Full Human Complement

This is about the unborn child, whose life is threatened by those who want to legalise abortion.

They will tell you it is not really a person, but "just a collection of cells." And to justify abortion, they talk about "socio-economic factors," "sheer desperation of the mother," "a woman's right," and so on — rarely do they talk about the unborn. It is dismissed after the first few sentences. So here I give you the facts of the unborn's existence during pregnancy, why abortion should not be legalised, and why the mother does not have the right to decide the fate of the unborn inside her.

Medical science has proved that at no stage of pregnancy is the unborn child an appendage of the mother. It is a genetically separate individual from conception. Right from the union of sperm and ovum, the zygote has a full human chromosomal complement, which given food and warmth, destines it to become a person. The cell divides into two, then four, and so on. Fortyone of 45 such cell generations which happen between fertilisation and mature adult, happen during pregnancy. The others occur in childhood and adolescence. Over seven or eight days, the multiplying and differentiating ball of cells goes along the fallopian tube to the uterus. There he implants himself in the spongy lining, and where he is also able to suppress the mother's next period. To make his home habitable for the next 270 days, the embryo develops a placenta and protective capsule for himself. He alone solves the homograft problem, so mother and foetus, immunilogical foreigners who could not exchange skin grafts safely, nor receive blood from each other, still tolerate each other in parabiosis for nine months.

By 25 days the developing heart starts beating. By 30 days, the baby, ¼ inch long, has a brain of unmistakable human proportions, and eyes, ears, mouth, kidneys liver umbilical cord and the heart is pumping blood he has made. BY 45 days, the baby's skeleton is complete, in cartilage, not bone, the buds of the mild teeth appear and he makes the first movements of his body and new limbs, though the mother will not notice movements for another 12 weeks.