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Some of the pro-life activists base their ideas of morality entirely on the current teaching of the Church. Others bolster their opinion with a scientific rationale as well. Dr. Jack Willke, president of the National Right to Life Committee, considers the embryo to be a human being from the moment of conception. His definition of "human being" depends upon the forty-six chromosomes first present in the zygote. "Contained within the single cell who I once was," he says, "was the totality of everything I am today." ¹¹ Randall Terry, leader of the militant pro-life group Operation Rescue, says "science confirms" abortion is murder because "at conception, each of us is unique. The fact that I'm a 6-foot-1-inch male with blue eyes was included in that one-celled person I used to be." ⁶

"The 'biological' argument that a human being is created at fertilization," says embryologist Charles Gardner, "contradicts all that [we] have learned in the past few decades." ¹¹ First of all, as embryologist C. R. Austin notes,  fertilization does not confer genetic uniqueness — this is achieved as a consequence of the first meiotic division, which takes place just before ovulation." ² Secondly, while all the necessary DNA is indeed present for the first time at conception, "the information required to make an eye or a finger does not exist in the fertilized egg. It exists in the positions and interactions of cells and molecules that will be formed only at a later time." ¹¹

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