Tan Seow Hon For The Straits Times dated 18 December 2014
"In abortion debates, I have observed that pro-choice advocates love to dismiss arguments of pro-life advocates for being based on religion.
However, it is science - not religion - that reveals that unique DNA, distinct from gametes from either parent, is carried by the embryo. Moreover, as Princeton philosopher Robert George noted, unless "severely damaged or deprived of a suitable environment", the embryo is capable "by an internally directed process of integral organic functioning" of developing "to each more mature developmental stage along the gapless continuum of a human life".
Women may play complex classical tunes to their unborn hoping that a world-class musician will be birthed. But aspects of the development of the unborn across the embryonic and foetal stages of life, and likewise, of the newborn across infancy, childhood, puberty and adulthood are internally directed by DNA.
Most of us know we are very different now, as adults, from the infants we once were when we were just born. But we recognise "the gapless continuum of a human life", and do not think the infant versions of ourselves were somehow not "us", just because they were a fraction of our current stature or had not attained puberty. The infant and adult us are one and the same person, with unique DNA that we possess from the moment we were born."
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