TV
Fully Human, Fully Alive
What an amazing ultrasound video—my eleven and a half week grandbaby stretching his legs and “jumping” in my daughter’s womb! We could see the tiny heart beating, and it became crystal clear that this little creation wasn’t just a “piece of tissue” but a living being.
That little being inside his mother’s womb is actually a living organism. He just hasn’t fully developed, passed through the birth canal, and exited his mother yet. He would have to cease to live, be killed, destroyed, or caused to die in order to stop developing to his full potential.
By five weeks, a baby’s circulatory system is beginning to form and the tiny heart starts to beat. By eleven weeks, the baby is almost fully formed. He's kicking, stretching, and even hiccupping as his diaphragm develops. By thirteen weeks, the last week of the first trimester, the baby’s tiny fingers have fingerprints, his veins and organs are clearly visible through the skin, and if “he” is actually a girl, her ovaries contain more than 2 million eggs.
Who could believe that this tiny kicking, heart-beating, thumb sucking, developing being is not living? Apparently, those who wish to terminate its existence.
In his article, "Blood Confessions: Ex-abortionist Spill Their Guts,” author and journalist David Kupelian, explains some of the history on this topic. In the 1960’s, after centuries of legal challenges and moral condemnations of abortion, a group of dedicated activists launched a campaign to change America’s minds on this subject. Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of NARAL (National Abortion and Reproductive Action League) admitted fabricating results of fictional polls and lying to the media in order to convince the public that a majority of people wanted legal abortion to be the norm. Dr. Nathanson set up a clinic and claims responsibility for 75,000 abortions.
But then something happened. New technologies—ultrasound, fetal heart monitoring, and fetoscopy (optical instrument inserted into the womb) permitted actual viewing of what takes place in the uterus. As Dr. Nathanson observed the baby move, swallow, urinate, sleep, and dream (discernable by rapid eye movement), he came to the conviction that this was his patient. "This was a person! I was a physician, pledged to save my patients’ lives, not to destroy them.”
Dr. Nathanson later produced a film entitled The Silent Scream, in which he was permitted to film the ultrasound of an abortion taking place on a twelve-week fetus. As medical instruments are pushed into the sac containing the baby, he squirms, his little heart beats faster, and then he opens his mouth and appears to scream in the womb before being ripped apart limb by limb and his head crushed and removed with forceps. After viewing this film, the young doctor who had performed this and many other abortions immediately discontinued aborting babies.
Other doctors gave up aborting babies after coming to the same conclusion. Dr. David Brewer, a resident at the time, was profoundly affected after participating in a late-term abortion delivered by caesarean section. He watched the baby move underneath the sack of membranes as the incision was made before the doctor broke the water. He watched and listened as the baby made little sounds, moving and kicking in a cold stainless steel bowl set on a table. He saw its chest moving as it struggled to take breaths until it finally died. He realized this was “a person.”
Jesus gives us this warning, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you, that their angels in heaven continually behold the face of My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 18:10 NASB).
Abortion is indeed a choice - between life and death. Choose life.
For anyone feeling guilt or shame from abortions they have had themselves, performed, or otherwise encouraged, forgiveness is available through repentance and belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. He died on the cross to pay for all sins.
If you want to be part of standing for a culture of life, visit our Pro-Life Get Involved Page to learn more.
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