Life truly begins at fertilization

The Supreme Court made a prudent and appropriate decision when it ruled that life should be protected from conception, fertilization or implantation—and that it should be left to the medical scientists to define the point when a new human life begins.

By constitutional definition, the beginning of life is at “conception,” a layman’s term, albeit one that can hark back to the Bible for some reference, specifically to the story of Joseph and Mary. When Joseph was about to leave Mary after he found out she was pregnant but not by his own doing, an angel appeared to him in his sleep and told him that the life in her womb was formed by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Bible does not exactly tell when this happened.

Medical scientists, however, maintain in many books on genetics that, based on electron microscopy and molecular biology observations, movements inside the cells of the

organelles, mitochondria, and chromosomes are dictated by the centrosome.

1. Fertilization starts with the union of the sperm and egg. (a) The union does not always start as a human life when the contents of the head of a sperm mixes with the elements of the ovum. (b) In the mixture of the sperm and ovum elements, if the sperm material dominates, no human being is formed and an abnormal pregnancy or hydatidiform mole occurs; except in 10 to 30,000 cases where a fetus forms together with the molar pregnancy. (c) If the mixture of the sperm elements and the contents of the ovum results in a homogenous mixture resulting in the combination of 23 pairs of somatic chromosomes and a pair of sex chromosomes, then human life begins: If the pair of sex chromosomes is x and y, the fetus develops into a male; if the pair of sex chromosomes is

x and x, the resulting fetus would be a female.

(d) However, if in the resulting mixture of the sperm and ovum elements, the predominating material is from the ovum, the resulting pregnancy will contain chorionic elements without a fetus. This is called “blighted ovum” and is usually spontaneously aborted at 10.4 weeks.

The fertilized egg takes three to six days from fertilization to reach the lining of the uterine cavity where it may implant. Therefore, human life would be three to six days old by the time it is implanted. Fertilization precedes implantation by three to six days.

There are contraceptive pills that will prevent implantation, but these are banned in the Philippines. The available regular contraceptive pills prevent ovulation. If there is no ovulation, there is nothing to fertilize and no pregnancy results. If no pregnancy results then there is nothing to abort. I made this distinction in Congress between the ordinary oral contraceptive pills that prevent ovulation and the contraceptive pills that prevent implantation.

Finally, when does life begin? With the above explanation, based on textbooks on genetics and obstetrics, life begins at fertilization, three to six days before implantation. I presented this information in the last 10 years in various forums and congressional hearings on the Reproductive Health bill, where my

participation was requested by the Philippine Medical Association and Philippine Obstetrical and Gynecological Society.

—SANTIAGO A. DEL ROSARIO, MD,

former president,

Philippine Society of Reproductive Endocrinology  and Infertility