A miscarried baby at appoximately 8 weeks gestational age. Image: lunar caustic.
A clump of cells?
A video of an eight week old unborn child which had to be removed because of an ectopic pregnancy is illustrating the humanity of the unborn child and that even an early abortion takes a human life.
The video was originally shared two years ago by Jonathan Van Maren, communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, but it is now gaining more attention through the Nurses&Midwives4Life Ireland Facebook page.
Warning: Viewers may find this upsetting:
It shows the tiny unborn baby, who was only about eight weeks old, moving its arms, legs and head. Tragically, the baby will not have survived - he or she started growing in the mother's fallopian tube - a situation where the baby cannot survive and which is potentially fatal for the mother. In traditional medical ethics, removing a damaged follopian tube (containing an embryo that sadly will not survive) with the intention to save the mother is allowed under the principle of double effect, and is not considered an abortion.
According to comments on the original video, the parents of the baby wanted the video posted to help in the fight against abortion, and to show that the baby they tragically lost was not a blob of tissue.
Young babies are people too
The images are particularly powerful as they are of a baby in the first trimester - the time when babies are commonly dismissed as "clumps of cells" or "not a baby yet". It's also when the most abortions happen - in 2017, 77% of abortions took place at 3-9 weeks gestation, and 13% at 10 to 12. While late term abortions are generally seen as particularly barbaric and upsetting, pictures like these show that younger babies are equally living, moving humans whose lives are ended by abortion.
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