Imagine what it must feel like to hear your baby’s heartbeat for the first time with an ultrasound. It’s a confirmation that a person is developing! A problem we have today is the rationalisation of abortion. Let’s be reasonable. If a person who is born has a heartbeat, we -on a colloquial way of speaking- consider him alive. Why is that not the case for unborn children, who also have a heartbeat? Ok, you can’t see him and touch him yet. But maybe you have never met an Eskimo, and of course you know that they exist.
It seems the dehumanising of the unborn is only a problem as people grow older. Young children recognise instantly the beauty of life within the womb, also if they cannot hear the baby’s heartbeat. Any of us could tell many stories. As this mum remembered his 2 years old child: “He held and kissed my belly. I want to hold baby, said. He’d listen to my growing belly with his stethoscope. And then he started calling the baby Sophie”.
We don’t hear children phrases like “it’s just a clump of cells”, or “it’s not alive”. Science has shown us that the baby has a heartbeat, which is medically considered a sign of life. So what reasons can be ever reasonable to end a life?
When I read the EPIC leaflet made for the LoveBoth project, I could appreciate the beauty of life in the womb. A tiny human is growing inside the mother. The EPIC leaflet shows some fascinating milestones at different stages during the child’s growth in the womb. At around week 16, the baby can react to sound. This is supported by many studies. As a recent one from the University of Kansas, USA. It showed that the baby can distinguish between the sounds of different languages while unborn. If we have this evidence which shows how an unborn child is similar to a human who is born, then why do we want to end its life?
By Siobhan Wray