Life does not begin at fertilization

In Neal Cruz’s column, “Enrile: RH bill hangs in balance in Senate” (Inquirer, 9/12/12), he says, “On contraception, Enrile echoed the Church’s argument that once fertilization takes place in the womb there already is life and we do not have the moral right to terminate life.”

Life does not begin at fertilization or in the womb. The human egg (or ovum) and sperm are both alive. The egg is the biggest cell in the human body; the sperm, the smallest. There are 50 million to 500 million sperm cells per ejaculation. There are 13 egg cells released per year in a fertile woman. All of them die—egg and sperm cells—except the one sperm cell that fertilizes the egg and the fertilized egg.

You might say that human life was created (as religion teaches) or it evolved (as science teaches). Either way, human life has since persisted, by perpetuation of human species, through reproduction—formation, release and union of egg and sperm cells. Human life will only end when man becomes extinct.

There are billions and billions of sperm cells that die per year, so does a total of nearly 400 egg cells during the 30 fertile years of a woman (13 per year for 30 years). So what is the big deal about aborting a fertilized egg or preventing fertilization in the first place?

—FLOR LACANILAO,

retired professor of marine science,

University of the Philippines Diliman,

[email protected]