Progress becomes blind and destructive when it denies that life begins at conception

IN his letter (November 17), Con Hayes is incorrect in claiming that it “never will be possible to say with absolute precision when a foetus becomes a person”.

Science has confirmed with certainty that life does not result from an organism when it has been built up, but rather it is the vital principle of life that builds up the organism of its own body. Hence, human life begins at conception. This was established 120 years ago by Wilhelm His, the father of human embryology.

Major theologians also agree it is at the instant of conception that a person acquires his or her soul. Procured abortion, therefore, remains the deliberate killing of a human being in the initial phase of his or her existence, extending from conception to birth.

While the slogan that ‘abortion is a woman’s right to control her own body’ may sound reasonable to many, it is a medical fact that the human foetus is not a part of the mother’s body.

It is a separate, distinct and unique human person with its own heartbeat, brainwaves and DNA. Those who support abortion cannot coherently answer the question why the right of the foetus not to be killed must yield to the right of individual freedom.

When the law accepts that the rights of the weakest may be violated, it also accepts that the law of the jungle prevails. When we begin to call even an embryonic human being a “thing” or a “clump of cells”, progress becomes blind and destructive.

People may deceive themselves that legalised abortion across the world has not changed much in our private lives and in our society. But there are no “small murders”. When man loses respect for life, he inevitably ends by losing his own identity. We all must welcome every new life into the world, regardless of the circumstances, as if it were our own. Our lives and the lives of our unborn children are inseparable. Man, quo vadis?

Paul Kokoski

234 Columbia Drive

Hamilton

Ontario

Canada L9C 3Y9