What Does Modern Technology Reveal About When Life Begins? – Part 2

Previous Article

How has modern technology shown that human life begins at conception?

Recent developments of medical technology such as sound imaging and fetoscopy have permitted us to look into the womb and observe fetal development even from the point of conception. In terms of what we knew before, the difference is like observing a person’s reflection in a pond compared to observing his reflection in a mirror. Modern fetology has given us an amazing and incredible look at the growth of the tiny individual in the mother’s womb.^[1]

Dr. Bernard Nathanson discusses how advances in modern technology caused him to radically alter his pro-abortion beliefs. Once known as “the abortion king” because of his prominence in the field and his presiding over 60,000 abortions,^[2] he is today a vocal opponent of abortion because recent scientific advances in fetology forced him to accept the fact that the fetus was really a living human being:

Ultrasound technology has been really the apparatus which has put the window in the womb. This was the first time we really could see the baby. Up till that time we never could. I mean, X-rays were static. You couldn’t really use X‑rays to prove or disprove much of anything about the fetus. But ultrasound gives us these very clear, precise pictures, allows us to stimulate the child, see how it breathes, see how it moves, see how it swallows, see how it urinates, see how everything happens.

Now, there’s been a new advance in this ultrasound technology which is known as transvaginal sonography. It’s very exciting. [Before] the pictures were great, but they don’t compare to these pictures—it’s valuable for very early pregnancies.

We can see the gestational sac—the little sac of the pregnancy at two weeks following fertilization now with transvaginal sonography. [We] can see the heart beginning to beat at around 3 [to] 3-1/2 weeks now. So this has pushed back or updated a great many of our data about the unborn baby.

And I don’t doubt that there are new technologies coming even now; for example, color ultrasound which is going to give us even clearer, more vivid pictures and increase our knowledge about the unborn patient here.^[3]

The reason why modern science has come to the conclusion that human life begins at conception is because sound imaging and modern fetology have sup­ported this judgment dramatically.^[4] Every scientific law known (e.g., biogenesis— that is, life comes only from life) and every scientific fact (e.g., at conception a genetically new and unique human individual exists) demands this conclusion.

All of this is why the origin of human life cannot be defined at any other point (e.g., viability) than conception.

Read Part 3

Notes

1. ↑ John C. Fletcher, Mark I. Evans, “Maternal Bonding in Early Fetal Ultrasound Examinations,” New
   England Journal of Medicine, February 17, 1983.
2. ↑ Bernard N. Nathanson, “Deeper into Abortion,” New England Journal of Medicine, Nov. 28, 1974, p.
   1189.
3. ↑ Transcript, The Ankerberg Theological Research Institute, Is Abortion Justifiable? televised
   program, Jan. 1990, p. 7.
4. ↑ Norman L. Geisler, Christian Ethics: Options and Issues (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1989), p. 140.