A Womb with a View

1. A Womb with a View A Look at the Life of the UnbornandThe Methods Used to Take that Life

2. This presentation takes a week-by-week, month-by-month look at the life of an unborn human. • We also describe the methods used to abort the unborn during each “trimester.” • There are no pictures of abortions or dead children, the so-called “products of abortion.” • The main purpose here is to inform…

3. In the beginning sperm joins with ovum (egg) to form one cell - smaller than a grain of salt. • This union brings together the 23 chromosomes from the father with the 23 chromosomes from the mother to make a single new life with 46 chromosomes - the genetic blue print for the development of every detail this new person will ever have.

4. For the next few days the fertilized egg travels down the fallopian tube into the uterus. • At the end of the first week it implants itself into the lining of the uterine wall and draws nourishment from its mother.

5. By only Day 20 foundations of the brain, spinal cord and nervous system are already established. • By Day 21 the heart begins to beat. • By the 4th week, the backbone and muscles are forming. Arms, legs, eyes, and ears have begun to show.

6. Now one month old, the embryo is 10,000 times larger than the original fertilized egg and is developing rapidly.

7. At Week 5 five fingers can be discerned in the hand. The eyes darken as pigment is produced. • Brain waves can be detected and recorded. • At Week 6 the liver is now taking over production of blood cells, the brain begins to control muscle movements and organs.

8. Week 7 - The embryo begins to move spontaneously. The jaw forms, including teeth buds in the gums. • Soon the eyelids will seal to protect the embryo’s developing light-sensitive eyes, and will reopen at about the seventh month.

9. By the 8th Week the now-called fetus is a little more than an inch long. The fetus has now everything found in a fully developed adult. • The heart has been beating for more than a month, the kidneys are functioning; the stomach is producing digestive juices. • And it responds to touch.

10. At Week 9 the tiny one has fingerprints and will curve its hand around an object placed in its palm. • By Week 10 the fetus can squint, swallow, and wrinkle its forehead. At the 11th week, the fetus is now about 2 inches long. Urination occurs. Muscle movements are becoming more coordinated.

11. 3m • Now 3 months old, the unborn sleeps, awakens, and exercises its muscles. It “breathes” amniotic fluid to help develop its respiratory system.Fine hair is growing on the head.

12. 4m • At 4 months the fetus is 8-10 inches long and weighs half a pound. • The mother starts to “show.” The baby’s ears are functional. • It can hear its mother.

13. The fetus at 5 months is now about 12 inches long. There is definite movement felt by the mother. The unborn may jump in reactions to startling or loud noises.

14. At the 6th monthoil and sweat glands are now functioning. The delicate skin is protected from the fetal waters by a special ointment called “vernix.” Born now and given proper care,the baby would survive…

15. At 24 weeks, this unborn child was operated on for spina bifida while still in the uterus. • This is Sarah Marie Switzer, the baby who was operated on above.

16. This is about the time that a premature baby can survive outside the womb, given proper medical treatment. • This little boy, here 7 weeks after birth, was born when his mother was only 25 weeks pregnant.

17. At Month 7 the baby now uses the four senses of hearing, vision, taste, and touch. The child can respond to his or her mother’s voice.

18. In the 8th month the skin begins to thicken with a layer of fat stored underneath for insulation and nourishment. Antibodies increasingly build up. • The baby is nearly ready for life outside the womb.

19. Toward the end of this month the baby is ready for birth. By this time the infant normally weighs 6 to 9 pounds, and his or her heart is pumping 300 gallons of blood per day.

20. Medical Embryology Textbooks • The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology • "Zygote: this cell results from the union of an oocyte and a sperm. A zygote is the beginning of a new human being (i.e., an embryo). Human development begins at fertilization… This highly specialized, totipotent cell marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.”

21. Medical Embryology Textbooks • Essentials of Human Embryology • “In this text, we begin our description of the developing human with the formation and differentiation of the male and female sex cells or gametes, which will unite at fertilization to initiate the embryonic development of a new individual.”

22. Medical Embryology Textbooks • Human Embryology & Teratology • “Fertilization is an important landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed…”

23. What Do Medical Doctors Say? • Dr. Alfred Bongioanni (University of Pennsylvania): “I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at the time of conception.” • Dr. Jerome LeJeune (University of Descartes): “after fertilization has taken place a new human being has come into being.”

24. What Do Medical Doctors Say? • Dr. Hymie Gordon (Mayo Clinic): “By all criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.” • Dr. Micheline Matthews-Roth (Harvard University Medical School): “It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception”

25. Abortion Techniquesused during theseFirst Three Months(the First Trimester)

26. Suction aspiration, or "vacuum curettage," is the abortion technique used in most first trimester abortions. • A powerful suction tube with a sharp cutting edge is inserted into the womb through the dilated cervix. The suction dismembers the body of the developing baby and tears the placenta from the wall of the uterus, sucking blood, amniotic fluid, placental tissue, and fetal parts into a collection bottle.

27. In another method, Dilation and Curettage, the cervix is dilated or stretched to permit the insertion of a loop-shaped steel knife. The body of the baby is cut into pieces and removed and the placenta is scraped off the uterine wall.

28. RU 486 is another method used in the first trimester. In her first visit, the mother will take an RU486 pill which blocks the action of progesterone, the natural hormone vital to maintaining the rich nutrient lining of the uterus. The developing baby starves as the nutrient lining disintegrates. • At a second visit 36 to 48 hours later, the woman is given a dose of artificial prostaglandins, usually misoprostol, which initiates uterine contractions and usually causes the embryonic baby to be expelled from the uterus. Most women abort during the 4-hour waiting period at the clinic, but about 30% abort later at home, work, etc., as many as 5 days later.

29. Abortion Techniquesused duringthe Second “Trimester”

30. Used to abort unborn children as old as 24 weeks, the method called Dilation and Evacuation (D&E) is similar to the D&C. The difference is that forceps with sharp metal jaws are used to grasp parts of the developing baby, which are then twisted and torn away. This continues until the child’s entire body is removed from the womb. Because the baby’s skull has often hardened to bone by this time, the skull must sometimes be compressed or crushed to facilitate removal. If not carefully removed, sharp edges of the bones may cause cervical laceration. Bleeding from the procedure may be profuse.

31. Some abortion methods involve the injection of drugs or chemicals through the abdomen or cervix into the amniotic sac to cause the death of the child and his or her expulsion from the uterus. Several drugs have been tried, but the most commonly used are hypertonic saline, urea, and prostaglandins…

32. Saline abortions are used after 16 weeks of pregnancy, when enough fluid has accumulated in the amniotic fluid sac surrounding the baby. A needle is inserted through the mother’s abdomen and 50-250 ml (as much as a cup) of amniotic fluid is withdrawn and replaced with a solution of concentrated salt. • The baby breathes in, swallowing the salt, and is poisoned. The chemical solution also causes painful burning and deterioration of the baby’s skin. • Usually, after about an hour, the child dies. • The mother goes into labor about 33 to 35 hours after instillation and delivers a dead, burned, and shriveled baby.

33. Abortionists sometimes refer to Partial Birth Abortions or similar types of abortions as "Dilation and Extraction" (D&X), or "intact D&E" (IDE). This procedure is used for women who are 20 to 32 weeks pregnant -- or even later into pregnancy. • Guided by ultrasound, the abortionist reaches into the uterus, grabs the unborn baby’s leg with forceps, and pulls the baby into the birth canal, except for the head, which is deliberately kept just inside the womb. (At this point in a partial-birth abortion, the baby is alive.) • Then the abortionist jams scissors into the back of the baby’s skull and spreads the tips of the scissors apart to enlarge the wound. After removing the scissors, a suction catheter is inserted into the skull and the baby’s brains are sucked out. The collapsed head is then removed from the uterus.

34. Hysterotomy, similar to the Caesarean Section, is the method generally used if chemical methods such as salt poisoning or prostaglandins fail. • Incisions are made in the abdomen and uterus. The baby, placenta, and amniotic sac are then removed. • Babies are sometimes born alive during this procedure. This raises questions as to how and when these infants are killed and by whom.

35. Abortion is legal in most states up until birth. All the techniques used during the second trimester are also used during the third: • Dilation and Evacuation • Saline Abortion • Prostaglandin Abortion • Partial Birth Abortion • Hysterotomy

39. Margaret Sanger quotes Founder of Planned Parenthood "The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922. "Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race." Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. Page 12. "We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population. and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." Margaret Sanger's December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble

40. "Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need ... We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock." Margaret Sanger, April 1933 Birth Control Review. "Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives." Margaret Sanger. "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda." Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5.

41. "The campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics." Margaret Sanger. "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda." Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5. "Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying ... demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism ... [Philanthropists] encourage the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant ... We are paying for, and even submitting to, the dictates of an ever-increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all." Margaret Sanger. The Pivot of Civilization, 1922. Chapter on "The Cruelty of Charity," pages 116, 122, and 189. Swarthmore College Library edition. "The undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind."

42. "The marriage bed is the most degenerative influence in the social order..." Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922. "[Our objective is] unlimited sexual gratification without the burden of unwanted children..." Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922. "Give dysgenic groups [people with 'bad genes'] in our population their choice of segregation or [compulsory] sterilization." Margaret Sanger, April 1932 Birth Control Review. "As we celebrate the 100th birthday of Margaret Sanger, our outrageous and our courageous leader, we will probably find a number of areas in which we may find more about Margaret Sanger than we thought we wanted to knw..." Faye Wattleton, Past-president of Planned Parenthood

44. When does life begin? Is the embryo or fetus merely a “blob of tissue”? • What exactly is murder? Is abortion murder? • Is the unborn child part of the woman’s body or just inside the woman’s body? • Should any of these abortion methods be a choice for a pregnant woman? • What about rape and incest? Are they legitimate circumstances to have an abortion? • Can or should the woman who has had an abortion ever be forgiven if abortion is murder? • Does knowing the facts about preborn life and the methods of abortion make us more responsible?

45. What can you do to be on the side of unborn life? Be specific. • What are some things that you support that maybe are against life and support the culture of death? • What are ways that you see life attacked in our culture today? • What are the rippling effects of abortion? How does it effect other things in a person’s life and in society in general? • Why are some reasons why your friends are pro-choice? How would you answer them?

46. The first feminists were adamantly pro-life. Susan B. Anthony In her publication The Revolution, wrote: "Guilty? Yes. No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; But oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime!" "We want prevention, not merely punishment. We must reach the root of the evil...It is practiced by those whose inmost souls revolt from the dreadful deed." The Revolution, 4(1):4 July 8, 1869

47. Elizabeth Cady Stanton -- early feminist She classified abortion as a form of "infanticide." The Revolution, 1(5):1, February 5, 1868 "When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit." Letter to Julia Ward Howe, October 16, 1873, recorded in Howe's diary at Harvard University Library

48. Victoria Woodhull The first female presidential candidate was a strong opponent of abortion. "The rights of children as individuals begin while yet they remain the fetus." Woodhull's and Claffin's Weekly 2(6):4 December 24, 1870 "Every woman knows that if she were free, she would never bear an unwished-for child, nor think of murdering one before its birth." Wheeling, West Virginia Evening Standard, November 17, 1875

49. Sarah Norton -- Early Feminist "Child murderers practice their profession without let or hindrance, and open infant butcheries unquestioned...Is there no remedy for all this ante-natal child murder?...Perhaps there will come a time when...an unmarried mother will not be despised because of her motherhood...and when the right of the unborn to be born will not be denied or interfered with." Woodhull's and Claffin's Weekly, November 19, 1870

50. Mary Wollstonecraft British author. Best known for her book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). This book was one of the first to claim that women should have equality with men. "Women becoming, consequently, weaker...than they ought to be...have not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection...either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast if off when born. Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity."