University of St. Thomas Journal of Law and Public Policy Volume 8 Issue 1 Fall 2013 Article 4 January 2013 When Does Human Life Begin? The Scientific videnceE and Terminology Revisited Maureen L. Condic Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.stthomas.edu/ustjlpp Part of the Family Law Commons, and the Health Law and Policy Commons Recommended Citation Maureen L. Condic, When Does Human Life Begin? The Scientific videnceE and Terminology Revisited, 8 U. ST. THOMAS J.L. & PUB. POL'Y 44 (2013). Available at: https://ir.stthomas.edu/ustjlpp/vol8/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UST Research Online and the University of St. Thomas Journal of Law and Public Policy. For more information, please contact the Editor-in-Chief at
[email protected]. WHEN DOES HUMAN LIFE BEGIN? THE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE AND TERMINOLOGY REVISITED MAUREEN L. CONDIC* The question of when human life begins continues to be a source of ethical and political controversy. In this debate, the language used by many medical textbooks fosters significant misinterpretation of the scientific facts. In particular, terminology that refers to the product of sperm-egg fusion as a "penetrated oocyte" and claims that the zygote does not form until syngamy (approximately twenty-four hours after sperm-egg fusion) have resulted in the erroneous belief that a human embryo does not exist during the period prior to this point (i.e. the "pre-zygote error"). Yet an objective view of the modem scientific evidence supports only a single definition of the term "zygote": a one-cell human organism (i.e.