There are several ways of reproducing, and until recently we humans had just one (with a notable exception): A spermatozoon (Gk. seed-life) and an ovum (egg) meet in a cloud of spermatozoa. One sperm is chemically and physically in the best situation to contribute its DNA to the ovum. The membranes thin in reaction to a chemical recognition of each other in the hospitable environment of the fallopian tube. A half-share of DNA, 23 chromosomes, is present in each gamete (Gk. marriage unit). The spermatozoon’s 23 pass through the membranes when they become thin enough and are attracted byt he electomagnetic charge of the 23 chromosomes in the ovum. These bond and form a 46-chromosome human cell, with half the DNA of the father and half the DNA of the mother. This is not one of the mother’s cells and obviously not one of the father’s cells; it’s a different cell with a separate biological identity, and it is dividing as soon as it is formed. The cell divisions are planned genetically from the beginning. Each new set of cells is more specialized than the one before. In a few days, the cells are differentiated by type and are forming tissues – muscle, cartilage, skin, connective tissue, lymph, platelet, red blood cell, white blood cell, nerve cell – and within ten days the little creature has the visually recognizable buds of a brain, spine, nervous system, immune system, heart and eyes, along with other organs. These are the brain, heart and eyes etc. of a new person.
As anyone who has ever fished for minnows knows, it doesn’t take a high IQ for a creature to want to live. Every living thing struggles to live.
At some point in the conception process, the child is a new individual living creature. The child of a human and a human is always a human. If the sperm and egg were human cells, the resulting child is a human child.
Ten days later there is strong reason to assume the child has some kind of sensation and struggles to live. S/he is already more neurologically sophisticated than a cricket or a butterfly, or any insect, which we know will fight to live if threatened.
A pill abortion at ten days kills a human child who is alive and struggles to live. A surgical abortion kills a child far older than ten days, and stops a functioning multi-lobed brain, fully functioning nervous system, distinctly human hands, kicking feet, wiggling toes, face with recognizable expressions, thumb-sucking mouth, working liver, steadily-beating heart and functional kidneys, spleen, bone marrow and other human systems, and interrupts a learning new human mind.
A child was born years ago at 18 weeks and five days after conception. She lived. Today survival at 23 weeks is more common all the time and the day we can keep a child alive who emerges at 17 or 15 or maybe 12 weeks is in view already. A typical term is 39-41 weeks counting from conception (41-43 gestational age). The baby who survived birth at 18 weeks was at 45% term,and was exactly like a full-term child but thin, short, weak, with low immunities and sensitive to temperature and light, and exhausted, with difficulty breathing and eating. But she got through it. She differed from a nine-month child to the degree a none-monther differs from a child born a couple of months ago. That’s the degree to which that child differed from a child conceived three months earlier, or a three-month child differs from a six-week child, or a six-weeker differs from a three-week child, or three weeks from ten days, or ten days from seven days, seven days from four days, or four days from one day, one day from several hours, several hours from a few minutes. These differences of maturity are gradual and not sudden changes of kind. The only sudden changes of kind our life cycles involve are conception and death.
