Abortion | Chapter 1 Preface
One of the most controversial issues of the abortion debate is the question of when human life begins. Many abortion opponents argue that life commences at the moment of conception, when a sperm fertilizes an egg cell. Fertilization, they contend, creates a unique individual with a complete genetic code that is separate from that of its mother. Consequently, terminating a pregnancy kills an innocent and defenseless human being, anti-abortionists maintain. As prolife lawyers Olivia Gans and Mary Spaulding Balch assert, an embryo “has a beating heart [in] as early as 18 days, with tiny...
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