Claire Vriezen wrote in her opinion article “Amendment threatens birth control use” that, “If contraceptives work to prevent a fertilized egg from completing it’s (sic) natural course of implanting in the uterus, then a ‘life at conception’ amendment would essentially qualify this as killing that life.” Now, Vriezen is a junior in biology, so surely she knows the consensus of biologists, of scientists, around the world in regard to when life begins.

Even the biology textbooks confirm this, as indicated by this quote (admittedly found on the Internet) from “The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology by Keith Moore,” the 2003 edition: “Human begins at fertilization, the process during which a male gamete or sperm (spermatozoo development) unites with a female gamete or oocyte (ovum) to form a single cell called a zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell marked the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.” Admitting in law that life begins at conception would be recognizing what the science has told us for years and years. It’s no good to deny this. Abortion kills something, and so do hormonal forms of contraception.

That something that is killed is also clearly human, being the product of two human beings and possessing a distinct, unique set of human DNA. What we are killing is not simply a part of the woman’s body, like a finger or toe. This is a separate life taken, even, at least potentially, in the case of hormonal forms of contraception. The Catholic church has long recognized this, and, so far as I understand (not being myself Catholic), the church is against most forms of contraception partially for this reason. Many cultures recognize life beginning at conception as well, including, ironically, China, which counts a baby as 1 year old at the time of birth.

But life is not a simple, arbitrary designation. I don’t think we should act like some forms of contraception (and abortion) are not killing anything, because then we are just lying to ourselves and to society. In these cases, we are killing human life, and we need to take this seriously and carefully consider the ramifications for ourselves as individuals and for society at large.