Science and the Unborn
By Liz Townsend
 

When the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973, the world of the unborn was shrouded in mystery. But developments in ultrasound and fetal surgery, evidence of fetal pain, and the survival of very premature babies have established unborn babies as people separate from their mothers, able to be seen and healed before they are born. Denying that they are "persons," as in the Roe v. Wade decision, is quickly becoming an untenable position in light of scientific developments.

 Ultrasound

In 1973, doctors had only recently begun to use ultrasound as a diagnostic tool during pregnancy. Images were black and white, blurry, and hard for the layperson to interpret.

The decades after the Roe decision saw great strides in ultrasound technology.

Researchers began using digital and color ultrasound images in the 1990s, which vastly improved their quality. The advent of three- and four-dimensional ultrasound also revolutionized the field and brought images of the unborn child to life.

Traditionally, ultrasound images were seen on a monitor screen as two-dimensional pictures. 3D ultrasound enters two-dimensional data into a computer, which reconstructs them as three-dimensional images characterized by depth and clarity.

4D ultrasound systems allow physicians (and parents) to view continuously updated three-dimensional ultrasound images, which essentially show the baby's movements in "real time."

A controversy erupted in Great Britain in July 2004 when Professor Stuart Campbell, a pioneer in the field of ultrasound scanning, released 4D images of active unborn babies taken throughout pregnancy even before the mother can feel movement. The babies can be seen opening their eyes at 18 weeks. The British newspapers especially highlighted a 12-week-old unborn baby "walking" in the womb, rubbing his/her eyes, and yawning.

The ultrasound images were widely circulated on the Internet, initially via the Drudge Report. Dr. Campbell is an obstetrician at the privately run Create Health Centre in London.

Even though he is not pro-life, Campbell's ultrasound images inspired him to speak out against Britain's laws allowing abortion up to 24 weeks. "I now think 24 weeks, if the baby is healthy, is too late," he told the Sunday Herald. "The world is a different place from 1967, when the [U.K.] abortion law was first passed, and science has moved on."

"These pictures are a wonderful reminder of the fact that the unborn child is a living human being," said John Smeaton, national director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. "Tragically, unborn children such as these are killed at a rate of one every three minutes. We hope and pray though that many lives will be saved by these awe-inspiring pictures. We challenge abortion providers, in the interests of informed consent, to show these pictures to women seeking abortion."

Fetal Surgery

In procedures unheard of in 1973, unborn children with disabilities or life-threatening conditions are now receiving treatment as patients in their own right at hospitals around the world.

The Fetal Treatment Center at the University of California at San Francisco was the first to successfully perform open fetal surgery to correct an unborn baby's urinary obstruction in 1981. This operation was the first success in a field that has been growing by leaps and bounds, as new techniques and technology have allowed a variety of once-fatal conditions to be treated in utero.

On May 12, 1999, a baby diagnosed with hydrocephalus while in his mother's womb was born free of the condition two months after doctors at Vanderbilt University Medical Center operated on his brain during a landmark open-womb surgical procedure. Hydrocephalus, a build-up of fluid in the brain that can lead to severe disability and even death, had never before been directly treated in an unborn baby.

Only a few months later, on August 19, a freelance photographer took a picture during fetal surgery at Vanderbilt that shook the world. The image of 21-week-old unborn baby Samuel Armas reaching his hand out of the womb and grasping his doctor's finger provided graphic proof of the humanity of the unborn. The doctors were repairing a lesion caused by spina bifida, which occurs when the spinal column fails to fuse properly, leaving an opening that is highly susceptible to infection.

The field of fetal surgery continued to advance in the new century, as surgeons in Austria repaired the completely blocked heart valve of a 27-week-old unborn baby in 2000. This was the first time such an operation has been successfully performed.

Fetal Pain

Thirty-two years ago, it was assumed that unborn babies, and even newborns, did not have the capacity to experience pain. Anesthesia was rarely used for operations after birth, and the unborn babies who were torn apart by abortion procedures certainly received no pain medications. A growing body of evidence in the last 20 years has exploded these assumptions.

"Anatomical studies in the 1980s documented the establishment of the body's pain network - - the spino-thalamic pathway - - by 20 weeks' gestation," Paul Ranalli, M.D., wrote in the January 2003 NRL News. "By 20 weeks, the fetal brain has the full complement of brain cells present in adulthood, ready and waiting to receive pain signals from the body, and their electrical activity is recordable by standard electroencephalography (EEG)."

"The evidence suggests that 20 weeks is a conservative estimate," Ranalli continued. "English fetal pain researcher Dr. Vivette Glover, who is personally 'pro-choice,' has stated: 'I think the evidence is that the system is starting to form by 20 weeks, maybe by 17 weeks.'"

Britain's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a report in October 1997 recommending that the evidence for fetal pain perception in the late second trimester was convincing enough that the doomed fetus should be sedated with its own specific anesthesia during all abortions performed from 24 weeks onward.

U.S. congressmen have responded to the evidence of fetal pain by introducing the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act in 2004. The bill would require every abortionist to provide, whenever a woman seeks an abortion past 20 weeks after fertilization, specified information about the capacity of her unborn child to experience pain during the abortion. After receiving that information, the woman would sign a form either accepting or refusing the administration of pain-reducing drugs directly to the unborn child.

"Unborn children can experience pain," said bill co-sponsor Senator Sam Brownback (R-Ks.). "This is why unborn children are often administered anesthesia during in utero surgeries. [C]onsider the D&E abortion. During this procedure, commonly performed after 20 weeks - - when there is medical evidence that the child can experience severe pain - - the child is torn apart limb from limb. Think about how that must feel to a young human. We would never allow a dog to be treated this way."

Survival of Premature Babies

The Supreme Court legalized abortion for all nine months of pregnancy. But advances in medicine have caused a tragic contradiction: babies are now born prematurely and survive at the same age as others who are killed by abortion.

"In 1973, the scientific discussion heavily focused on the issues of fetal viability," Dr. Jean A. Wright testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 1998. "At that time, the common understanding was that infants born before 28 weeks could not survive. Today, that age of viability has been pushed back from 28 weeks to 23 and 24 weeks. And some investigators are working on an artificial placenta to support those even younger."

Now, babies born too early and too small can be aided by drugs to help lungs develop, antibiotics to stave off infection, incubators to regulate body temperature, laser surgery to correct eye problems, and many more medical devices and techniques. Tiny Rumaisa Rahman was born with her twin in September 2004 at only 26 weeks' gestation and weighed just 8.6 ounces, but she is thriving and is expected to go home soon.

Pro-lifers often have to be wary of some scientific endeavors, since many researchers use them to devise new ways to harm the unborn, in research that utilizes embryonic stem cells, new abortion techniques, fetal tissue transplants, and the like. But the overwhelming scientific evidence of the past 32 years makes it clear that unborn babies are human beings, and that the Roe decision is increasingly outdated and undeniably wrong.