What is the Unborn?
by Oxford Students for Life
This article has been adapted with permission from the Alliance of Pro-Life Students
Have you ever tried to provide a scientific answer to the question ‘What is the unborn?’ without using the words
What is the Unborn?
by Oxford Students for Life
This article has been adapted with permission from the Alliance of Pro-Life Students
Have you ever tried to provide a scientific answer to the question ‘What is the unborn?’ without using the words ‘foetus’, ‘baby’, ‘embryo’, ‘child’, zygote’, ‘blastocyst’, ‘clump of cells’ or ‘a pregnancy’? Perhaps not. It’s easy, in the context of popular debate, to use the same terms over and over again. But it’s of vital importance to know exactly what you’re talking about when you use those terms. So, let’s give it a go.
From the earliest stages of development, the unborn is a distinct, living and whole human being.
And this can be proven by turning to the science of embryology.
“Development begins with fertilization, the process by which the male gamete, the sperm, and the female gamete, the oocyte, unite to give rise to a zygote”
(T. W. Sadler, Langman’s Medical Embryology, 10th edition, Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2006, p. 11)
‘…a new cell is formed from the union of a male a female gamete. The cell referred to as a zygote, contains a new combination of genetic material, resulting in an individual different from either parent and from anyone else in the world’
(Keithe L. Moore & T.V.N. Persuad, Before We Are Born – Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects [W.B. Saunders Company, 1998. 5th edition) p. 500
Both of these come from standard textbooks in embryology, and if you look, you can find many more. These facts about the development of a human being have been known for a long time. It is not controversial in the medical/scientific community to say that life begins at conception/fertilisation. This is a scientific fact. To deny that a foetus, embryo or zygote is a human being is to show your scientific ignorance.
But let’s flesh this out a little more.
As was said, the unborn (or what exists in a woman’s womb when she is pregnant) is a distinct, living and whole human being. But what is meant by each of these and how do we know they are true?
- Distinct: the unborn is a distinct human being. He/she has a unique DNA structure, different from his/her mother’s (and father’s) DNA. When sperm and egg combine at fertilisation, there is a new combination of genetic material.
Furthermore, the unborn is not an organ of the mother. The unborn is not like a woman’s pancreas. The unborn is a distinct human which lives for 9 months or so in her womb.
- Living: in the category of things which are alive (as opposed to things which are not capable of being alive or dead like plastic or water) the unborn are undeniably alive. How do we know this? How do we know that they are not dead? Simple – dead things don’t grow. The unborn is growing extremely rapidly throughout its wombly existence, something it could not be doing if it were not alive.
- Whole: the unborn is a whole human being. It is not a part of a human being.
Sperm and egg are parts of a human being. Left on their own they will never become a human being. Only when they combine at conception/fertilisation, does a whole human being with a complete genetic code come into existence. The 23 chromosomes from the father and the 23 chromosomes from the mother combine to give the complete 46 chromosomes that is typical of the human species.
The unborn does not become a 