You wake from a deep sleep and open your eyes.  It’s dark.  The distant regular beating at the periphery of your hearing is still there.  You rub your eyes with your hands, but you can’t make out any shapes or forms.  […] Then you hear a different but recognizable sound—an amorphous, moving, wiggly sound with a fast beating, a pounding that you can feel in your feet.  The sounds start and stop without definition.  [...]  These familiar sounds are comforting, you’ve heard them before.  As you listen, you have a vague notion of what will come next, and it does, even as the sounds remain remote and muddled, as though you’re listening underwater.

Inside the womb, surrounded by amniotic fluid, the fetus hears sounds.  It hears the heartbeat of its mother, at times speeding up, at other times slowing down.  And the fetus hears music, as was recently discovered by Alexandra Lamont of Keele University in the UK.  She found that, a year after they are born, children recognize and prefer the music they were exposed to in the womb.  The auditory system of the fetus is fully functional about twenty weeks after conception.  In Lamont’s experiment, mothers played a single piece of music to their babies repeatedly during the final three months of gestation.  Of course, the babies were also hearing—through the waterlike filtering of the amniotic fluid in the womb—all of the sounds of their mothers’ daily life, including other music, conversations, and environmental noises.  But one particular piece was singled out for each baby to hear on a regular basis.  The singled-out pieces included classical […], Top 40 […], reggae […] and world beat […].  After birth, the mothers were not allowed to play the experimental song to their infants.  Then, one year later, Lamont played the babies the music that they had heard in the womb, along with another piece of music chosen to be matched for style and tempo.  […] Lamont then determined which one the babies preferred.

How do you know which of two stimuli a preverbal infant prefers?  Most infant researchers use a technique known as the conditioned head-turning procedure […].  Two loudspeakers are set up in a laboratory and the infant is placed (usually in his mother’s lap) between the speakers.  When the infant looks at one speaker, it starts to play music […], and when he looks at the other speaker, it starts to play different music […].  The infant quickly learns that he can control what is playing by where he is looking; he learns, that is, that the conditions of the experiment are under his control.  The experimenters make sure that they counterbalance (randomize) the location that the different stimuli come from; that is, half the time the stimulus under study comes from one speaker and half the time it comes from the other.  When Lamont did this with the infants in her study, she found that they tended to look longer at the speaker that was playing music they had heard in the womb than at the speaker that was playing the novel music, confirming that they preferred the music to which they had the prenatal exposure.  A control group of one-year-olds who had not heard any of the music before showed no preference, confirming that there was nothing about the music itself that caused these results.

[…] It appears that for music even prenatal experience is encoded in memory, and can be accessed in the absence of language or explicit awareness of memory.

[…] Lamont’s results are important because they show that the prenatal and newborn brain are able to store memories and retrieve them over long periods of time.  More practically, the results indicate that the environment—even when mediated by amniotic fluid and by the womb—can affect a child’s development and preferences.  So the seeds of musical preference are sown in the womb […].

The struggle to defend human life continues throughout the world, as does the push for pro-choice laws. Recent news out of the Philippines highlights how the gift of life is viewed by the political and religious leaders in that country, but at the same time should remind those on the “life” side of the battle to be ever vigilant for the encroachment of pro-choice ideology from those who will stop at nothing to impose their mandate of “reproductive rights” against the will of a people.

On August 2, 2010, top Filipino lawmakers and religious leaders affirmed their support for human life by rejecting an appeal from various pro-choice organizations which had urged Congress to pass a law allowing “safe and legal abortion”:

Reproductive health and women’s rights advocates urged Congress Monday to pass a law allowing “safe and legal abortion,” citing a new report that described a “human rights crisis” … arising from unsafe abortions in the Philippines…

The cited report, Forsaken Lives: The Harmful Impact of the Philippine Criminal Abortion Ban, was created by New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR). The request for the Philippine Judiciary to legalize abortion turns out to be a hard sell in a country that’s 90% Christian and whose churchgoing population is so large that some parishes hold their services in megamalls. The responses from Filipino leaders are refreshing for their honesty and bluntness. Below is a selection of the reception given to the pro-choice meddlers:

…the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines or CBCP rejected the proposal. Responding to the figures describing the incidence of unsafe abortion cited by the CRR study, CBCP legal counsel Josephine Imbong said…“The cases that they are citing about poor women [seeking unsafe abortion] are exceptional. It is not the general rule. We have studies that the majority of women and mothers in this country love to have children. We cannot allow a minority to rule and change the law,” she said…

…Imbong asserted that abortion should not be allowed under any circumstances, including rape or incest. “Hindi naman kasalanan ng baby yun eh. Bakit siya papatayin?” (The rape is not the baby’s fault. Why should the baby be killed?)…

…“I don’t think the population can justify any legislation that would legalize abortion in this country,” said Rodante Marcoleta, a Christian pastor and member of the House of Representatives’ Alagad party…

Neither the Philippines Congress nor the Catholic Bishops’ Conference can necessarily be considered parties of “no.” Many of their members support a bill being sponsored by Congressman Roilo Golez, HB No. 13: Protection of the Unborn Child Act 2010, a proposed law that empowers humanity and glorifies the dignity of human life. The law states, in part:

The State recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution; (Art. 11, Sec. 12, and Constitution); The State shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn child from conception; The State recognizes the Filipino family including the unborn child as the foundation of the nation and is pledged to strengthen its solidarity and actively promote its total development; The Filipino family’s most vulnerable members are their children, including those who are unborn; The State recognizes the right to life as the most fundamental right of all without and from which all other rights become meaningless…

The struggle for the hearts and minds of people continues on both sides of the abortion issue. However, for those looking to find a shining example of a country that values the gift of life and is more than holding its ground against pro-choice ideology, the Philippines provides welcome news.

Biology is the knowledge, or science, of life.  If rational biology was the only factor in our attitude toward unborn babies, there would be much less debate about caring for and protecting them.  But irrational emotions and personal philosophies play a huge additional role in our attitudes and choices.  What does biology, by itself, tell us about life before birth, beginning with the single, fertilized egg cell?

First, that this new life is a separate and distinct individual from all others.  Modern molecular genetics has taught us that this new person’s specific pattern of genetic information is not duplicated among all the other people on earth and is clearly distinct from the mother.  Twins result from the separation of developed cells slightly later in development.  Christianity has long taught that each individual is unique and valuable.  And now biology has confirmed that uniqueness.  We may debate when this new life becomes human, but we can no longer argue about it being a separate individual from the very beginning.

Second, we now know that the whole structure and function of the independent adult is laid out in the DNA blueprint of this one original cell, including contributions from each parent.  Although the realities of birth and adulthood lie in the distant future, no additional information or specifications need to be added.  The adult who results from this single cell may be modified as the complexities of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects develop.  But all the programming instructions for the nervous system and all the other specific cell types and complex systems needed to be a human adult are already present.  We still have much to learn about the ways that cells control what they will become, including stem cells.

Third, we have learned from biological study of human development that all these systems develop at surprisingly early stages.  There have been attempts to define pregnancy as beginning only when the developing embryonic baby has attached to the mother’s uterine lining.  Yet even before this, complex and irreversible developments have occurred – nerve cells are laid down and the brain and spinal cord begin to develop, our three basic tissue layers have separated, and the support structures needed during pregnancy (placenta, etc.) are developing so that the mother can supply needed food and oxygen. Heart tissue even begins to beat about day #23, and before the month is out, the embryo is a recognizable, tiny human body.  Such knowledge of early development heightens concerns about chemical and other stresses undergone by the mother during this critical time of rapid development.

Fourth, we are learning more and more about a developing baby’s responses to stimuli, both by nervous system and endocrine reactions, although there is not yet a firm scientific consensus in this area.  In 1996, English physiologist Peter McCullagh spoke in support of a pro-life position to the British Parliament. He said, “At what stage of human prenatal development are those anatomical structures subserving the appreciation of pain present and functional? The balance of evidence at the present time indicates that these structures are present and functional before the tenth week of intrauterine life.”  Studies of the specific brain structures which are the means by which pain is perceived indicate to others that they are not formed in a fetus until 20 weeks or more.  However, there are many anecdotal descriptions of fetal response to loud noises, music, mother’s stress level, and other stimuli to indicate that sensory systems in the brain are active and processing at very early stages.

Finally, progress in medical sciences in the last thirty-seven years has resulted in ever shorter duration before the developing baby can survive outside the womb.  In 1973, that limit was sometime after the 24^th week of pregnancy.  Now that time is down to 22 weeks and still being reduced.  There are problems, of course.  Babies at this early stage have barely formed respiratory systems.  They need special medical support systems, which are also being developed.  Sonograms and other measures of fetal weight can be used to indicate the state of development of the baby.  Yet these biological advances are dismissed by some medical ethicists and abortion advocates, who say that other, non-quantifiable factors should be used instead.  Such arguments are used most loudly in arguments about late-term abortions, when survival outside the womb is clearly possible and where avoidance/pain reactions are clearly observable.

With areas of medical science, genetics, human development and other parts of the biological sciences giving us so much new information over the last three decades, it is important to make rational use of this new knowledge in evaluating the fate of a developing baby.

References:
Fetal image from www.creationwiki.org/Developmental_Biology
Foer, Franklin.  “Fetal Viability”  Slate Magazine. Posted online May 25, 1997
McCullagh, Peter.  Foetal sentience.  London: All-Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group (1996).
Dr. McCullagh is a Senior fellow in developmental physiology at the John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University. This report was reprinted in the Catholic Medical Quarterly, XLV11 no 2, November 1996, p6.

Tiny little fingers
and tiny little toes
What she could have been
only heaven knows

Growing in the safety
of her hiding place
A beautiful little head
and a precious little face

Yawning and stretching
and kicking around
Moving and responding
to her mother’s sound

A future chemist
or an astronaut in space
Someone to cure cancer
for the human race

A wonderful mind
that could have found
answers to the questions
that have kept us bound

A precious life
so quickly is gone
And now we’re reaping
the death we’ve sown

To take her life
is a horrible sin
And it’s sad to think
What could have been?

Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, President Obama’s pro-abortion Supreme Court nominee, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, was confirmed by the Senate last week Thursday. Kagan has a track record of personal and profession support for the putative right to abortion:  She was once a member and financial contributor to the National Partnership for Women & Families, a pro-abortion legal group, and during her tenure in the Clinton administration, Kagan played a key role in keeping the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban from becoming law.

Interested in spreading the Pro-Life message on your campus? Be brave and take a direct stand at your college. Here is what I did:

I ran the above quarter page Pro-Life Ad in our daily school newspaper. 10,000 copies printed in our presidential election paper which ran over a two day period, reaching approximately 18,000 students.

Here I am standing as the paper was printed.

Looking to spread the message to more students, I decided to pass out the Live Action, Pro-Life quarterly magazine, “The Advocate,” during school concerts and in front of our library.

Passing out the Advocate magazine.

This magazine can be obtained from Live Action’s website, http://liveaction.org/advocate.  I handed out 400 copies in 3 days. With creative ideas and a strong will to make a difference, many people can be reached. YOU TOO can do this! Be brave and take a stand! Your student body depends on it!  Please feel free to use that ad that I used in my school’s paper! A picture is like a thousand words.

This was the situation my maternal grandmother found herself in at 14. Instead of having an abortion, she gave my mother up for adoption, and my mother was adopted by wonderful, loving parents and got a great family. Had my biological grandmother chosen to have an abortion, my mother would not be here — and neither would I. We do not have a relationship with her, but she chose to give my mother a life. I’m proud of her for that.

Apparently, rapper/actor Nick Cannon’s mother was in this exact situation. She got pregnant at 17, and was going to have an abortion. She ultimately changed her mind, giving birth to her son, Nick. He wrote a song thanking her for her decision and the sacrifices she made entitled “Can I Live?” (lyrics here). Here is the touching music video:

Chloe at Feministing found this video, and proceeded to blast it as “anti-woman”… and cruelly mocked it, sneering that his mother chose life and ended up with a “C-grade celebrity”. I guess if babies don’t grow up to become A-list celebrities, then they aren’t worth the hassle — in Chloe’s world, anyways.

Adult-with-the-voice-of-a-fetus Cannon’s argument is that not would his mother be killing someone were she to get an abortion, but she’d be killing him, Nick Cannon, the “Oprah-bound” “star” of Drumline. Drumline, guys.

It’s interesting that this is part of her argument. If he had been the star of, oh, Avatar, would she still be mocking him? Is it about the level of celebrity for her? I’m pretty sure that Cannon’s mother doesn’t love her son just because he’s a celebrity, and the point Cannon makes is a good one, whether a parent is considering an abortion or not. All parents wonder what their child will grow up to be, and how far they might go in life. And while Nick Cannon might indeed be a C-grade celebrity, he’s still more well-known than Chloe is, so does she really have much room to be sneering at him for his lack of fame?

And, believe it or not, even babies destined to grow up to be C-grade celebrities deserve a chance to live. I wonder if Chloe would be willing to tell her mother that she wished she had been aborted, if it was what was best for her at the time. And if Nick Cannon is such an inconsequential celebrity, then why is she getting so upset about him professing his pro-life views?

If this were just a rap to thank his mother for the sacrifices she made for him, it would be really sweet. And I understand that the knowledge that your mother very nearly aborted the pregnancy from which you resulted might color your view of abortion, but Cannon’s not just thanking his mother here. He’s calling on women, all women, who find themselves in a similar situation, to make the same decision she did. There is no other possible way to interpret the message “if your baby could speak, it would beg you not to have an abortion.”

… This video isn’t just about “telling the story of his life,” it’s about encouraging other women to make the same decision his mother did. It’s about telling people that no matter what sacrifices it requires of her, a seventeen-year-old woman who gets pregnant should keep the pregnancy, even if she has to drop out of high school, go to night school and depend on government welfare programs. Even if she has dreams other than the ones in which she sees her baby (“you see me in your sleep, so you can’t kill your dreams”? Really, Nick?). And what’s his reasoning? Because that baby might end up being a C-grade celebrity who will thank you for your strength and sacrifice years later, in the form of a poorly-written rap with a barely-concealed political agenda!

It’s quite clever, really, to focus on what the baby might become, on what the world might have missed out on if someone’s life had never come to pass, whether that person is Nick Cannon or Tim Tebow or you, the person watching this video. It’s clever because it forces us to acknowledge that even if we don’t believe a fetus is a person, it undeniably has the potential to become one. That might feel like a victory for anti-abortion forces, but in fact, it reveals a crucial weakness in the approach of those who argue for restrictions on abortion.

The focus on the baby’s potential life lays bare exactly where pro-life priorities lie, and it’s not with women. Women don’t matter here. Babies, fetuses and the potential they represent are all that matters. What women want, what women need, none of those things are important compared to the potential future life of the fetus. And if a woman has goals that would be impossible to achieve if she had a baby, or if she doesn’t want to make the enormous sacrifices that might be required of her, she’s weak. The admirable women are the ones who are “strong” enough to “make the right decision” even if it’s completely against their interests.

The focus on what the baby might grow up to be reveals just how anti-woman the anti-choice stance really is, despite the lauding of women like Cannon’s mother as strong and admirable. Because, as Cannon’s video demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt, we’re meant to care more about the potential for the fetus’ life than the woman’s. We’re expected to care more about a being that merely possesses the potential to become a fully-fledged person with thoughts, hopes, dreams and accomplishments, than we do about the woman who has already fulfilled that potential.

So just remember, ladies, even though it’s your body and your life, it’s not about you. You don’t matter. What matters is that the next generation of human life not be denied the glory, the greatness and the genius that will be Drumline 2.

The overall theme of this post is common for the pro-abortion fanatics. They love to claim that if women cannot have abortions, it means that they have to give up their entire lives — and call this anti-woman. Is it not, though, anti-woman to assume that women are such victims, incapable of living and working while pregnant? While mothers? Feminists look at pregnancy as something crippling, as if being pregnant somehow means that you aren’t able to function. It’s as if in their world, pregnancy turns women into blind-deaf crippled retards who somehow cannot continue to go to school (you can’t learn when you’re pregnant or something), you cannot keep working (it’s too rough on your fragile pregnant body), and your life is completely over (because obviously you’ll have no future if you have a baby). And, as usual, the idea of adoption is never mentioned. I just can’t quite understand how making women out to be these fragile, weak little victims who can’t handle sacrifices or hardship somehow makes women more empowered.

And while the pro-abortion crowd likes to pretend they only care about the life of the woman, it’s simply not true. Pro-abortion feminists like Chloe don’t care about women at all. They care about abortion. It’s why they are against pre-abortion ultrasounds and laws requiring clinics to give medically accurate information. (They know that if a woman sees an image of her child, or knows that the baby already has a heartbeat, they’ll be much less likely to go through with the abortion.) It’s why they try to drown out the post-abortion trauma women face — from increased health risks (like breast cancer) to higher incidences of miscarriage, they don’t want women to know about it. They also don’t want women to know about the emotional trauma many women face. Post abortion, many, many women are stricken with feelings of guilt, regret, and sorrow. Pro-abortion radicals do not want women to know about any of these things, yet they trumpet themselves as pro-woman. What they actually are is pro-abortion.

I don’t think Nick Cannon’s song is genius or even that good. The video has touching moments, though, especially the scenes of mother and son together at the end. While feminists might like to pretend that women who choose life over abortion will regret it their entire lives (remember, pregnancy is a life-ruiner), I’d suspect the opposite. Many, many parents struggle when they’re first starting out, and especially teenage parents. There will be many, many sacrifices to make, and life will inevitably be harder. But I’d be willing to bet that most of the parents who make these sacrifices for their children ultimately say it was worth it in the long run. They love their children enough that they are willing to sacrifice, willing to work harder, to give their children the chance to have a better life. And it’s because they love their children. Feminists like Chloe, though, would have parents miss out on that love just because the road might be a little bit harder. Because, you know, Heaven forbid life be anything but easy. If you can’t do what you want, when you want to, as much as you want, then it’s not fair! They can’t seem to understand that hard work pays off in the end, and a little sacrifice can be very rewarding in the long run. A life of sacrificing for your children does not mean you somehow love your children less, but pro-abortion feminists can’t understand that, can they?

—–

Follow Cassy on Twitter and read more of her work at CassyFiano.com and Hard Corps Wife.

Rosa Acuna was examined by her physician, had an ultrasound, and was told she was 6-8 weeks pregnant. When she asked if it was a “baby in there,” she was told,“don’t be stupid, it’s only blood.” Following an abortion, Rosa experienced bleeding and was admitted to a hospital. When she asked a nurse what had happened, she was told that “the doctor left parts of the baby inside of you.” At this point, Rosa realized it was a baby. Subsequently, her mental health deteriorated, and she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Rosa filed a lawsuit, and both the district and appellate courts agreed that she should have been fully informed, including being told that she was carrying a human being. However, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that the abortionist was under no obligation to give her the information she had asked about – that she was carrying a baby! Citing the 35-year-old Roe v. Wade ruling, the court reasoned that the abortionist is not compelled to provide this information because there are “different scientific, moral, or philosophical viewpoint on the issue of when life begins.”

Live Action launched a multi-state undercover investigation of Planned Parenthood to find that counselors typically use misleading, manipulative, and exploitative information to convince women to get abortions. There have been two videos already released, which were filmed at Planned Parenthoods in Appleton and Milwaukee Wisconsin, and now, Live Action has released a third from a clinic in Indianapolis, Indiana.

When the woman, purportedly 10-weeks pregnant, asks the clinician, named “Sarah,” when her baby’s heart begins to beat, Sarah replies, “It’s around I think the 8th or the 9th week that you can hear the heartbeat.” The heart actually begins beating 3 weeks and 1 day after conception, according to Moore and Persaud’s well-known textbook The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology. The Planned Parenthood clinician also insists, “It’s not a baby, it’s a fetus,” which, she claims, is “not like a person.”

In the video, Sarah assures the woman that “having an abortion is safer than carrying to term.” The woman asks, “The abortion won’t hurt me from having more kids in the future, will it?” and the counselor replies, “Nope.” But a 2009 study from the Obstetrical and Gynecological Survey recently found that a previous abortion increased a woman’s risk of pre-term birth by 20%, and a 2003 report from the Shanghai Institute of Planned Parenthood Research notes a 55% increased risk of future miscarriages for women who have abortions.

Lila Rose, UCLA student and president of Live Action, says the new footage places Planned Parenthood well outside the medical mainstream. “Planned Parenthood’s counseling is based on its abortion-first mentality rather than the medical facts that women need,” observes Rose. “Planned Parenthood gives vulnerable women misinformation to sell them the abortion.” Indiana informed consent state law requires that women receive accurate medical information before undergoing an abortion.

As Lila said, this is entirely about selling abortions. Abortion is a lucrative business. What we see from Live Action’s undercover videos time and time again is that the “counselors” never offer an alternative to these women. They’re confused, they’re scared, they’re vulnerable, and Planned Parenthood takes advantage of them by lying to them with manipulative and inaccurate information. Why? To make money. Planned Parenthood doesn’t get any money if the woman decides to keep the baby or give it up for adoption. In 2007, Planned Parenthood performed 305,310 abortions… and only referred 4,912 adoptions.

It’s all about the money for them. These “counselors” aren’t there to help women during a time of crisis. They’re salespeople, out to make a sale. Planned Parenthood makes millions of dollars off of abortions, on top of the millions of taxpayer funding they already receive, and why would they want to give that up?

This is why pro-life advocates push for mandatory ultrasounds. Women seeking abortions deserve to know the truth, and instead, they’re lied to and manipulated. These Planned Parenthood counselors have goods to sell, after all, and the murders of unborn children must happen no matter what. If women know the truth, they’re not as likely to have the abortion. Lying to women doesn’t matter as long as abortions are being performed — and the femisogynists go right along with it. As I said before,

Meanwhile, feminists (who ardently defend Planned Parenthood and their abortion mill) have been silent about Lila Rose and all that she’s uncovered. Jessica Valenti, for example, seems to have no problem with covering up the sexual abuse of minors, as long as it leads to abortion, the sacred cow of feminism. Planned Parenthood must be defended and the taxpayer funding cannot be revoked. To feminists, “the right to choose” is more important than anything unethical or immoral that an abortionist may do. It can cover all manner of ills.

They self-righteously huff that women know enough to make their own choice, but if they’re lied to and uninformed, how can they really make a choice? If abortion advocates were truly pro-choice, then they’d be outraged over these lies and manipulative tactics. But they aren’t pro-choice, they’re pro-abortion, and abortion clinics like Planned Parenthood are selling the murders of unborn children at any cost.

Forward this story on. These undercover videos will keep coming from Live Action — and how many of them need to be released before people wake up to the evil of Planned Parenthood?