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Surgery performed on 21-week old fetus still in the womb
Samuel Armas' tiny hand grips Dr. Joseph P. Bruner's finger just as
Bruner finishes returning him to his mother's womb.
Bruner, director of fetal diagnosis and treatment at Vanderbilt
University Medical Center, was performing a cutting-edge procedure on
the 21-week-old fetus.
Read the rest of the story at
http://www.tennessean.com/sii/99/09/07/fetus07.shtml
or
http://www.lifesite.net/fetaldevelopment/samuel.html
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Samuel
Armas' tiny hand reaches out of the womb to grip Dr. Joseph P. Bruner's
finger.
(Photos
copyright/ Michael Clancy)
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'Smile'
in the womb fires abortion row
By Rebecca Urban, James Meikle
September 14, 2003 The Age
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/09/13/1063341814497.html
Images published for
the first time yesterday suggesting unborn babies smile, blink and cry
months before they leave the womb have renewed calls for abortion to be
outlawed.
 The
pictures, published in London, show foetuses at 26 weeks exhibiting facial
expressions. The images were captured by state-of-the-art scanning
equipment.
Anti-abortion groups seized on the revelation, saying the images confirmed
what they had argued all along: that a foetus was a human being with human
characteristics.
The technology, known as a 3-D/4-D ultrasound, also reveals limb movements
at eight weeks, leaping, turning and jumping at 11 to 12 weeks, intricate
finger movements at 15 weeks and yawning at 20 weeks.
Whether the facial expressions are an emotional response or merely
physical reflex is likely to be debated.
An obstetrician who has been using the Austrian-developed equipment at a
private London health clinic for two years, Stuart Campbell, said:
"It is remarkable that a newborn baby does not smile for about six
weeks
after birth. But before birth, most babies smile frequently. This may
indicate the baby's trouble-free existence in the womb and the relatively
traumatic first few weeks after birth when the baby is reacting to a
strange environment."
In Australia yesterday, anti-abortionist Senator Brian Harradine said
governments had a responsibility to at least look at the new information
to emerge from London. Similar evidence pointing to activity in the womb
had existed for several years, but had largely been ignored, he said.
"The photos show abortion is actually killing these unborn children.
It really is time the massacre stopped."
A Victorian Government spokesman said abortion laws were based on years of
scientific research and while the Government was interested in all new
medical developments and theories, any major policy review on abortion was
a long way off.
Pro-Life Victoria secretary Denise Cameron said she was not surprised by
the photographs. The information would bolster the campaign for a review
of abortion laws.
"It is very, very exciting news for us... that babies at 26 weeks are
smiling and laughing in utero," said Ms Cameron, speaking from the
Freedom To Be Born rally at Treasury Gardens yesterday.
"No longer can you deny that what is in the womb is a living being.
We have always known that every abortion is killing a baby."
Australian Doctors Who Represent Human Life president Kevin Hume, said
pro-life groups had believed for years that a foetus had human
characteristics. The images would allow them to say, "I told you
so."
"If evidence of human features, smiling and so forth, appear at an
early age it means we should look again at... abortion that is carried out
in the first and second trimesters," he said. "We're looking at
recognisable human beings."
Melbourne's Catholic vicar-general, Monsignor Les Tomlinson, said he
expected the images would ignite further debate on abortion. He backed a
review of abortion laws.
"The Catholic Church's position has always been that we would regard
human life from the moment of conception. So this would certainly be
scientific evidence of the correctness of our belief," he said.
"Any revisiting of the legislation would be welcomed by us."
Australian Birth Control Services medical director Geoff Brodie said he
doubted the pictures would have much impact on the abortion laws.
"I think they are clutching at straws," he said. "No doubt
it will be picked up by those groups that use anything and everything to
stop terminations but ignore the fact that women have a right to
choice."
The 3-D/4-D ultrasound reveals more detailed and life-like scans of a
foetus than the common 2-D ultrasound that concentrates largely on the
internal organs.
Obstetrician Professor Campbell said he believed the new technology meant
there were many questions that could now be investigated. "Do babies
with genetic problems such as Down syndrome have the same pattern of
activity as normal babies? Does the foetus smile because it is happy or
cry because it has been disturbed by some event in the womb? Why does a
baby blink when we assume it is dark inside the uterus?" Professor
Campbell said.
A spokeswoman for the Royal Women's Hospital in Melbourne said scientific
evidence still maintained that babies in the womb did not smile.
Dr Brodie, of Australian Birth Control Services, said it was still unknown
if smiles, or other facial movements, were the result of neurological
reflexes or emotional development.
The $A290,000 scanner that makes the images possible costs two to three
times more than conventional equipment. The machine develops ultrasound so
that it can be transformed and shaded to produce detailed surface features
from the foetus that move in real time. It is already improving diagnosis
of abnormalities such as cleft lip and palate.
- with Guardian
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