17 February 2010
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. Psalm 139:13-14
For centuries when doctors have finished medical school, they have taken the Hippocratic Oath. A paragraph in that covenant reads as follows: “I will not give poison to anyone though asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a plan. Similarly I will not give a pessary to a woman to cause abortion. But in purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.”
Today, however, doctors may affirm that oath but their commitment doesn’t go very deep. When I was a youngster the most common surgical procedure was having your tonsils removed; today it is terminating a pregnancy. In the United States, this procedure takes place 1.5 million times annually; however, the number of abortions in the US pales in light of the number of procedures done in China, India, and Russia where the average woman has between 9 and 14 abortions during her lifetime. Rarely does a woman who terminates a pregnancy understand the awesome process of fetal development as God’s finger touches humanity and brings life. In short, here’s what happens.
At conception 500 million sperm compete with each other to produce an ovum—one cell, so tiny it can be seen only under magnification, but then division and multiplication begin. By the eighth division, genes attached to the 23 chromosomes coming from both parents kick in and begin the process which will eventually determine the color of a baby’s hair, the color of his eyes, the shape of his brain, and the frame of the person, whether he will be tall or short, stocky or thin.
By the eighteenth day—long before a woman even knows she is expecting—a tiny heart begins to pulsate, growing stronger every day. By the forty-second day, brain waves can be recorded, and in the process the hypothalamus gland in the brain kicks into operation producing progesterone or testosterone which make that baby male or female. Soon thereafter the thyroid and adrenal glands are working too.
By the end of the thirteenth week, or the first trimester, the baby’s fingers are developed, including a fingerprint that, with his DNA, will be his identifying mark for the rest of his or her life. And by the way, that baby knows what to do with that thumb, too—not just hitchhiking a ride the same direction mom is going. The baby sucks his thumb and moves it at will.
Nurses who watch ultrasound, which is something like a video movie of an unborn child, say that by the end of the thirteenth week, they can detect personality in those little people that the world wants to call a fetus, denying that a human being, created in the image of God, endowed with life, personality, and emotions is in the process of developing into a full blown member of the human race.
Long before they are born, babies recognize the voices of their mothers and are quieted when they sing and talk to them. When David pondered this, long before science had given us ultrasound, he said, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!” (Psalm 139:13-16).
Because life is sacred, terminating the life of an unborn child is never written on the page in God’s book which has your name on it. Of that, you can be certain.
Resource reading: Psalm 51