Life is an interesting and controversial topic. Many have question "when does life begin?" This topic has been a topic of heated discussion from the point of view of those who are for or against abortion. This is a question that many theologians argued and debated over. I truly do not believe that someone can give a definite answer to this question. I have always wondered about the moment we consider life to begin. Could it be the moment of conception or the moment we first took our breath at birth? It is this curiosity that led me into more in-depth research about life. To have a better understanding of "life", I will begin with the process of conception, prenatal development, and finally birth. .
To begin with, as a human being it takes a male and female for conception to take place. First, a male and a female must meet in society, usually start a relationship, and during the process they have sexual intercourse for conception to take place. A male releases the sperm and a female releases the egg during intercourse. There are other artificial methods of conception as well. For example in vitro fertilization, which "involves mixing sperm and egg in a Petri dish and then placing several fertilized eggs in the mother's uterus, with the hope that they will become implanted in the uterine wall (Kail & Cavanaugh, 2004)." A teaspoon of seminal fluid can contain as much as 200 to 500 million sperm. All of these sperm fight their way up to the fallopian tubes. Once the sperm travels about six or seven inches to the fallopian tube, just a few will end up surviving and finding the egg. When the egg is found these sperm will begin to burry itself into the egg. This journey will eventually end up with one sperm winning this battle to the egg released by the female. This is such an interesting process in the beginning of human life. This process eliminates all the weaker and unhealthy sperm to allow only the best one to unite with the egg.