Albert W Liley is often called the “Father of Fetology”for all his research into embryology and the development of the unborn baby. Here, he talks about the development of the baby:
“The prerequisites for motion are the muscles and nerves. In the sixth to seventh week, nerves and muscles work together for the first time. If the area of the lips, the first to become sensitive to touch, is gently stroked, the child responds by bending the upper body to one side and making a quick backward motion with his arms.… By the beginning of the ninth week, the baby moves spontaneously without being touched. Sometimes his whole body swings back and forth for a few moments. By eight and a half weeks the eyelids and the palms of the hands become sensitive to touch. If the eyelid is stroked, the child squints. On the stroking of the palm, the fingers close into a small fist.…
sonogram at 12 weeks
… Every child shows a distinct individuality in his behavior by the end of the third month. This is because the actual structure of the muscles of the face, for example, follows an inherited pattern. The facial expressions of the baby in his third month or ready similar to the facial expressions of his parents.
12 weeks
… Further refinements are noted in the third month. The fingernails appear. The child’s face becomes much prettier. His eyes, previously far apart, now move closer together. The eyelids close over the eyes. Sexual differentiation is apparent in both internal and external sex organs and primitive eggs and sperm are formed. The vocal cords are completed. In the absence of air they cannot produce sound; the child cannot cry aloud until birth, although he is capable of crying long before.”
nine weeks
Abortion and Social Justice edited by Thomas Hilgers and Dennis Horan Quoted in Monica Migliorino Miller Abandoned: the Untold Story of the Abortion Wars (Charlotte, North Carolina: St. Benedict Press, 2012) 114 to 115
The entry for “Fetus” in the Encyclopedia of Human Biology says the following:
legs of an unborn baby at three months
“[in the third month] Electrical activity of the nervous system is discernible… Attempts to suckle have been seen in utero and in aborted fetuses of 3 months.”
“Fetus.” By Frank D. Allan in the Encyclopedia of Human Biology. Academic Press, 1997. Volume 3. Page 962
“At 7.5 weeks’ gestation, reflex responses to somatic stimuli begin, and touching the perioral region [mouth] results in a contralateral bending of the head. The palms of the hands become sensitive to stroking at 10.5 weeks, and the rest of the body and hindlimbs become sensitive at approximately 13.5 weeks. Shortly after the development of sensitivity, repeated skin stimulation results in hyperexcitability and a generalized movement of all limbs. This hyperexcitability has been interpreted as evidence for the presence of a functional pain system, reflecting an immature but intact pain response with early hypersensitivity to stimulation.”
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
Facts about unborn babies and their development have been known for many years. From a medical textbook from 1945:
“Our own repeated observation of a large group of fetal infants. . . left us with no doubt that psychologically they were individuals. Just as no two looked alike, so no two behaved precisely alike. . . . These were genuine individual differences, already prophetic of the diversity which distinguishes the human family.”
Arnold Gesell, The Embryology of Behavior (1945), cited by Heffernan, “Early Biography of Everyman,” pp. 17, 18.
Quoted in John Jefferson Davis, Ph.D0 Abortion and the Christian: What Every Believer Should Know (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1984)
A prominent scientist describes how unborn baby’s have a sense of taste, even in the womb.
“Fetal drinking rates crash after the injection of the contrast medium Lipiodol – an iodinated poppyseed oil which tastes foul to an adult or child and which causes a neonate to grimace and cry.”
The Fetus As Personality. A W Liley. Talk presented at the eighth annual Congress of Australia and New Zealand Counseling Psychiatrists, Auckland, New Zealand October 1971. Appeared in the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry
Dr. Liley,a scientist who is known as the “Father of Fetology”:
“We know that he [the unborn baby] moves with the delightful easy grace in his buoyant world, that fetal comfort determines fetal position. He is responsive to pain and touch and cold and sound and light. He drinks his amniotic fluid, more if it is artificially sweetened, less if it is given an unpleasant taste. He gets hiccups and sucks his thumb. He wakes and sleeps. He gets bored with repetitive signals but he can be taught to be alerted by a first signal for a second different one. And, finally, he determines his birthday, for unquestionably, the onset of labor is unilateral decision of the fetus.”
11 weeks
A.Liley “A Case against Abortion” Liberal studies,Whitcombe & Tombs, Ltd., 1971
