Q. Dr. Lejeune, could you please describe the process of human reproduction?

A: It is a very long story, your Honor. Because life has been with us for millennia. But even if life continues from generation to generation, each of us has a very unique beginning, which is the moment that all the information necessary and sufficient to be that particular human being, which we will call later Peter or Margaret, depending on its own genetic make-up, when this whole necessary and sufficient information is gathered.

And we now know from experience both in animals and now in human beings, that this moment is exactly the moment at which the head of the sperm penetrates inside the ovum; then the information carried by the father encounters in the same recipient cell the information carried or transmitted by the mother; so that suddenly a new constitution is spelled out.

It is very curious that biology and the science of the law are speaking the same language.

The voting process even exists in biology, which is the choice of the sperm. Because there are maybe hundreds of thousands or ten thousand sperm swimming around one egg, and one is selected. And that is a voting process. And at the moment the human constitution is entirely spelled out, a new human being begins its career. That’s not rhetoric. That’s not fancy, or hope of a moralist. It is just an experimental phenomenon.

Q: Dr. Lejeune, where is this information specifically contained?

A: This information is specifically contained in two different parts. One is DNA. DNA is a long thread molecule. And to give you an impression, your Honor, this flat ribbon is roughly comparable to the tape that you put in a tape recorder. But it is very minute.

Inside the head of a sperm there’s a long thread of one meter, one yard, say.

And this is so tightly coiled in 23 little pieces that we call chromosomes, that the whole thing is inside the head of the sperm and the volume of it is upon the point of a needle.

In the first place, in so small a volume, all the data which will spell out the way to build all the protein which will make the machine tool inside the cells is entirely spelled out.

The same is true in the ovum, in which 23 little pieces of chromosomes one meter long all together stay there until they receive the help of the 23 from the father. Now that’s part of the information and it is a text book.

Most of the people will stop there and tell you that genetic information is carried by DNA. That’s perfectly true. But there’s another type of information, the amount of which is even much more important and much bigger, which is inside the cell.

Inside the ovum there are prepared billions of highly specialized molecules who will recognize and be recognized by the signals given by the genetic make-up.

And to make the thing understandable, remember that when you use a tape recorder if you buy a mini cassette in which the music of an artist such as Mozart is recorded, then if you put it in your tape recorder, you will get a symphony. But curiously on the tape there are no notes of music, and inside your tape recorder there are no musicians.

Nevertheless, by a special code written on the tape, some information is given to your tape recorder so that it will read it, and it will make the air move by the loudspeaker so that what is coming to you is not the orchestra, not the musicians, not evidence of music, but the genius of Mozart.

That’s the way life, the symphony of life, is played. That is inside the egg, which receives the tape band from father and which has its own tape bands, and which make 23 plus 23, 46 volumes of the table of the law of life.

Now when you speak about genetic information, you have to remember you have the long ribbon of DNA which is the mini cassette of the symphony of life, but you have the cell itself which is the tape recorder; and which has an enormous amount of information.

Because the tape recorder, to read a tiny ribbon like this, must be a fantastic machine, extremely complex.

Q: Doctor Lejeune, as the being develops, does it retain its individuality and its membership in the human species?

A: Totally. We, each of us, has never been a chimpanzee. And we are not going to become one.

No baby goes through different species. It belongs to its own species from the very beginning. And that’s true of every species. It’s not a special feature of humanity.

But what is written in the human fertilized egg that is in a human zygote, in the human being of one cell, what is written is this humanity.

Q: Dr. Lejeune, at eight weeks how would you describe that being?

A: I would describe that being indeed as a human being. But to tell the Court what it looks like, I would say it’s Tom Thumb.

Q: Tom Thumb?

A: Tom Thumb. Because the human being at eight weeks is the size of my thumb. That is, from the head to the rump, he measures one inch. And if you were looking at one of them, having never seen anything about human embryology, if I had an eight-week-old human being in my fist you would not see I had anything inside.

But if I opened my hand you would see a tiny being with fingers, with toes, with a face and with palm prints you could read with a microscope.

You would see the sex. And this story of Tom Thumb, of the tiny human being smaller than the thumb which has always enchanted the young babies and the great mothers, is not a fancy.

It is a truth. Each of us has been a Tom Thumb in the womb of the mother, in this curious shelter, in which only some red light, dim light comes in, in which there is very curious noise, one loud, and strong, and deep hammering which is the heart of the mother and which bangs around a decemberate of a counter bass. And the other is very rapid, like the maracas. And it will come from the heart of this tiny human being. And those two rhythms which we can now detect with hydrophones are typical of the most primitive music any human ear has ever heard, which is the symphony of two hearts; the mother one like the counter bass, 60 times per minute, and the baby one like maracas like 150 per minute: 140 if it is a boy, 160 if it is a girl. This symphony by two hearts is what defines the true story of Tom Thumb.

Q: Dr. Lejeune, what is the effect of an abortion on an eight week human being?

A: It kills a member of our species.

Original Bio/Editorial Note:

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Jérôme Lejeune was a French geneticist and pediatrician who discovered the chromosomal abnormalities that cause Down syndrome. A devout Catholic who was fiercely opposed to abortion and eugenics, he dedicated his life to removing the stigma associated with Down syndrome and developing treatments to improve his patients’ lives. He was declared Venerable by Pope Francis on January 21, 2021. We reprint above excerpts from the April 13, 1991, testimony of Dr. Lejeune at the trial of Alexander Loce (New Jersey v. Alexander Loce et. al.).