Dr. Jerome Lejeune’s renown in the scientific community, as well as his ardent support of life from the beginning of conception, made him a sought-after public speaker. He spoke at hundreds of conferences throughout the world, including many in the U.S.
He addressed many prestigious universities, including Stanford, Harvard, UCLA, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, Cornell, MIT, and others, as well as hospitals and pro-life organizations. His last speech in the United States was given in 1987, just seven years before his passing.
Standing for Life at the American Society of Human Genetics
One of his most famous speeches was given at the American Society of Human Genetics in San Francisco, in October 1969, when he was receiving the William Allen Memorial Award. He spoke out against abortion and the culture of death, knowing that it would eliminate any chance of his receiving the Nobel Prize:
Should we capitulate in the face of our own ignorance and propose to eliminate those we cannot help?
For millennia, medicine has striven to fight for life and health and against disease and death. Any reversal of the order of these terms of reference would entirely change medicine itself.
Affirming Life from the Moment of Conception
In 1989, Dr. Lejeune also came to the U.S. to testify in a case that dealt with the custody of frozen embryos for a couple that was seeking a divorce. He provided a moving testimony that they should be considered early human beings, and thus were worthy of protection:
[E]ach human has a unique beginning which occurs at the. moment of conception…As soon as the program is written on the DNA, there are twenty-three different pieces of program carried by the spermatozoa and there are twenty-three different homologous pieces carried by the ovum. As soon as the twenty-three chromosomes carried by the sperm encounter the twenty-three chromosomes carried by the ovum, the whole information necessary and sufficient to spell out all the characteristics of the new being is gathered…
An early human being…cannot be the property of anybody because it’s the only one in the world to have the property of building himself, And I would say that science has a very simple conception of man; as soon as he has been conceived, a man is a man.
Full List of United States Speaking Engagements of Dr. Jerome Lejeune
Pasadena | 1958 | Taught Human Genetics with Professor Beaddle | |||
Los Angeles | 1958 | City of Hope | |||
Seattle | 1958 | Faculty of Medicine | |||
Denver | 1958 | Medical Center | |||
Ann Arbor | 1958 | Institute of Human Genetics | |||
Baltimore | 1958 | Johns Hopkins Hospital | |||
New York | 1959 | Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease | |||
Denver | 1960 | University of Colorado | |||
Oak Ridge, TN | 1960 | Oak Ridge National Laboratory | |||
Cleveland | 1960 | Western Reserve University | |||
Ann Arbor | 1960 | Institute of Human Genetics | |||
Boston | 1961 | Massachusetts General Hospital | |||
Philadelphia | 1961 | Cancer Institute | |||
Boston | 1962 | Children’s Hospital | |||
Princeton | 1962 | Macy Foundation Conference | |||
San Francisco | 1963 | Stanford University School of Medicine | |||
Los Angeles | 1963 | University of California | |||
Pasadena | 1963 | California Institute of Technology | |||
New York | 1963 | Second International Conference on Congenital Malformations. | |||
New York | 1963 | International Awards Program — The Joseph Kennedy Foundation. | |||
Boston | 1964 | Forsyth Dental Center | |||
Philadelphia | 1965 | Wistar Symposium | |||
Brooklyn | 1965 | Jewish Hospital and Medical Center | |||
New York | 1966 | Rockefeller University. | |||
Boston | 1966 | Harvard University School of Public Health | |||
Los Angeles | 1966 | Society of Biological Psychiatry | |||
Birmingham | 1966 | University of Alabama Medical Center | |||
Chicago | 1966 | University of Chicago — International Congress of Human Genetics | |||
Bethesda | 1966 | National Institutes of Health — Critical Areas in Human Genetics Research | |||
Boston | 1966 | Kennedy International Awards | |||
San Francisco | 1969 | American Society of Human Genetics | |||
Baltimore | 1969 | John Hopkins University | |||
Brooklyn | 1969 | The Jewish Hospital and Medical Center | |||
Bethesda | 1971 | N.I.H. Fogarty International Center | |||
Washington D.C | 1971 | International Symposium on Ethics — Kennedy Foundation | |||
Washington | 1972 | Kennedy Foundation | |||
Washington | 1973 | Georgetown University | |||
Washington | 1976-1977 | Georgetown University | |||
New York | 1977 | Cornell University | |||
Los Angeles | 1973 | Kaiser Center at UCLA | |||
Pasadena | 1973 | California Institute of Technology | |||
Boston | 1973 | Massachusetts General Hospital | |||
Boston | 1979 | M.I.T. — Ecumenical Congress of Churches | |||
Rochester | 1978 | Mayo Clinic | |||
Chicago | 1980 | Pro Life Congress | |||
Washington, D.C. | 1981 | United States Senate | |||
Chicago | 1982 | Loyola University Chicago — Stritch School of Medicine | |||
Baltimore | 1983 | Kennedy Institute | |||
Chicago | 1983 | Americans United for Life | |||
Chicago | 1984 | Illinois Masonic Medical Center | |||
San Antonio | 1984 | University of Texas | |||
Houston | 1984 | University of Houston — Faculty of Medicine | |||
Detroit | 1986 | Committee on Human Values | |||
Dallas | 1987 | Pope John Center |