The Meaning of Life
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It does not begin at conception. Life (characterized by metabolism, growth, and motion) is present in developing sperm and ova. This was shown by a London widow being permitted to use her husband’s frozen sperm and Chicago’s Dr. Craig Niedermeier extracting sperm from a dead man’s body at the request of his widow who “may have wanted to conceive the dead man’s child.” The use of ova in cloning mammals shows that sperm are not even necessary to start life. If sperm and ova can survive independently, continuity of life is proved.
Carl Sagan, in Billions & Billions, wrote, “Nor does human life begin at conception. It is an unbroken chain dating back to the origin of our species hundreds of thousands of years ago.”
In a letter to the New York Times, Allyson J. Kleiman wrote: “However, in the Torah, the zygote is considered ‘mere water’ the first 40 days after conception, and the fetus is not considered a human being until it can exist independently from its mother.”
