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Happy New Year Twenty-Ten
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--- On Fri, 1/1/10, Ivo da C.Souza <icso...@bsnl.in> wrote:
>
> Scientifically, human life begins with the conception, therefore
> abortion is a murder.
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 21:08:58 -0800 (PST)
From: Santosh Helekar <chimbel...@yahoo.com>
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has clearly stated in a strong resolution
that the above claim regarding human life "cannot stand up to the scrutiny of
science", and that it is basically a "matter of moral and religious values".
The academy's position has been supported in an independent petition by more
than 1200 eminent scientists, including 6 Nobel Laureates, one of whom is David
Baltimore, a current member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. They stated
that this claim is "a misuse and a misunderstanding of science," and that
"science cannot define the moment at which 'actual human life' begins".
Mario responds:
Once again we see the conflict between the self-serving needs of "science" as
expressed by Santosh, amd of religion as expressed by Fr. Ivo.
They are both correct. Abortion interrupts the process by which a human person
is formed after that process has begun, but legally, early stage abortions for
any reason are not considered murder in secular countries and some late stage
abortions to save the live of a mother are legal as well.
As Santosh quotes a group of scientists, "....science cannot define the moment
at which 'actual human life' begins".
Is this because they can't, or because don't want to because it would devastate
their scientific research programs and/or ideological and/or political
philosophies if they did.
My questions are a) can these scientists deny that prior to the conception of
an embryo there is NO CHANCE of the fruits of that process evolving into a
fetus and eventually into a human person no matter how that is defined, and b)
can these scientists deny that DNA tests can distinguish every embryo with
virtually 100% certainty as being a human embryo, an embryo of some other
species, or a non-living "thing"?
BTW, endorsements of scientific principles by scientists and Nobel Laureates
from unrelated fields are not credible endorsements that should impress any
serious observer.
