At fertilization we have all the genetic material that we are ever going to have. We have our genetic code or genetic blueprint. This genetic code is distinct from our mother’s. Embryologists Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Müller state, “Although life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed.” In other words, at no point is an unborn child not a distinct, unique human being. After fertilization or conception, no one ever is merely a part of his or her “mother’s body.” If four criteria exist, a cell is considered to have biological life: Metabolism Growth Reaction to stimuli An ability to reproduce At the point of fertilization or conception, a new and distinct human being exists and meets all of these qualifications. To drive this point a home, I want to quote Dr. Keith L. Moore. At the University of Toronto in Ontario, Canada, Moore was a “Former Chair of Anatomy and Associate Dean for Basic Medical Sciences in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toranto, Ontario, Canada.” He also was a professor emeritus in the field of anatomy among faculty members specializing in surgery. He said, On December 24, 2002, Laci Peterson failed to show up at her Modesto, California, home. She was seven-and-a-half months pregnant with a boy, whom she and her husband Scott had planned to name Conner. A massive search was launched to find her in the immediate area where she lived, but to no avail. Four months later, on April 13, 2003, the body of a pre-born baby boy washed up on the shore of San Francisco Bay. The next day, the badly decomposed body of a woman also washed up on the shore of the bay, about a mile from where the baby’s body had been discovered. DNA testing provided evidence the bodies were those of Laci and her son. Scott Peterson became a suspect in the murders and, in November of 2004, was convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances in the death of Laci, and second- degree murder in the death of his son Conner. Scott subsequently was sentenced to death by lethal injection but, as of this writing, remains on death row as his case is undergoing the process of automatic appeal to the California Supreme Court. In 2004, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, or Public Law 108- 212 (This law also has been called Laci and Conner’s Law), passed by Congress and signed into law by then-President George W. Bush, provides that an unborn child, whom it defines as “a member of the species Homo sapiens, at any state of development, who is carried in the womb” is a victim if he or she is harmed or killed by means of any of more than 60 violent federal crimes.
