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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume. 34, Number 10. 1971

Biology and Abortion

Biology and Abortion.

Now to turn to the question of whether, or when, a conceptus is a person Ignorant and simplistic people proclaim with much emotion that any abortion is murder and close their minds to any examination of biological facts. A common idea on abortion is that "life begins at the moment of conception". The biological fact of the matter is however that fertilization does not occur at any particular "moment" but is a process taking about twenty four hours. Malcolm Potts. Fellow and Director of Medical Studies at the Sidney Sussex College in England, said in 1968 at the University of Chicago Conference on Abortion: "At the completion of fertilization a genetically unique structure has been produced but it cannot be said to warrant a special status or the label 'a potential human being'. We must see the genetic uniqueness of the fertilized egg in the context of the richness of all biological processes. Every cell in our body contains all the genetic information to make a new individual. Botanists have already taken a single cell from the leaf or root of a plant and grown a new individual." The same experiments have also been successfully performed with frogs and it is only a matter of time before a whole new human being can be grown from any piece of living tissue of an already existing person. Why then the disproportionate concern for the tiny clump of cells in the reproductive system? Many products of the union of sperm and ovum are grossly malformed and these are usually sloughed off early in pregnancy. Some indeed can still be described as they were in the Middle Ages, as monsters, and are in no way human beings although they may have hair, skin, a nervous system and other tissues.

"Unborn child" is a new cry in New Zealand but "Unborn child" is a meaningless phrase. It is an emotive term designed to conjure up images of curly hair, rosy cheeks and booties; in fact at any time that an abortion should be granted upon demand—if only for the health of the woman—the creature which is a potential human being is not more than two inches long. If abortions were granted upon demand, women would want to have them as early as possible, for many obvious reasons, and the potential human being would be a barely discernible shapeless little scrap of living tissue. If correct terminology is to be used, then we begin with a sperm and an ovum once fertilization has taken place it is known as a zygote, until, implanted in the uterine wall several days later, it is a blastocyst. Soon it is known as an embryo, and after three months it is a fetus. If abortions were freely available and if the general climate of opinion were not so harshly condemnatory, there would be few women or girls who would put off facing the truth of their situation and wait until the fetal stage had been reached.

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Cartoon of abortion surgery

Liberal religious leaders in the United Kingdom and in North America increasingly stress the concept of a continuum of life, an "accruing value" of the life of a potential human being. Unless one's religious beliefs instruct one that a fertilized ovum is "ensouled" it is obvious that a microscopic dot of human material is not a person. These liberal religious leaders place considerable emphasis upon the actual experience of the pregnant woman who usually does not feel that the life within her, even if planned and eagerly awaited, is a "real person" until nearly midterm when it is felt to move.