Jacob Kettner
The Unborn
What is life? What constitutes a life? Are their certain aspects that are needed for something to be living? What is a human? What is the difference between a life and a human life, or is there a difference? These questions could go on and on, and these questions have gone on and on throughout history and in the debate of life. These questions always seem to lead to the subject of the unborn. Are unborn babies, or the embryo/fetus, alive? Are they human? Is there a specific time when they become human? And the questions keep on coming. But there is one more question; the question of which this video we had the opportunity to watch on Dr. Hilgers and his study asked: Are the unborn “human beings with potential” or “potential human beings”?
According to Dr. Hilgers, an avid pro-life supporter from the content he studied and stated in the video, he goes with the first of the two. The unborn are most definitely human beings with potential and they are so at the very moment of conception or when the sperm makes contact with the ovum. Dr. Hilgers believes that whatever one may think makes up a living human being, the unborn embryo/fetus has it. Hilgers stated that we all, that is everybody who has and currently lives on earth, share and have shared this experience of starting our lives here.
Let’s go back to the questions stated earlier. Some may say life is when one’s heart is beating; well Dr. Hilgers stated that the heartbeat of an embryo starts beating at 18 days! Some may say life is when one looks like a human adult, well by 7.1 weeks the embryo has all the parts an adult would. Also at 7.3 weeks one can see fingers that are only identifiable with the human being and further along in development the anatomical detail of the unborn mimics that of the human adult but in just a smaller and more condensed package. Others may say life is when one has a certain amount of brain activity, well at 8.1 weeks brain waves are detected in the fetus showing the activity of the brain. Finally, still others may say life is when one can react to its environment, well once the spinal cord develops, the fetus is able to react to touch and at 12.5 weeks the fetus’s reflexes are entirely in place. Dr. Hilgers could go on and on, at 12.5 weeks the fetus is able to move around (i.e. kick, grip, open their mouth, move their arms, etc.), at 29.3 weeks the fetus has all four chambers of the heart in place, and at 34.4 weeks the fetus is already performing breathing movements to name just a few.
As a result of watching these videos, with all the facts, the observations, and the studies in them, I do not know how one could logically think these unborn embryos and fetuses are not living humans. So once one comes to this realization, how do they not view abortion and its consequences more seriously? Let’s take a further look into what abortion is and its consequences. There are a few methods of abortion; one method that occurs in the first trimester is sucking the embryo out of the uterus. This method uses a powerful vacuum suction tube that tears the soft baby apart and removes it from the uterus. How about at 19 weeks, the abortionists literally dismember the fetus. And why do these happen? Dr. Hilgers said most every abortion is performed for social convenience, so killing a living human being for their own benefit. How does society feel though when someone abuses a child? Dr. Hilgers asks what the difference is in child abuse and abortion. How could one support abortion but is totally against child abuse.
With the facts, observations, and studies Dr. Hilgers and other scientists have performed there is no way an unborn could be referred to as a potential human being but is a human being with potential. And what is that potential? What if someone like Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the list goes on and on, were aborted? What would this world be like if these influential people never quite made it to birth? Dr. Hilgers goes on to say maybe the next humans aborted are going to be the ones that find the cure for cancer or Alzheimer’s or finds another new discovery. And if not, these humans are still human beings like you and me who like them were once in the same position in our development. Every one of these facts and observations amazed me. The unborn truly are hidden from the average person but now that we are able to view these babies in the womb with modern technology and observe their development and life how can one not say that we are so fearfully and wonderfully made.