Okay Dokay... Life. Wow. What is alive? Are sperm alive? I seen some of those buggers swimming, their tails flagellating wildly, and they sure as hell looked alive to me. I have never seen an ovum under a microscope, but I know it is alive, too (just a lot less obnoxious that those sperm). So life does not begin at conception, that is an established fact. But we all know when someone says, “Life begins at conception”, they mean human life. They mean a person has been created. Let us examine that hypothesis.

If life begins at conception, then every time a human ovum is fertilized, a human is created. That is the hypothesis put forward by some people. Hmmm. Really?

Let us put aside, for the moment, the huge amount of miscarriages and pregnancies lost for other reasons. Let us put aside the fertilized eggs which do not implant in the uterus. Let us put these things aside, even though they support my case.

No, I have two examples that I wish to present. Yes, even though what I have already presented would convince most open, unbiased people to at least consider the possibility that life does not begin at conception, I have two stories to present.

When I was in high school, I had a girlfriend. I loved her madly. She was smart, beautiful, perfect in every way. She had a twin. Yep, that happens. So, if life begins at conception, where in the hell did the other one come from? That is, unless you subscribe to the “evil twin” theory (which, in retrospect, would explain quite a lot). Yes, if human life begins at conception, where in the hell did the other one come from?

Still, that is not my slam-dunk proof. That is just an anecdote. Here is my irrefutable proof.

Ectopic pregnancies. A sperm and and ovum come together. And then, well, something goes wrong. Very wrong. Horrendously wrong. A woman may die, wrong. But there is NO baby involved here, in fact, in most cases, there is no human involved except the mother. Yes, there have been a few cases of ectopic pregnancies coming to term, but most are from implantations after a uterus is removed, or very, very close to the uterus. That is NOT what I am talking about here. Mostly, I am talking about a “tubal” pregnancy. The fertilized ovum does not complete its journey and implants in the fallopian tube. At that point, it is not a baby, or even a potential baby. It is like a cancer. It will never be human, it cannot ever be a human. All it can do is kill. Its cells will split, undifferentiated, until the woman dies.

Can you imagine? Imagine this. Imagine a woman, happily married, who believes she is pregnant. She and her husband are both overjoyed. But, no baby can possibly occur. It was a so-called “tubal pregnancy”. The “tubal” part was right, but we have to stop calling it a “pregnancy”. It is not. It is a foreign cancer, that if not removed will kill the woman in whose body this malignancy resides. This is a fact, except it had become a bit more complicated now.

It used to be, uncomfortable things were not discussed in public. I just discussed something like that in the previous two paragraphs. It used to be, private medical decisions were just that, private. But no more.

Someone, very, very close to me, had a situation just like this. A tubal pregnancy. She was devastated, as was her husband. This should have been treated in our local hospital, but it was not. It was a Catholic hospital. Her doctor told her that she would have to go to Pittsburgh to save her life. Her husband traveled a lot, for his job. He wanted to stay home, to support her, but she said, “No”. Her doctor told her it was a routine procedure. Reluctantly, her husband went on his field assignment.

She lived in the next county (Westmoreland) to the east of Pittsburgh. So she had to take the bus. Actually, a lot of busses (there is no mass transit between Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is, and the surrounding counties).

Where did this woman have to go? She was sent to Planned Parenthood.

Guess what this woman faced when she arrived, finally, after two hours on various busses? She faced a vicious phalanx of so-called “Christians”. They swore at her. They shoved her. They called her a “murderer”. Someone ran out and helped her. I'm glad it was a good guy. He led her into the clinic.

The people there helped her. They saved her life.

Yes, a sperm and an egg came together. But it was not a baby. It was a cancer that had to be excised. We CANNOT politicize this!

And, oh yeah, I just proved that life does not begin at conception. Because it didn't.

The person this happened to, well, that was my sister.

And I love her.