LifeSite.net addresses the question of "personhood of fertilized eggs" we've been hearing about in the news the past few weeks:
Pro-life advocates have often pointed to the misrepresentation in media of terminology surrounding cloning and embryo research. Terms such as "pre-embryo", "balls of stem cells", or "fertilized eggs" are commonly used to indicate what human embryologists have defined scientifically as a human embryo in the earlier stages of development.
Despite what many refer to as the "debate" over when a human being begins to exist, the facts have been known for more than a hundred and thirty years. In 1875, the German zoologist Oskar Hertwig showed definitively that penetration of a spermatozoon into an ovum was the beginning of independent life and that the terms "conception" and "fertilization" are therefore interchangeable terms.
Human embryologists have shown that once fertilization has taken place, neither the male nor female sex cells (often misnamed "eggs") continue to exist.
Dianne Irving, a scientist and ethicist who has written extensively on the subject, says that misdirection by the media in terminology has enabled much of the enormous gains in legalizing destructive research on human embryos in the last ten years.
Irving has pointed out that once an "egg" has been fertilized, it's no longer an "egg" but a zygote. When it's an "egg," it only contains the mother's DNA. Once fertilized by the man's sperm, it takes on a unique set of DNA--which, incidentally, makes it no longer "part of the woman's body" with which she can do whatever she likes. It's unique human DNA proves it is a separate entity, just as her 1 week old baby has unique DNA.
As I said a couple of weeks ago, the "mainstream" media and other Leftists aren't really interested in "science" when they can twist the language to lead us away from the truth of a matter. In this case, the discussion of personhood of "fertilized eggs" is meant to make us think about the personhood of something "scrambled or over-easy" and not unique human beings.
For a group supposedly so concerned with "science," they certainly can be sloppy...when it suits their purposes.
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