Back Transdisciplinarity and the Unity of Knowledge: Beyond the Science and Religion Dialogue

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Julio A. Gonzalo
Lucia Guerra Menendez
The Inalienable Right to Defend Human Life and Dignity: A Scientific Perspective


Abstract

About a quarter of a century ago, a pro-life American president said that those who have defended abortion on demand have had the possibility of doing so because their mothers with the support of a pro-life legislation respected their right to life.

The child in the womb is a human being. As noted by Dr. Bernard Nathanson, M.D., “The mere size of a human being is no measure of his/her value; it has long been my contention that in the tiny, almost invisible thirty-two cell blastoncyst—in that one one gram or so of tissue—there is a physical potential and moral density unparalleled in our universe. Next to it, a gram of plutonium is a triviality: plutonium cannot compose a symphony, cannot cure cancer, cannot plan our course to the stars”.

The child should be given legal protection. And legal protection means making abortion illegal. Most people recognize in abortion a moral evil, but they have been intimidated by cultural indoctrination, through the newspapers, through TV, through the radio, to keep for themselves their personal evaluation of the morality of abortion, instead of making clear, through their voices and votes, that they are in favour legal protection for the unborn children, the most innocent and harmless human beings. There may be serious reasons why a mother cannot or does not want to take care of her child. But his does not give her any right to kill the child. As Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, there are alternatives. Why there are now so many couples who have to travel as far as to China to get a child for adoption?

Modern science demonstrates unambiguously that the child in the womb is a human being: (1) the fertilized egg undergoes after implantation a rapid development during which the bodily organs and parts come to place as distinct and identifiable elements, and begin to function as recognizable in a small baby; (2) pictures in the womb of the mother make clear that what is there is a small child; (3) the pre-born child is the same human being who becomes a boy or a girl (and later a man or a woman) through a purely natural and continuous process; (4) none of the differences between the preborn child and the born child justify changing the status from non-person to person.



Biography

Julio A. Gonzalo is Professor of Physics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and is the author of several books on Condensed Matter and on Cosmology, the latest being Inflationary Cosmology Revisited.  In 2003, he was awarded the Medal of "Alfonso X El Sabio" by the Government of Spain.



Lucia Guerra Menendez is a Lecturer on Human Physiology at the School of Medicine of the University of San Pablo CEU (Madrid).  She served as Lecturer on Human Genetics at the Institute Angel Ayala, San Pablo CEU (2005-06).  She holds Licentiate in Pharmacology (2004) and an MBA (2005) from IEB (Madrid).  She has made oral presentations at scientific conferences in Philadelphia, Toulouse, and Madrid.  She also supervised the translation of the book The Ethical Foundations of Bioethics by Prof. Stanley L. Jaki, winner of the Templeton Prize in 1987.  In 2007, she obtained a DEA (Diploma of Advanced Studies, or the equivalent to an MA in Bioethics and Biomedical Legislation, UNESCO).  She is the joint author, with Prof. Julio Gonzalo, (Universita Autonoma Madrid), of the article “Science and Energy Politics,” in Nuntium   (Roma), February 2007.

 

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