, direct/ intentional abortion is always morally wrong, and should be called what it really is: murder.

       Let's listen to what respected and established scientists in this field have testified to before the U.S. Senate Judicial Subcommittee in 1981, and elsewhere:

"The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple, straightforward matter -the beginning is conception. This straightforward biological fact should not be distorted to serve sociological, political, or economic goals."
-Dr. Watson Bowes, University of Colorado

"It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception."
-Dr. Micheline Matthews-Roth, Research Associate at Harvard Medical School

"Each of us has a uniuque beginning, the moment of conception... Our entire being is contained in the DNA in the very first moment of fertilization."
-Dr. Jerome Lejeune, Genetics Professor at Rene Descartes University of Paris: testimony in Circuit Court, Blount County, Tennessee, September 21, 1989 (Kennedy Award recipient for discovery of the chromosomal basis of Downs Syndrome/Mongolism -Trisomy 21)

       Therefore, the ONLY reasonable and factual conclusion to be reached is this: abortion is MURDER!

A Philosophical Rebuttal:

       God, by definition, is that Supreme Being, or Force, Who is the source of life. To reject life at any time or stage of development (i.e., by means of *contraception or abortion) is therefore to be closed to the Source of life –Who offers/gives it. To be closed to anything is to reject it, even if temporarily, for one rejects it at THAT time. Thus, to be closed to life is to reject the Life-Giver, the Source of life. To reject the Source of life is to reject God, Who is the very Source and Author of life. Therefore, those who profess to believe in God and obey Him, yet allow either abortion or contraception, which is nothing other than being closed to life precisely so that it may not begin, are either idiots (i.e. those who cannot use their intellectual facilities properly), or they are hypocrites and liars. They say they believe in God, yet they in fact reject God in His profound and gratuitous action of giving life. I hesitate to hold that they are idiots, because that would be making a judgment on how God made them, and I dare not do that. So the only other alternative is that they are liars and knaves. There is no third alternative.

       You may ask, "But couldn't these persons be merely misled and deceived by the propaganda put out by the pro-death advocates and the media, and thus should not be considered liars for holding their opinions?" No, for moral truth is a matter of Natural Law, and this law is written upon the hearts of every person. So, one only needs to think and examine it honestly and clearly. Therefore, it is not simply a matter of being mis-informed, but of being guilty, at best, of the sin of sloth; of not making the effort to honestly examine abortion. At worse, it is a matter of just plan bad will and selfishness by choosing NOT to honestly examine the nature of this evil act.

       *There may be some who protest the fact that I equate in this argument both contraception and abortion. However, at its essence, the definition of abortion is that of a human action to prevent the continuation of a human life. Contraception is a human action to prevent the beginning of a human life. In essence they are the same: an action performed to prevent human life at any stage -whether before conception or before birth. Both are grave offenses against God, the Giver of life.

Post Note:

       The U. S. government sanctions and defends the murder of those persons who are most helpless because it has legalized it, and prosecutes those who attempt to stop others from committing it. Since abortion is murder, and that of the most helpless of citizens, any institution or government that sanctions it should not be trusted for anything. Here's why: since everything concerning human affairs and endeavors (including politics) first depends upon LIVING human beings (obviously!), then to sanction and even defend the killing of human life before birth undermines EVERY and ANYTHING ELSE the government may say or legislate. Any discussion or position by the government on any human rights (real or pretended) is entirely superfluous (and is an illusion) because the destruction of the very foundation upon which all human rights depend -the birth of living human persons- is sanctioned, legalized and defended by our government.

       Let us recall that to destroy the foundation of something means that all that is built upon it can not stand, but will crumble. To legalize and sanction the destruction of the foundation (i.e. birth) upon which all human rights depend means that all that follows and is built upon that foundation (human rights) crumbles. All human rights first depend upon a defense of the beginning and birth of life. When that defense is gone, and the very opposite is sanctioned, legalized, and defended, then all true human rights can be attacked and destroyed (this is, in fact, what is happening today). How can any institution defend any human right when it legalizes the destruction of the very foundation upon which all human rights depend? That foundation is birth, and its absolute right to be protected. This means that the supposed fact of a government for the people does not really exist in this land, because the law of the land sanctions the destruction of the foundation upon which all human rights depend -freedom for every pre-natal child to be born. Thus, the nation that brags about being the champion of freedom is in fact the worse enemy of freedom. Hence, the necessity of the conversion of America to the One True Faith -the Catholic Faith.