Children, Pregnant Mothers and Doctors Know

The biggest question in the whole abortion debate, or at least the question that the debate keeps coming down to, is what is a fetus– is it a baby and alive, or is it a glob of cells? And understandably so. For we are a people that couldn’t stand to think of killing a baby, but have no trouble getting our appendix taken out.

Yet, the part that’s baffling is that someone actually believes that it’s obvious that it’s something other than a baby. The supposition is preposterous. Doubt me? Everyone knows it’s a baby:

Children Know that Human Life Begins Before Birth

Feminist Jean Garton tells the moving story of her three-year-old, who wandered into her room late at night and inadvertently saw a photo of a ten-week abortion. his mother describes his reaction:

His small voice was filled with great sadness as he asked, “Who broke the baby?”

How could this small, innocent child see what so many adults cannot see? How could he know instinctively that this which many people carelessly dismiss as tissue or a blob was one in being with him, was like him? In the words of his question he gave humanity to what adults call “fetal matter”; in the tone of his question he mourned what we exalt as a sign of liberation and freedom. With a wisdom which often escapes the learned, he asked in the presence of evidence before his eyes, “Who broke the baby?”¹

Pregnant Women Know that Human Life Begins Before Birth

When’s the last time you’ve seen a shirt that says “Blob”, “P.O.C. – Product of Conception” or “Fetus” with an arrow pointing to a pregnant mom’s belly?

What about when the baby moves around inside the mother: Does she say “My, that fetus is really moving around!” or “My fetus kicked me!”

Randy Alcorn mentions the following incident:

My wife and I were outside an abortion clinic one dark, overcast day. Three women in a row came out of the clinic wearing sunglasses. we could see that all three had been crying. My wife said, “You don’t grieve like that when you’ve just had a lump of tissue removed. You grieve like that when you’ve lost your baby.”²

Doctors Know that Human Life Begins Before Birth

“Surgery Before Birth,” a remarkable cover story from Discover magazine, describes surgery on an unborn child:

A precise dose of anesthetic has put both the mother and the 24-week-old fetus safely and limply to sleep. And now, lifting the little arm gently to rotate the one-pound body into position, pediatric surgeon Michael Harrison posed his scalpel just under the rib cage. The astonishing intrusion on an unborn life took place on June 15, 1989; it was necessary because this tiny patient’s diaphragm had failed to close as it should have.³

Alcorn goes on:

Note the reference to the unborn as a patient. If the unborn is not a person, who is the patient being operated on? If the surgery is unsuccessful and the unborn’s heart stops beating, did the patient die? The patient is referred to as “an unborn life.” His arm, rib cage, and diaphragm are referred to by name. An anesthetic was used to put him to sleep. Elsewhere in the article, the author refers to his gender, and occasionally comes right out and calls him a baby. The article ends by saying, “While fetal therapists wrestle with protocols… their efforts to save tiny lives continue.” Yet the same tiny life, not to be born for another four months, can be legally killed by abortion up to the moment of birth.²

Unless otherwise credited, facts taken from
Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments Expanded & Updated

1. Jean Staker Garton, Who Broke the Baby? (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1979), 7-8. [↩]
2. Randy Alcorn, Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments Expanded and Updated, p. 92-93 [↩] [↩]
3. Pat Ohlendorf-Moffat, “Surgery Before Birth,” Discover, February 1991, 59. [↩]