On May 7, 1974, less than 500 days after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the disastrous Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide, a world-renowned geneticist testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments in support of a proposed Human Life Amendment. Doctor Jérôme Lejeune had a medical practice in which he treated children with intellectual disabilities; he was also Professor of Fundamental Genetics at the Université René Descartes in Paris and an eloquent advocate for preborn human beings.
Excerpts from Professor Lejeune’s testimony were published by Human Life Review (Winter 1975, pages 105-107) as “Appendix C: Human Genetics and the Unborn Child.” Most of that text is reprinted here with commentary. The English spoken by the expert witness was excellent but sometimes unidiomatic; occasional clarifications are noted in brackets. Lejeune said:
Read more on CWRThe transmission of life is quite paradoxical. We know with certainty that the link which relates parents to children is at every moment a material link, for we know it is from the encounter of the female cell (the ovum) and the male cell (the spermatozoa), that a new individual will emerge. But we know with the same degree of certitude that no molecule, no individual particle of matter enclosed in the fertilized egg, has the slightest chance of being transmitted to the next generation. Hence, what is really transmitted is not the matter as such, but a specified conformation of the matter, or more precisely, [a kind of] “information.”
