Another new medical textbook has confirmed that human life begins at conception.
The details in “The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology” by professors Keith Moore, T.V.N. Persaud, and Mark Torchia add even more validity to the pro-life position. Even at the earliest moment, when the unborn child is a one-cell zygote, it already is a unique, living human being, the authors wrote.
Their textbook is not outside the mainstream. A few years ago, pro-life blogger Sarah Terzo compiled a list of dozens of textbooks and medical experts that also stated that human life begins at conception.
The Federalist reports about the new book:
… the book confirms the premise of the pro-life movement.
The authors of this textbook state in two separate cases that “human development” is “a continuous process that begins when an oocyte from a female is fertilized by a sperm from a male,” and also that “human development begins at fertilization when a sperm fuses with an oocyte to form a single cell, the zygote.” In other words: human life begins at conception.
The textbook contains a number of interesting facts about an unborn baby’s development, starting from the moment of fertilization. Live Action News, which first reported about the new edition of the textbook, listed some of these details:
“All major external and internal structures are established during the fourth to eighth weeks.”
“Upper limb buds are recognizable at day 26 or 27 as small swellings on the ventrolateral body walls.”
“Embryos in the sixth week show spontaneous movements, such as twitching of the trunk and developing limbs.”
“By the end of this week (8th week), the embryo has distinct human characteristics; however, the head is still disproportionately large, constituting almost half of the embryo.”
SUPPORT LIFENEWS! If you like this pro-life article, please help LifeNews.com with a donation!
Abortion activists, especially those at Planned Parenthood, are fond of saying that no one really knows when life begins, and a woman should be able to decide her views on the matter of abortion and human life.
Planned Parenthood Vice President Dawn Laguens recently got a lot of attention after she avoided answering interview questions on national TV about what an unborn baby is.
Fox News’s Tucker Carlson asked her, ““You work for the country’s biggest abortion provider, if you can hear the heartbeat of this fetus, what is it? Is it a piece of tissue or is it a separate human being?”
“I think that’s up to each individual to decide what they believe,” Laguens replied.
This is a complete denial of science. Textbooks, researchers and many others have confirmed over and over again that a baby in the womb is a separate, living human being from the moment of fertilization. To believe otherwise is wrong.
