This is in response to Erica Carnes’ column printed on Friday, March 5, and the statement:

“The anti-abortion supporters focus most of their argument on the biology of when life begins. Most of these arguments are driven by religion.”

The focus of “anti-abortionists” on the “biology of when life begins” is rightly justified.

For if life does not begin at conception, abortion is no worse than a woman having her tonsils removed. If life does begin at conception, an abortion is the premeditated termination to a human life.

These arguments are no longer driven by religion, though, but by objective scientific findings.

In 1981 a United States Judiciary Subcommittee invited many prominent scientists and physicians to present evidence to determine the scientific beginning of life.

The Official Senate report on Senate Bill 158, the “Human Life Bill,” summarized its findings from that meeting this way: “Physicians, biologists and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being — a being that is alive and a member of the human species.

There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological and scientific writings.” — Report, Subcommittee on Separation of Powers to Senate Judiciary Committee S-158, 97th Congress, 1981.

At this subcommittee there was not one expert witness who presented evidence that life began elsewhere besides conception, and only one who said that it could not be determined when life began.

Whether or not the growing child should possess the same rights as a post-birth child is yet to be discussed, but there is no longer debate in the mainstream scientific community as to the beginning of life.

Life begins at conception. This is not, as you asserted, a belief based upon religion.

David Hanson

Junior

Materials Engineering