Proof that life doesn't begin at conception

“Life begins at conception.”  This is a phrase that has been used repeatedly by many, including a recent Presidential candidate and two Vice-Presidential candidates in 2012.  On The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, former Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee indicated that he believed life begins at conception.  Rallies have recently been held where the protesters waved placards saying life begins at conception.

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Mr. Huckabee and others would probably flunk any biology class.  There are numerous reasons why life does not begin at conception.  Here are a few.

Plants.  There is no conception in the plant world, yet most people would agree that plants are alive.  Some may argue that there is pollination, which could be considered a surrogate for conception, but that doesn’t address the issue of plants that reproduce vegetatively.  Strawberry plants are an example of plants that don’t necessarily reproduce through pollination and seeds.  They frequently spread via runners which produce new plants without ever being pollinated.

One might say they meant only animals when they talk about life beginning at conception.  Except, there are animals that reproduce by parthenogenesis.  There is no genetic material exchanged between a male and female to produce viable offspring with parthenogenesis.  Snails, aphids and whiptail lizards are examples of animals that reproduce without conceiving.  But these animals are life and alive.

The life begins at conception crowd might be hollering now claiming that they meant human life begins at conception.  

Explaining the basics of biology that should have occurred to this group of people when they were in the sixth grade is rather feeble.  Conception occurs when a sperm cell from a male of the species meets an egg cell of a female of the same species.  There is one way for conception to occur and that is when both the sperm cell and the egg cell are living.  If either one, or both, of those cells are dead, conception does not happen.  The cells involved in conception have to be alive in order for conception to occur.  Life begins before conception, as the cells involved in conception have to be alive.

When does life start?  Many biologists will tell you, and Mike Huckabee as well, if he is listening, that life began 4.6 billion years ago.  And life is a continuum, an ongoing process that has neither a beginning nor end.  Where would you draw the line for where life begins when life is a series of changes that are passed from one organism to its offspring through many biological processes?  It would be very difficult to put a finger on any one process and say here is where life begins.

If life begins at conception then one can say that Jesus did not live.  Christians such as Mr. Huckabee believe in what has been written about in the Holy Bible, and that book says that Jesus mother was a virgin.  She had not had sex, therefore conception could not have happened.  If life begins at conception, then Jesus never lived.

Dolly the sheep was never alive, if you believe that life begins at conception.  Dolly was the first mammal cloned by humans.  There was no conception involved in the development of Dolly, so it follows that Dolly was never alive.  This is one more example of proof that life doesn’t begin at conception.  Life is a continuum.  

What happens when humans are cloned.  It is a matter of time before people are cloned and there is no conception involved in the human development.  If somebody killed a cloned person would they get off of any charge of murder because they could claim that the clone was never alive?  What about an entire army of clones?  Killing them, at least to people who believe life begins at conception, would not be a crime, and you could send them into battle with no qualms about any of the “deaths”. 

There is no single point where life begins.  It occurs continuously, changing from a living single cell to a multicellular organism.  Whether the living organism is a human, a snail, or a plant, life progresses through a series of changes.  There is no one point where life begins, for it is an ongoing process with no beginning, and perhaps no ending, as evidenced by the living cells of Henrietta Lacks sixty years after her death.


 "There never was a time when you or I did not exist. Nor will there be any future when we shall cease to be." 

--  Bhagavad Gita

Earth Day comments

The following was originally published in the Stump on the OregonLive.com website a while back. Unedited.

On a spring day in 1970 I bicycled to my high school as I usually did, rain or shine.  This was a semester where my first class started second period, so I was one of the last students to arrive.  I usually had my choice of where to park at the bike rack, as there were maybe ten other bicycles in the rack at a school with 2,000 students.  But on this particular sunny spring day I was shocked to see about 200 bicycles in and around the bike parking facilities.  There was no place to park, and I wound up leaning my bike against the side of the school, a distance from my usual site.

That was the very first Earth Day, and since then, I have occasionally wondered what happened to those 200 bicyclists?  What do they do during Earth Day now— buy compact florescent light bulbs?  Set their printers on duplex?  Combine their errand trips so they aren’t making as many trips to the strip mall?

It seems that there is more traffic now then there was in 1970.  Where are all the bicyclists?

On that first Earth Day in 1970 fifty-five percent of the population was registered to drive motor vehicles. In 2003, according to the US Department of Transportation, 67 percent of the population is registered drivers.  In 1970 there was less than one vehicle per driver.  Today there are one and a quarter vehicles for each registered driver.

Clearly, the trend is toward more drivers and more vehicles.

In 1970 there were very few sport utility vehicles.  Today, approximately fifty percent of the vehicles sold are SUVs and pick-up trucks.

I suspect this all has something to do with the increase in population, but not entirely.  For example, in 1998 only 14 percent of the population under 18 years of age owned a motor vehicle.  In 2008, a mere ten years later, about 43 percent of that segment of the population owned a motor vehicle.  Why should somebody under 18 even need a motor vehicle?  Can’t they share their parent’s car or truck?  Couldn’t they continue to travel as they had before they (or their parents) bought the vehicle?

Bicycles should be a major part of the transportation infrastructure of the twenty-first century.  Yet, most Americans think of them as quaint relics from the past.  I have been bicycling for over fifty years, and I still can’t get over how great it is to bicycle.  In addition to being efficient, inexpensive, and I can fix nearly anything that may go wrong with the bike, I can also get a physical workout, which helps to keep me healthy.

There’s no doubt that Earth Day has made more people more aware of environmental problems over the past forty years.  But has it made a difference?

“Widening roads to overcome congestion is like loosening our belt to solve obesity.” -John Norquist, former mayor of Milwaukee