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Steven Ertelt | WASHINGTON, DC | LIFENEWS.COM | 6/16/08 9:00 AM
by Paul A. Byrne, M.D.
June 16, 2008
LifeNews.com
Note: Dr. Paul A. Byrne, a Neonatologist, is Director of
Neonatology and Director of Pediatrics at St. Charles Mercy
Hospital in Oregon, Ohio. Dr. Byrne is also a Clinical
Professor of Pediatrics University of Toledo College of
Medicine and the past-President of the Catholic Medical
Association. Opinion and editorial articles like this one do not necessarily reflect the views of LifeNews.com.

A
proposed amendment to the state constitution of Colorado
states, "The terms ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include any
human being from the moment of fertilization." This is not
quite true. Life on earth for every person begins with
conception. (The words "human person" and "human being" are
always interchangeable.)
How did this misconception get started? Perhaps it
was several years ago, when the word "pre-embryo" was
misapplied to development from the zygote (one cell stage)
to implantation in the uterus. In reality, facts about
conception do not change by inventing a new word like
"pre-embryo," or by giving a false meaning to conception and
even by trying to protect life by using a word like fertilization.
To counteract false proposals such as "pre-embryo,"
some have responded by changing the words to indicate that a
new human life begins at fertilization. This is not
accurate. Fertilization refers to a process of making a
thing fertile, as what happens to a non-fertile hen’s egg
when a rooster is in a barnyard. This activity initiates a
new chicken. Fertilization is a biological term that can be applied
to reproduction of beasts that can indicate a new individual
beast.
Evolutionists claim that human beings evolve from
beasts. There has never been a human person evolved from any
beast. Evolution from lower forms is bothersome and false.
Is it modern evolutionism to claim the IVF test-tube-product
to be a person?
Life for every person begins with creation by the
Creator. (Cf. CCC, 327; 296.) The reference to creation is
prior to time. Life is the substantial fact of the existence
in time. Human time begins with Adam and Eve. The living
person is visible. The soul is the life of the person. It
cannot be seen because it is spiritual.
Not long ago a magazine article wrongly stated:
"Life is a
continuous thread connecting each generation to the next. A new
human person appears on this thread at fertilization because at that
point a new organism with unique DNA comes into existence."
While the author can make this case for beasts and
brutes, the physical actions and activities of reproduction
in beasts are different from creation and procreation of the
human person.
The person is created; the body is formed using the
sperm and egg. The person created is first visible or
manifest as a zygote. The zygote within the body of his/her
mother has immediate effect on the mother manifest by Early
Pregnancy Factor (EPF). EPF is made by the embryo but found
in the mother’s blood already when there are only two cells.
Thus, we can know that this new person is present within the body
of his/her mother immediately after conception. Every person
since Adam and Eve, including Jesus, has lived within the
body of his/her mother.
Zygote is the name given to the one-cell stage of
many species of organisms. Embryo is applied to the stage of
development between zygote and fetus for many types of
organisms — e.g., chicken, mouse, etc. The nomenclature of
zygote and embryo has no meaning about species, type, or
kind of organism.
The person on earth is always a spiritual-corporeal
(soul-body) unity. The human person is unique (separate),
irrepeatable (one of a kind), made in the Image (substance)
and Likeness (nature) of God. The human person is an
individual substance of a nature rational. Human life cannot
exist in animals or plants, nor can it be grasped in terms
of merely biological categories. The life (soul) is in all cells,
tissues, organs, and systems of the living person on earth. When
cells, tissues, and/or organs are separated, there can be
activity of the individual cells, tissues and organs.
The power to begin life is not in the sperm and/or
ovum. Only God can create a person. With the concurrence of
God, the body is formed by taking up, allotting, and
aligning the needed components of the sperm and egg. Life is
the substantial fact of the soul-body unity manifest
already in the zygote. The formation of the body at the instant of
conception manifests the person created by God. "The body and
it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the
spiritual and the divine" (Pope John Paul II Feb 20, 1980).
Those who claim that a person begins at fertilization
are not using the correct term or referring to the correct
process. Sperm and ovum have the activities of individual
cells, but they cannot be a cause of liberty or a rational
soul. Fertilization is a physiological activity in beasts
and plants, but this is not enough to understand human creation
and procreation. A dictionary can help:
"Fertile" comes from
the Latin, fertilis, to bear, produce. Fertilization: 1.
The act or process of rendering fertile. 2. The process by which the
pollen renders the ovule fertile. 3. The act or processing of
fecundating the ovum. Fertilization can properly be applied
to reproduction in plants and animals. This is in contrast
to the word "conception," which brings in something more
than simply physical, e.g., idea, notion, spiritual, soul.
"Conception" comes from the Latin,
Concepcio,
Conceptus, from
concipio, ~con, and
copio,
I receive, I bring together. 1. The act of conceiving; the
first formation of the embryo. 2. The state of being
conceived. 3. The formation in the mind of an image, idea, or
notion.
To use the word "fertilization" to describe the
beginning of a human being is neither precise nor proper.
Conception is precise and proper to describe that the life
of a person is now manifest in the
conceptus, known in Comparative Embryology as the zygote.
We know from experience, precision, and accuracy that
once the zygote is present within the body of his/her
mother, it can be factually known that this person has newly
arrived and is manifested. This is prior to implantation;
conception ought not to be falsely labeled as implantation.
Procreation is a special word with precise
signification and reference to the human person’s
generation. We don’t know exactly how creation happened. We
do know that God is Almighty and God creates from nothing in a
non-extended instant. These words are not adequate to describe these
mysteries. When the body is formed, time for that person on
earth begins. Conception is the beginning manifestation of
life on earth for a person with soul, intellect, will, and
body. God, the Creator, creates life from no prior
existence. Without God, no human person is created. No
person since Adam and Eve, including Jesus and His Blessed
Mother, has arrived on earth at any place other than within
the body of his or her mother.
Abortion (including abortifacients), human embryo
research, in vitro fertilization, stem cell research, and
mixed-species chimeras involve specific claims as to when
the life of a human person begins. But this question is not
merely scientific because it deals with more than only sperm,
ovum, etc. Science deals with empirical facts. Science is certain
and evident knowledge of things through their proximate causes.
The scientist knows, as to existence, that a living human
organism exists when the zygote is recognized. But as to the
existence of the human person or the human soul, science
alone cannot judge. It cannot establish personhood unless it
understands something beyond scientific research, because
the zygote is a manifestation of a unique and irrepeatable
person created by God in His Image (spiritual soul) and Likeness
(nature).
"In vitro fertilization" uses the term
"fertilization" to describe the bringing together of sperm
and egg. Sperms are obtained by evil means (masturbation),
and eggs are obtained via chemical and physical mutilation
of the body of a woman. The activity of sperm is to fuse
with an ovum. After fusion, the cell produced has DNA and
chromosomes that are unique and different from the cells of both mother
and father. Cell division follows, but without the body of a
mother, these cell divisions are quite limited, cease, and
disintegrate. With cryopreservation, cell division can be
stopped temporarily, but to develop further, a mother is
necessary.
[N]ow the mode of origin is
not the same in all things, but in each thing is adapted to
the nature thereof; animated things being produced in one
way, and inanimated in another; animals in one way, plants in
another (Summa, P.1, Q. 93, a. 5).
God, who is an Omnipotent Spirit, creates the human
person with a rational soul immediately. Only Omnipotence
can create spirit, a non-material soul, a person endowed
with liberty. With the concurrence of God, the human body is
formed from the material sperm and ovum. The reality of the
person is evident by the visibility of the body. The soul is
the life. We see life in the living person; we do not see the soul.
When the formed body is present, the scientist and
embryologist can then, and only then, know that the person
exists. Creation is the mystery. Once alive, there is much
to learn about the human person, who is for eternity.
Certainly, those responsible for the amendment to the
Colorado Constitution are to be commended for doing
everything they know to do to protect the life of the person
from its first manifestation on earth. Those who label
embryos in test tubes as persons are telling us we need to protect
these "embryos." Yes, we need to protect and preserve life
of every human being (person) from its conception to its natural
end.
The final answer to the question of when life of a
person on earth begins is from God revealed through
revelation in sacred scriptures and the authoritative
teaching of the Church as found in The Bible and tradition:
Psalms 139:13 — "Truly you have formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb."
Jeremiah 1:5 — "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you."
Job 33:4 — "For the spirit of God has made me, the breath of the almighty keeps me alive."
Psalms 139:15 — "When I was made in secret, when I
was fashioned in the depths of the earth." (The depths of
the earth: figurative language for "The womb" — stressing
not so much the darkness of the place as the hidden,
mysterious nature of the operations that occur there.)
Isaiah 44:2 — "Thus says the Lord who made you, your help, who formed you from the womb:"
Isaiah 44:24 — "Thus says the Lord, your redeemer,
who formed you from the womb: I am the Lord, who made all
things, who alone stretched out the heavens; when I spread
out the earth, who was with me?"
Isaiah 45:12. — "I made the earth, I created man [hominem] upon it. [Super eam-before all].