The Unborn Child - One of Us

Each of us has a unique beginning

Modern science clearly shows that human life begins at conception. It is therefore entitled to all the protections the rest of us enjoy.

• 18 days after conception the baby's heart is beating.
• At 8 weeks everything to be found in a fully grown person is formed.
• At 11 weeks fingerprints and fingernails appear.
• At 12 weeks the baby's lips open and close. It turns its head and can leap around the womb.
• At 16 weeks the baby reacts to sound, sucks, swallows and yawns.
• At 18 weeks most mothers feel the baby's movements. By pushing with its feet and head, the baby exercises its developing muscles. The baby now sucks its thumb.
• At 20 weeks the baby sleeps and wakes like a born baby.
• At 24 weeks the baby continues moving, hearing and perhaps even dreaming.
• At 30-40 weeks the baby, if left undisturbed, will grow stronger until it's time to be born.
  

We all travelled a similar amazing journey towards birth.

Watch a short video to see wonderful imagery of the unborn child here

Movie dealing with abortion to feature at Cannes Film Festival

The Cannes Film Festival next month is to premier a new film called 22 Weeks. It tells the true story of Angele, a woman in her 30s who had an abortion in Florida in 2005.

She chose what was called a ‘labour and delivery’ type of abortion, which was to take two days. She opted for this rather than other forms of abortion, which she felt would be more distressing and harmful for her baby.

The film is significant for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it will show graphically the mindset of the abortionists in action. An abortion is a procedure the entire intention, aim and purpose of which is that the baby does not survive. Sometimes a baby does not die during the procedure but is deliberately left to die after it.

Secondly, it will give us a sense of how profoundly misguided some politicians are on the issue. As a State senator in Illinois, President Obama voted against a Bill to protect babies who survive abortions.

But thirdly and most importantly, it is a testimony to the confused and suddenly traumatic experience of the mother.

Driven by who knows what pressure to opt for abortion, Angele allowed herself to be seduced by the soothing reassurances of the abortionists, which at one level she wanted to believe.

She asked them what would happen if the baby were born alive and they said ‘they would guide a needle into his heart and it would put him to sleep, and he wouldn’t feel anything.’

She took pills to induce labour and by the time she arrived at the abortion clinic she was experiencing painful contractions, but it was not open. The contractions were getting closer. Eventually she got in and delivered her son, apparently on her own.

Then suddenly she sees. She sees her baby for the first time in the flesh. Fighting for his life. And her motherliness awakens and she calls for help. Surely they will look after him.

When a women working in the abortion clinic staff arrived, she refused the give her baby emergency medical care or to call a 911 for medical help for him. Angele called a friend to ring for an ambulance, but the clinic staff turned them away when they arrived and he died.

That terrible journey made at the speed of light from dreamlike denial to full waking, seeing her baby face to face, real at last but too late, is a precious part of women’s experience of abortion.

22 weeks is yet another straw in the wind that shows the cultural consensus on abortion is turning.