“Following first trimester abortions, sterile room workers strain the contents of the aspirator jar and cannulae to isolate the fetal tissue,… After eight weeks gestation, weight should increase according to the doctor’s estimate of gestational length, and sterile room workers look for fetal parts. If they did not find evidence of the spine, skull, and upper and lower extremities, the client was called back into the examination room for a reaspiration.”
Wendy Simonds. Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1996) page 70
“When does the life of a human being begin? To answer this question is to decide whether or not human embryos are, in fact, human beings and, as such, possessors of inherent human dignity. Where do we go to find the answer? Not to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.… Not to the Bible, which says nothing about human embryos. Not to the Talmud, which (like the Bible) was composed centuries before the discovery of the ovum – a time when almost nothing was known about embryogenesis. Not to the Koran. Not to our “moral intuitions.”
Rather, we go to the standard texts of modern human embryology and developmental biology – for example, the texts by Keith Moore and TVN Persaud; Bruce M Carlson; Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Mueller; and William J Larsen. When we consult these works, we find little or nothing in the way of scientific mystery or dispute. The texts tell the same story and answer the key question in the same way. Anyone who wishes to know when he or she as a distinct living member of the species Homo sapiens came into existence need only open any of these books and look up the answer.
So I have a proposal for people of good will who wish to affirm the inherent and equal dignity of all human beings but disagree with those of us who are opposed on moral grounds to embryo destructive research. Let’s leave religion out of this. Let’s agree to resolve our differences of opinion strictly on the basis of the best available scientific evidence as to when the life of a new human being begins. Any takers?”
Robert P George is an advisor on the President’s Council on Bioethics, a professor at Princeton University posted this on the National Review Website
Scott Klusendorf. The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2009) 108 to 109
When I was 38 weeks pregnant with my first son, Zac, my doctor couldn’t feel if he was breach or not. Right after my appointment, my husband and I went down the hall to have an ultrasound, just to make sure he was head down. My husband’s aunt works at the radiology department in the hospital and asked to come in, when she saw we were there. It took about 30 seconds to find out that everything was fine, and the ultrasound technician asked if we wanted to see Zac’s face, just for fun. So as we were looking at his face, the technician and my husband’s aunt were ‘awwwwing’, at Zac sucking his thumb. The women were standing by the door and my husband was sitting on the other side of me. My husband didn’t say much, but every time he did (3 or 4 times), we could see Zac’s eyes look in Daddy’s direction and stop sucking! We were all blown away! He could hear muffled, unfamiliar, voices and carried on.
But so as he heard Daddy, he knew who that was, and actually looked for him.
I knew babies recognize their Mommy’s voice, they hear it all the time. But they know Daddy’s voice too! And probably anyone else, close in the family, like Brother or Sister.
These unborn people aren’t just fetuses, or even ‘just a baby’, they are Geniuses! Very Awesome!
seven months old – not a person, according to US law
The law requires doctors performing abortions at clinics to have hospital privileges. This is important because women injured in abortions need to be hospitalized with a minimum of trouble. A number of women have died because they were not transported to the hospital in time after a botched abortion.
One clinic owner, whose clinic had to close because of the law, said the following:
“I’ve been able to keep the doors open and the phone staff working up until this week,” she said in the letter. “We’ve been working on legal remedies, injunction, etc., but I was unable to bridge the financial gap of paying the monthly lease and operating expenses without knowing when we could resume seeing patients. … I’m so angry about this, also sad, and I’m grateful for whatever wisdom I possess that keeps me from feeling like a victim.”
Kristi L. Nelso “Abortion clinic director blames new state law for closure” Knoxnews.com Saturday, August 18, 2012
Is this clinic worker a “victim?” Or does that designation pertain more properly to the babies aborted in her clinic?
unborn baby at nine weeks – the majority of abortions take place around this time
A clinic worker said the following about counseling at her clinic:
“At the clinic where I worked, abortion counselors were discouraged by the management from engaging in long sessions with clients or staying with them during their abortions. If we took our time or we left our offices, the clinic slowed down, and the average waiting time could creep up to two hours or more.”
Wendy Simonds. Abortion at Work: Ideology and Practice in a Feminist Clinic (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1996) 7
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, large sit ins or “rescues” at abortion clinics were common. Pro-life activists would stage a sit in in front of an abortion clinic’s doors, hoping to dissuade women from going in to have abortions. These activists would usually be arrested for trespassing. These protests are a thing of the past, in part because the pro-life movement has evolved into new tactics, in part because the FACE (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Laws) have made it a felony to block access to an abortion clinic.
The vast majority of pro-life activists engaged in civil disobedience were nonviolent. In fact, they were often the victims of violent police tactics. In this quote, one observer who was not part of the movement describes the sit ins.
“Such large sit ins usually generated a tense emotional atmosphere. Knowing friends were in imminent danger of being arrested and manhandled, seeing them handcuffed and (at times) dragged like sacks of potatoes, or lifted in a pain inducing manner, generated much emotion regardless of the number of friends involved.… At times, during large events, I saw police arrest picketers who had no intention of sitting in, who either had not actually stepped on forbidden territory or had done so inadvertently…. During large events arrests of obvious violators sometimes entailed unnecessary roughness. For example, one time I watched as police tossed a handcuffed septuagenarian priest head over heels in the cartwheel despite his obvious frailty; a young female activist recounted being lifted painfully by her long hair. Many activists recalled the times police beat non-resisting male activists.”
Carol JC Maxwell. Pro-Life Activists in America: Meaning Motivation and Direct Action. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 66 – 67
sit ins were usually an attempt to save babies like this one from being aborted
A man who identifies himself only as Ryan says the following:
“I didn’t think of the baby… Not really. Not then. I was in a panic and I wanted out and that was the way I was playing it.
I don’t remember how I finally changed her mind – it took about a week, but I did it. I remember being with her at the clinic, with one of her friends, smoking outside and then driving home thinking, “Thank God it’s over!”
The child would be about 13 or 14 years old now. When I look at our two children, I know there’s supposed to be three. I don’t know if the baby was a boy or a girl. I keep thinking it was a girl, probably because my wife wanted one so badly. Although I still struggle with depression and guilt, I eventually found forgiveness. My wife is not ready to take that step. So I must continue to try and help her bear the burden and make up for the crucial time I failed her.”
“I Still Remember” Human Life Alliance Advertising Supplement Page 11
An abortion counselor at a clinic said the following:
some women suffer after their abortions”but they’re usually not the ones that you hear about [at abortion clinics] because for some it appears so much later because they repressed it for so long.”
James D Slack Abortion, Execution, and the Consequences of Taking Life (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009) page 61
During the Clinton Administration, The National Bioethics Advisory Commission described the human embryo from its earliest stages is a living organism and a “developing form of human life.”
Cloning Human Beings cited in “On Human Embryos and Stem Cell Research.”
Scott Klusendorf. The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture. (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2009) On page 83
For science textbooks and renowned scientist’s statements on when life begins, go here.
