Author Mary Kenny wrote:
“Looking back on the newspaper cuttings of the great abortion debate, the editorials in serious newspapers such as the Observer and the Sunday Times constantly referred to the foetus as “a blob of jelly”, “a piece of tissue”. But in the years in between the science of embryology has developed extraordinarily, and the “blob of jelly” is now known to have human organs all in place after eight weeks and an entire nervous system after ten weeks. I have watched many abortions taking place, and in the early stages the operation is so swiftly destructive that nothing can be properly perceived by the naked eye. Into the second trimester (after thirteen weeks) however, it is evident that this is a very tiny human being. Once past twenty weeks, the baby begins actually to try to resist the needle, which draws away its amniotic fluid.”
Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 6
