“Carl Sagan ridiculed abortion opponents by asking, ” Why isn’t it murder to destroy a sperm or an egg?” The answer, as every scientist should know, is that there is a fundamental difference between sperm and unfertilized eggs on the one hand, and fertilized eggs or zygotes on the other.

Like cells of one’s hair or heart, neither egg nor sperm has the capacity to become other than what is is. but when egg and sperm are joined, a new, dynamic, and genetically unique human life begins. That life is neither sperm nor egg, nor a simple combination of both. A fertilized egg is a newly conceived human being. It’s a person, with a life of its own, on a rapid pace of self-directed development. From the instant of fertilization, that first single cell contains the entire genetic blueprint in all its complexity. This accounts for every detail of human development, including the child’s sex, hair and eye color, height, and skin tone. Take that single cell of the just conceived zygote, put it next to a chimpanzee cell, and “a geneticist could easily identify the human. Its humanity is already that strikingly apparent.”” Randy Alcorn, Why Pro-Life?, pp. 33-34