From Keith Pavlischek over at First Things:
Dr. Hymie Gordon (Mayo Clinic): “By all criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.”
Dr. Micheline Matthews-Roth (Harvard University Medical School): “It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception.”
Dr. Alfred Bongioanni (University of Pennsylvania): “I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception.”
Dr. Jerome LeJeune, “the Father of Modern Genetics” (University of Descartes, Paris): “To accept the fact that after fertilization has taken place a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or opinion . . . it is plain experimental evidence.”
Rick Warren: At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?
Sen. Barack Obama: Well, I think that whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.
HT: James Grant.
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BTW, while we’re on the topic (sorta), here are a few books authored by religious and political conservatives mainly dealing with the ethics and ethical issues involved:
- Bioethics: A Primer for Christians by Gilbert Meilaender.
- Body, Soul, and Bioethics by Gilbert Meilaender.
- Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice by Francis Beckwith.
- Embryo: A Defense of Human Life by Robert P. George and Christopher Tollefsen.
- Medical Ethics: Principles, Persons, and Problems by John Frame. (Also see Frame’s recently published book The Doctrine of the Christian Life.)
In addition, here are some books written by Reformed Christians to build a biblical foundation for Christian couples and families with questions about sex, contraception, birth, children, and so on:
- The Contraception Guidebook: Options, Risks, and Answers for Christian Couples by Dr. William Cutrer and Sandra Glahn.
- The Genesis of Sex: Sexual Relationships in the First Book of the Bible by O. Palmer Robertson.
- God, Marriage, and Family: Rebuilding the Biblical Foundations by Andreas Kostenberger with David W. Jones.
- Sexual Intimacy in Marriage by Dr. William Cutrer and Sandra Glahn.
And — I just gotta mention a personal hero in the faith — this book is mainly addressed to Christians who work in the medical field (although it can obviously be read with great profit by any believer):
- Healing and Medicine by Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
