OPINION:
Today there is some support for a policy of legal abortion before viability. Viability means the capability of an embryo or fetus to develop outside the uterus.
Courts and legislatures have wrestled with the question of when life begins. Is the answer ’At viability’? Of course not. At the moment of conception, a zygote is created. That is a diploid cell resulting from the fusion of two haploid gametes. In other words, a fertilized egg.
A live egg and a live sperm have united, starting the development of a new person — a child, an offspring, with all the DNA of the parents intact.
A new life has started.
Why is it so difficult for some to recognize that when this happens, the process of development has begun, and uninterrupted it will result in a son or daughter whose life began at the moment of conception?
EMMETT A. STARKS
Winter Garden, Fla.
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