When Does Life Begin?

The federal Uniform Determination of Death Act states that death has occurred when an individual has no beating heart and/or no detectable brain waves.

• Being “wanted” has nothing to do with it.
• Requiring a special environment to sustain life has nothing to do with it.

Why should EITHER criteria have anything to do with when life begins?

• The fetal heart begins to beat just 3 weeks and 1 day after fertilization.
• Brain activity can be measured by an EEG about 3 weeks later.

Many pro-aborts define the beginning of life (or legal personhood) to be viability.

The ability of a fetus to survive outside the womb is currently defined as somewhere between 22 and 24 weeks.

At such early dates, premature infants require an enormous amount of medical support to survive, but then, so do many people suffering from serious trauma (e.g., quadriplegics) and illness (e.g., kidney failure).

Extreme pro-aborts refuse to grant legal protection to unborn human beings, even after they have become fully developed infants capable of surviving outside the womb without assistance.

This is a really slippery slope.

If it is okay to deprive a living, yet unborn, DNA-unique human being of legal protections simply because its mother wants it dead, then where does that stop?

• One minute after birth?
• A day?
• A week?
• A year?
• Any time a kid becomes “unwanted” by his or her mother/father/caregiver?

Bill Cosby used to do a funny routine about his then-teen son, Ennis, who was being annoying. He said he told him, “I brought you into this world and I can take you out.”

That joke became profoundly unfunny the day Ennis Cosby was murdered in a failed robbery attempt. The man who did it was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.