The science of the origins of life

Thanks so much to Mark Boden (The definitions of being human, Sept. 23) for the thorough lesson in mammalian reproduction. He correctly described the fertilization of a human egg by a human sperm resulting in, after a period of approximately nine months of gestation, a human being. He called this process a miracle. I call it biology.

One can easily substitute a canine sperm and canine egg and end up with a litter of puppies. The same goes for cats, bears and elephants. If you really believe that humans are divinely conceived, do you feel the same about all creatures?

While we all accept that a potential human life begins with conception, a lot of us believe that life is the number of breaths taken between the first and the last. Birth, for the mother and the baby, is fraught with roadblocks. Statistics show that maternal and fetal mortality and morbidity are worse in states that have restrictions on reproductive health procedures, including abortion.

Boden went on to write, “Destroy that egg and you have destroyed a human body and therefore a human life.” He wrote that denying the egg’s “personhood” is the moral equivalent of justifying slavery (did slave owners destroy their slaves?) and the Holocaust. (Weren’t the people killed mostly post-birth people?)

He carefully never used the word “Creator.” He certainly wouldn’t want to be accused of interjecting his religious beliefs into such a seemingly clinical discussion of fertility. If you want to get technical, every miscarriage destroys the fertilized egg at some stage of development. The medical term for miscarriage is spontaneous abortion. Who or what denied those eggs their personhood?

Diane Niesman

Wheaton