“It should always be remembered that many organs are still not completely developed by full term and birth should be regarded only as an incident in the whole developmental process.”
Human Embryology and Genetics. F. Beck Blackwell Scientific Publications
Incidentally,another rape counselor, Joan Kemp, was quoted saying:
“After sexual assault there is, for varying lengths of time, a natural revulsion toward anything associated with the rape. That may include the location, or characteristics of the rapist such as clothing, race, mustache, etc. It is normal for this feeling to attach to the unborn child conceived in rape. However, these feelings normally fade with time. When this does not happen spontaneously, counseling with someone qualified to treat rape victims is highly effective. Rape victims I have worked with were quite aware and distressed by the inappropriateness of these feelings. They would not, for instace, have welcomed anyone telling them that men of their attacker’s race are natural criminals. Nor do women welcome being told that their children conceived in rape are unworthy of life, genetically prone to crime, and bound to feel unwanted and bitter. A person in crisis is seeking positive solutions, not a counsel of despair.”
21. Joan Kemp “Abortion: The Second Rape” SisterLife, Winter 1990 Feminists for Life of America, 811 E. 47th St. Kansas City, MO 64100
“After 28 weeks in utero, the fetus can hear… by four months in a female fetus, all 5 million ova are formed. At 4 1/2 months the fetus response to a brush it’s lips by sucking. By six weeks the brain is visible and electrically active; by eight, it has convoluted folds and the shape of an adult brain.”
“Do you Hear What I Hear?” Newsweek special issue summer 1991
“Eleven years ago while giving an anesthetic for a ruptured ectopic pregnancy (at 8 weeks gestation), I was handed what I believe was the smallest living human ever seen. The embryonic sac was intact and transparent. Within the sac was a tiny human male swimming extremely vigorously in the amniotic fluid, while attached to the wall by the umbilical cord. This tiny human was perfectly developed, with long, tapering fingers, feet and toes. It was almost transparent, as regards the skin, and the delicate arteries and veins were prominent to the ends of the fingers.”
Dr. Rockwell continues, “The baby was extremely alive and swam about the sac approximately one time per second, with a natural swimmer’s stroke. This tiny human did not look at all like the photos and drawings and models of ’embryos’ which I had seen, nor did it look like a few embryos I have been able to observe since then, obviously because this one was alive! When the sac was opened, the tiny human immediately lost his life and took on the appearance of what is accepted as the appearance of an embryo at this stage of life (with blunt extremities etc.).”
The statement by Paul E. Rockwell, M.D., an anesthesiologist, was quoted by Dr. and Mrs. J.C. Willke in their Handbook on Abortion
“In the sixth to seventh weeks…If the area of the lips is generally stroked, the child responds by bending the upper body to one side and making quick backward motion with his arms. This is called total pattern response because it involves most of the body rather than a local part.”
LB Arey Developmental Anatomy sixth edition, Philadelphia: WB Sanders and Company 1954
Lennart Nilsson is an intrauterine photographer who took pictures of unborn babies in the womb for Life magazine and the best-selling book “A Child Is Born”
hands of an unborn baby at seven weeks
He says of the unborn at 45 days after conception:
“Though the embryo now weighs only 1/30 of an ounce, it has all the internal organs of the adult in various stages of development. It already has a little mouth with lips, an early tongue and buds for 20 milk teeth. Its sex and reproductive organs have begun to sprout.”
Lennart Nilsson “Drama of Life before Birth” Life, April 30, 1965
It should also be noted that there have been only two studies of those who became pregnant after sexual assault. Reardon’s and one other, which was conducted by Dr. Sandra Mahkorn, who is an experienced rape counselor. Her study indicated that of women who become pregnant due to rape, a large number (70%) rejected abortion as an option and instead had their babies. Based on her research, Dr. Mahkorn concluded that:
“[This study indicates] that pregnancy need not impede the victim’s resolution of the trauma; rather, with loving support, nonjudgemental attitudes, and empathic communication, healthy emotional and psychological responses are possible despite the added burden or pregnancy.”
Sandra Kathleen Mahkorn, M.D. and William V. Dolan, M.D. “Sexual Assault and Pregnancy” in Thomas Hulgers, Dennis Horan and David Mall, “New Perspectives on Human Abortion” (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America) 1981, 194
“At two months of age, the human being is less than one thumb’s length from the head to the rump. He would fit at ease in a nutshell, but everything is there: hands, feet, head, organs, brain, all are in place. His heart has been beating for a month already . . . . With a good magnifier the fingerprints could be detected.”
8 weeks
Jerome Lejeune, testimony on The Human Life Bill, S. 158: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Separation of Powers of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 97th Cong., 1st Sess. 7-10 (1981).
“…at three weeks, the cardiac tubes will begin to beat, so that the heart is beginning to beat three weeks after fertilization. And progressively, you will reach the end of the embryonic period at two months after fertilization. At that moment, the little fellow will be just the size of my thumb….all the mothers telling fairy tales to the children are speaking about the Tom Thumb story because it’s a true story. Therefore, each of us has been a Tom Thumb in the womb of the mother.
…women have always known that there was a kind of underground country, a kind of vaulted shelter, with a kind of red light and curious noise in which very tiny humans were having a very curious and marvelous life.”
Court Transcript (Circuit Court Blount County, state of Tennessee, Maryville, August 10 1989) testimony of Jerome Lejeune, M.D. PhD (Professor of the Fundamental Genetics in Paris, award winning discovered Down’s Syndrome)
Quoted in R.C. Sproul “Abortion: A Rational Look at an Emotional Issue” (Colorado Springs: Navpress) 1990 p 173
One doctor, Edward Allred, who runs a chain of abortion clinics (learn more about him and his clinics here) has been quoted expressing some racist views about his Hispanic and African American patients:
“Population control is too important to be stopped by some right wing pro-life types. Take the new influx of Hispanic immigrants. Their lack of respect for democracy and social order is frightening. I hope I can do something to stem that tide; I’d set up a clinic in Mexico for free if I could … When a sullen black woman of 17 or 18 can decide to have a baby and get welfare and food stamps and become a burden to all of us, it’s time to stop. In parts of South Los Angeles, having babies for welfare is the only industry these people have.”
It is easy to imagine that this disdain may influence the quality of care that minority patients receive at his facilities.
“Doctor’s Abortion Business Is Lucrative,” San Diego Union, 12 October 1980, at B-1, col. 1.
