A blog launched on the 41st anniversary of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), the first pro-life organisation in the world, established on 11 January 1967. I wrote this blog in my role as SPUC's chief executive, commenting on pro-life news, reflecting on pro-life issues and promoting SPUC's work. I retired from my post on 31st August 2021 and will therefore be adding no further posts.
Tuesday, 4 March 2008
Chimp or person?
Mexico's former attorney general and ex-chairman of that country's human rights commission has reportedly said that early unborn children are chimpanzees. Dr Jorge Carpizo McGregor cited scientific discovery as a reason for his opinion. Dr Carpizo's apparent view reminds me of something said by the late Professor Jérôme Lejeune (pictured), the world-renowned geneticist who discovered the cause of Down's syndrome. In testimony to the US senate's judiciary subcommittee, he said: "[I]f at the beginning, just after conception, days before implantation, a single cell was removed from the little berry-looking individual, we could cultivate that cell and examine its chromosomes. If a student, looking at it under the microscope, could not recognize the number, the shape and the banding pattern of these chromosomes, if he was not able to tell safely whether it comes from a chimpanzee being or from a human being, he would fail in his examination." [California Prolife, 2000]
cited scientific discovery as a reason for his opinion. Dr Carpizo's apparent view reminds me of something said by the late Professor Jérôme Lejeune (pictured), the world-renowned geneticist who discovered the cause of Down's syndrome. In testimony to the 
