Opinion: Try to make a baby with only conception. Hint: It won’t work.

To the editor: I am a former infertility patient, and now a mother of two boys conceived via in vitro fertilization. Before kids, I focused on the hurdles that had to be overcome to make my oh-so-wanted children. (“Diminishing the importance of conception in creating human life is unscientific,� Readers React, Oct. 29)

I can list all the steps that an egg, a sperm and a mother’s uterus need to go through before a baby is made, but maybe the more important point is to highlight the absolute minimum requirements to make a baby.

A sperm needs to fertilize an egg, which then has to implant into the uterus of a mother. All three — egg, sperm and mother’s uterus — are all absolutely required for the life of a baby. Leaving out any one of these three makes it impossible to create a human. Life can only be possible if the fertilized egg becomes part of the mother’s body.

The baby and mother are not separate individuals until the baby can live outside the uterus.

Carol Parker, Encinitas

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To the editor: Once again, letters are published from writers arguing that a fertilized egg is a human being, thus calling for the banning of abortion.

However, those with this perspective never carry their point to its logical conclusion and call for prosecution of women who have miscarriages as a result of behavior that jeopardized the pregnancy, or calling for prosecution of women who obtain abortions for, at least, manslaughter.

If the antiabortion movement were to actually have the courage of its convictions, its adherents would make this part of their agenda. They won’t, of course, for obvious reasons that illustrate their hypocrisy.

Jan Rainbird, Irvine

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