Human life begins at conception.

We have learned last week that for Joe Biden — presumably just as “ardent” a Catholic as Nancy Pelosi — this is “a matter of faith.”

For the rest of us, it is scientific fact.

Biden also resurrected the stem-cell issue, faulting Sarah Palin (whom else could he have been referring to?) for “not supporting stem cell research.” At least Biden could have been a bit more creative in his attack on Palin. Why the old canard? He — like the rest of us — knows very well that pro-lifers like Palin don’t oppose all forms of stem-cell research, but only embryo-destructive stem-cell research (the only form of stem-cell research which, it might be added, after more than a decade of research has yet to yield even one human application in clinical trials or treatments.).

But back to Biden’s religious convictions about when human life begins.

Natural conception — coming into existence the old-fashioned way — is sometimes substituted today by in vitro fertilization (IVF). One day human beings might also be brought into existence through cloning (somatic-cell nuclear transfer, SCNT), albeit to exist only for a few days until stem cells are harvested from them.

However it may be, there will be a point that marks a before and an after — a “moment of conception.” That point is when a biological entity of the human species attains the prerequisite biological disposition to enter the world stage, and gets “up and running” as an individual organism.

True, embryologists might point out that even in the old-fashioned way of coming into the world — natural conception — we cannot pinpoint precisely when conception takes place. Fair enough. The present state of embryology does not apparently provide us with the kind of data we would need to point to a cymbal-crashing moment in which — voila! — we have an embryo. One-celled embryos, zygotes, come into existence over a span of time in which, through an uninterrupted series of biochemical events, a one-celled organism is boot-strapped into existence and what was once an egg and a sperm cease to exist.

Indeed, over roughly a 24-hour period of time after penetration of the sperm into the egg, the nucleus of the egg and the nucleus of the sperm enter into a biochemical dialogue and eventually migrate toward each other until their DNA joins together — a process called syngamy — to produce the unified nucleus of the newly constituted organism.

At what point — exactly, down to the nanosecond — in this process do we go from separate sperm and egg to individual human organism? I don’t know; in fact, I don’t know if we can know. Based on the biology and with a bit of philosophical reflection, I would venture that we have a new organism about the time the two pronuclei (the nucleus of the sperm upon penetration of the oocyte (egg) membranes, and the nucleus of the egg) begin to communicate with each other. Embryologists I know could share a world of fascinating information about the remarkable transformations which then ensue and which characterize this entity as something new, namely, a self-directing individual member of the human species, a one-celled human organism.

Does the fact that we cannot pinpoint the moment, nanosecond, at which a new being begins to exist, mean that there is no “moment of conception”? Hardly. Would either of your parents be able to point to the nanosecond when you started to speak intelligibly? Or pinpoint the exact moment when you took your first step (as opposed to taking something that might have been a step but was really just a jocular lunge at the couch)? But was there a point at which you did not speak or walk, and then a point at which you were speaking and walking? Was there a before and after and a point that separated the two, even if it can’t be pinpointed?

I rest my case for the “moment of conception.”

There is a logic of biological facts which underlie the mystery of our coming into existence. That logic can enable anyone to see — without recourse to dogmas or notions about the soul or appeals to blind religious faith — that if today I am an individual human organism of the species homo sapiens, endowed with tremendous potentials and certain inalienable rights, this also had to be the case of that one-celled human zygote that I once was.

This logic can actually be construed as a brief syllogism.

Maj. All human persons are living human organisms;
Min. But all living human organisms begin to exist at natural conception (or as the result of IVF or SCNT);
Therefore, all human persons begin to exist at natural conception (or as the result of IVF or SCNT).

In other words, if existence as a human organism begins at natural conception or by artificial means of reproduction, and all persons are organisms, and the organism that person X is today is the same organism that began with the conception that has been biologically, historically, and logically identified as the beginning of his or her existence, then the organism which began at the conception was, and continues to be, the person that person X is today.

So it’s definitely not Biden’s Catholic faith that instructs him to believe that human life begins at conception. The facts of biology should suffice for him to know that life begins at conception. But if Catholics, including Biden, who support embryo-destructive stem-cell research were to grant the truth of the premises of the preceding syllogism and its soundness, and yet persist in supporting embryonic stem cell research, then they would have a problem. They would have to explain — logically and reasonably — how destroying a human embryo is not destroying a human person. They would have to answer Rick Warren’s question to Barack Obama — “At what point does a baby have human rights?” — without flippancy. They would have to answer it squarely and avoiding the obvious pitfall — pointing to some arbitrary point — call it a “person point” — at which the baby, the fetus, the embryo “becomes a person” and acquires the right to live. Good luck.

And, oh yeah: Many of them would find their pro-choice stance on abortion to be as equally inconsistent as their stand on embryonic-stem-cell research.

– Father Thomas Berg. L.C., Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Westchester Institute for Ethics and the Human Person, and member of the ethics committee of New York’s Empire State Stem Cell Board.