Bioethics

When Does Life Begin?

Author Melinda Penner Published on 01/25/2017

When does life begin? It’s not really as hard to answer that question as many think.

I think virtually every fair-minded person would agree that self-directed growth and activity is a sign of life, and now a recent scientific study has revealed that embryos direct their own growth.

Labs can stimulate and force mere clumps of cells to grow. But scientists have now observed that embryos in petri dishes grow and develop normally on their own. In other words, the embryos determine their own activity apart from the mom’s body. It isn’t the mother’s body directing embryonic activity; the embryo determines that itself.

Embryos have limited energy to continue to develop, and of course the mom’s womb is needed to provide the nutrition embryos need to continue what they do on their own.

It’s unfortunate that the study conducted to learn this information used frozen embryos that then ultimately died. It should be apparent now that embryos are not clumps of cells to be experimented on, but living human beings who should not be exploited for science.

And more so, it’s conclusive that life begins at conception.