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THE VIEW INTO THE WOMB IS “Extraordinarily Dangerous”........

What springs to mind when you read that headline…...? For me, it was “Aha! An article explaining why women shouldn’t be doing unnecessary ultrasounds just to have a look at their babies”, since there is some question about the safety of these scans for the unborn child, especially at times of maximum brain growth.

But, I"m so old-fashioned….that’s not what the article is about at all!! No, it’s about…....abortion. Yes, what is “extraordinarily dangerous” about the cutting-edge “four-dimensional” ultrasound is that it might make a woman think that her “fetus” is actually a baby and create a disinclination in her to kill it. You don’t believe this? I can understand - that makes you kind of old-fashioned, too.

Sophisticated ultrasound scans that show foetuses as early as 12 weeks appearing to “walk” in the womb have had a dangerous impact on the public debate over abortion, leading doctors and scientists said yesterday. The emotive photographs, taken with new fourdimensional imaging technology, have created a misleading impression that foetuses become viable and potentially self-aware at a much earlier stage than is actually the case, according to experts on foetal development.

Oh, well….that’s all right, then. Wouldn’t want emotion to interfere with abortion, now, would we? And if actually looking at the unborn baby (that is, gathering data by actual observation) could create a “misleading impression”, then it really is dangerous, don’t you think? And what would be the downside of this “misleading impression”, one wonders.

The pictures showed foetuses of 12 weeks’ gestation, bouncing and kicking in the womb, before the mother is usually aware of such movement. At 16 weeks, they can be seen sucking thumbs and yawning, and at 18 weeks opening their eyes…. “I had two reactions when I saw those photographs,” said Donald Peebles, of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at University College London. “One was that this was a fantastic piece of technology that showed very clearly what we knew already about the foetus in a way that was comprehensible to the public. “But there was also a temptation to associate these movements — sucking a thumb, gasping as if talking — with adult movements, to think it is sucking its thumb because it is happy. It’s that feeling which I think is extraordinarily dangerous.”

Yes, yes…..one’s “feeling is extraordinarily dangerous” if that feeling might lead you to protect unborn human life. Can’t have that! But the good doctor goes a bit farther, and engages in a little misleading of his own.

Though the foetus clearly looks human by 12 weeks, proper sensory development takes place much later, he said. There was a risk that the pictures would make people assume that foetuses have more advanced brains than is the case.

“The neurons in the brain might be in their final positions by about halfway through the pregnancy, but that in no way means they function in an adult way. These images don’t tell me anything I haven’t known for 30 years with ultrasound scans. We know what it looks like, and that it moves continuously. I don’t think in a scientific sense this sheds any new light on the debate.”

First of all, it’s not only true that “the foetus clearly looks human by 12 weeks”, the fetus *IS* human at 12 weeks—and earlier, as well. This is biologically unarguable….the child in the womb is human life in a less developed state than we are, but without a doubt, it’s human.

Secondly, none of this may be new to the doctor of obstetrics, but it could really revolutionize the understanding of ordinary people, who have been bombarded with propoganda about the “ball of cells” in the womb, or worse with the 150-year old lie that “your baby is in the ‘fish stage’ right now”. Horrors! If these pictures get around, people might actually understand that 12-week old unborn babies ARE human beings…...that could even lead them to believe that unborn babies ought to have the basic human rights - the first of which is not to be killed by those who are more powerful than they are. When the doctor says that no new light is produced by these images “in a scientific sense”, he appears to be engaged in an attempt to mislead the reader…..the education of the scientific community isn’t the point at issue, but the education of the public.

Another doctor joins the chorus:

Huseyin Mehmet, Reader in Developmental Neurobiology at Imperial College London, said: “Personification of the foetus at that age is dangerous. Scans that look at the structure of the foetal brain at 23 to 24 weeks show that the human brain is extremely immature.

Did anyone suggest that “the structure of the foetal brain at 23 to 24 weeks” is something other than “extremely immature”? That person would be an idiot, of course. Naturally, their brain is immature - so is their skeleton, their heart, their digestive system, indeed the whole of the rest of the baby….. And if protection of human life must wait until the brain is mature, we’re going to be denying human rights to an awful lot of “born” people—since we know that the human brain continues to mature until the early 20s. What can the good Reader be trying to tell us with his remark? It’s not entirely clear, but one is tempted to suggest that he wants us to think that immature humans should have fewer rights than mature ones. Handy for him, since he’s at the “safe” end of that scale. But, do we really want to sign up for Peter Singer’s program?

Reader Mehmet continues:

I was worried when I saw those images. To suggest that an early foetus in utero has those kind of human qualities of being able to suck its thumb and move, that it meets the biological definition of being really viable outside the uterus, is very difficult indeed.”

Amazing what some people get worried about, isn’t it? Who is “suggesting” that an immature unborn baby “has those kind of human qualities of being able to suck its thumb and move”? “Suggest”? We can all look at the photos and SEE that it has whatever human qualities it takes to both suck its thumb and move! Is the good Reader attempting to deny this? And I don’t know that anyone has said that sucking its thumb means that a baby is ready to leave the uterus and live on the outside…..what on earth does that have to do with the argument over abortion? Is the suggestion that it is only when we can live on our own that we deserve the protection of the law? Again, that argument proves a little too much, it seems to me—there are perhaps millions of people who can’t meet that standard, even if only temporarily. And, after all, even the unborn baby is that helpless temporarily. It’s pretty difficult to construct a consistent ethic that condemns the unborn while maintaining current protections for those of us on the outside. What will we do to solve this problem? I don’t think it will be pretty.

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Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/19 at 09:09 PM

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