Seeing is Believing: A Device That Determines if You Have a Heart
Lee YanceyI recently saw a bumper sticker that read, “If it’s not a baby, you’re not pregnant!” Why is it that pro-choice proponents would have everyone to believe that a baby in the womb is not a baby? Recent technology advances are now making it more clear than ever before that “a person’s a person no matter how small.”(1) New four-dimensional ultrasound machines are being used to give expectant parents clear video footage before their little one is born. Like old ultrasound machines, the 4-D units produce images by bouncing waves off tissue. The test, often used to determine the baby’s gender, offers no risk to the mother or the baby. “The most surprising benefit of the new machine is the instant bond it builds between the mother and the unborn child.”(2) Expectant parents have been getting excited about ultrasounds for years. Many times, however, those fuzzy black and white images don’t tell them much.
Now new technology is helping doctors take ultra- sounds to a new dimension. While it might appear she’s playing a virtual reality game, an expectant mother is actually seeing her unborn baby’s face for the first time. “Oh my, she’s adorable...so we know it’s a she...oh yeah...she’s a she,” exclaimed the happy mom while viewing a 4-D ultrasound. Unlike the 2-D ultrasound she had on her son, this new technology not only lets her view her baby in the womb, but she can also see the child’s movements in real time. “It’s really a big change ... I can see the way her lips look and her cheeks and her facial structure...she looks a lot like my son...so I’m happy.”(3) A press release from General Electric, who created the 4-D Ultrasound system, “touts the medical benefits expected to come from this device because doctors will be able to see the developing child more clearly, enabling them to better diagnose potential problems. The unintended consequences of this device however, lie in the cultural baffle over the meaning and value of human life. The clarity of the image resembles a high-quality photograph. Everyone who sees such a picture will find it extremely difficult to regard the image as anything but that of a baby; not a ‘fetus,’ not a ‘product of conception,’ not disembodied tissue. The hands move. So does the head.”(4) “There is conclusive evidence from pregnancy care centers that parents that see their babies on sonograms nearly always choose life.”(5)
At $120,000, the machine is expensive, but every pregnancy help center should have one and the law should require every pregnant woman seeking an abortion to view this image of her baby. An unborn baby’s heart begins to beat eighteen days after conception, and her fingerprints are completely established during the fourth week of development in her mother’s womb. She sucks her thumb seven weeks after conception; and sometime between nine and ten weeks, this preborn wonder squints, swallows, and moves her tongue. At the moment of conception, every piece of her genetic puzzle is in place – a miraculous blueprint of life.
Using modern scientific advancements such as high-resolution ultrasound imaging, Scripture’s absolute accuracy is confirmed. As a weaver knows his every stitch, as a seamstress purposefully fashions a beautiful garment – God creates us wonderful and whole even while our form is hidden. Many pro-life leaders cite improvements in ultrasound technology and increased accessibility to the machines as key reasons for a growing awareness that it is a human life that is being taken in an abortion. “If wombs had windows, people would be much more reticent to abort babies because they would be forced to confront the evident humanity of the baby from very early gestation onward,” ERLC President Richard Land says, explaining that sonograms provide such a “window into the womb.”
Would you consider contributing whatever you can to this noble cause? The Psalm 139 Project was created by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission to help pregnancy care centers secure ultrasound machines. 100% of the gifts received will go to evangelistically oriented centers. To contribute, please send your tax-deductible gifts to the “Psalm 139 Project,” c/o ERLC, 901 Commerce Street, Nashville, TN 37203.
Away to help fund Mississippi crisis pregnancy centers is by purchasing a Choose Life car tag at your local tag office. You have to change your tag this year anyway so why not take a public stand for babies and help pregnancy centers in the process? Through September, Mississippi had sold 715 Choose Life car tags. That converts to $17,160 so far to distribute to pregnancy centers that promote saving babies. When women get a window to the womb through the use of 4-D ultrasound machines, abortions are dramatically reduced. Just like GE, you can help “bring good things to life.”
1. Geisel, Theodore. “Horton Hears a Who.”
2. Pamela Berry, “New technology touching moms.” The Clarion Ledger. 21 September, 2002. page 1A.
3. http://www.nbc4.com/healtharchives/l748998/detail.html
4. Cal Thomas, “Choice Enhancer.” World. 8 June 2~2, 20.
5. Dwayne Hastngs, “The Sanctity of Human Life.” Life Light Published by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.