FERTILIZATION
“The two cells gradually and gracefully become one… this is the moment of conception; when an individual’s unique set of DNA is created, a human signature that never existed before and will never be repeated… the genes she’s inherited have already predetermined her looks and much of her character; whether she’s stubborn, intelligent, a thrill-seeker, or good at music, and even her vulnerability to certain diseases…”
HEARTBEAT (3 WEEKS)
“One of the first organs to form is the heart… after 22 days, a single cell stirs, as if jolted to life… other cells in the cluster pick up the rhythm. Incredibly, they all begin to beat in perfect unison… If she lives to 75, that’ll be nearly 3 billion heartbeats.”
“FETUS” OR “OFFSPRING” (8 WEEKS)
“After growing for eight weeks, the embryo looks more like a tiny human and becomes known as a fetus, which in Latin means offspring.”
ALL ORGANS FORMED (11 WEEKS)
“The period from 6 to 11 weeks has seen the most dramatic transformation of the entire pregnancy… In a frantic five-week burst; over 200 types of cells have been made, muscles and nerves are twitching, there’s a liver, two kidneys, and a stomach no bigger than a grain of rice, all the organs of a human baby have formed, and it’s still less than 3 inches long.”
DECREASED RISK OF MISCARRIAGE (12 WEEKS)
“After 12 weeks, the fetus enters the second trimester… Although she’s still no bigger than a fist, she’s much less delicate and there’s less risk of a miscarriage.”
SENSE OF HEARING (13 WEEKS)
“At three months old, the fetus’s most developed sense is hearing… her ears start picking up… the gurgles and rumbles made by her mother’s body… [she] makes her own noises as she kicks and swishes in the amniotic fluid…
She can also hear the competing thud of heartbeats… [and] sounds from the world outside…”
NERVOUS SYSTEM UP & RUNNING (16 WEEKS)
“Her nervous system is up and running and her movements are increasingly being controlled by her brain… Muscles are flexing, fingers and toes are separate and defined, and her bones are hardening… She’s becoming sensitive to touch… She can bend, flex, and twist her extremities; her fingers, wrists, legs, and toes. More incredible, she’s already beginning to develop an awareness of the space around her.”
MIMICS LIFE OUTSIDE THE WOMB (18 WEEKS)
“At 18 weeks, the fetus begins to mimic life outside the womb. Her digestive system shows signs of activity… Around this time… the mother may become aware of its movements for the first time. Although the fetus has been active for quite some time, it’s only now that her movements are strong enough for her mother to feel…”
POSSIBLE TO SURVIVE OUTSIDE THE WOMB (22-24 WEEKS)
“After six months of pregnancy, at the end of the second trimester, everything is developed and is functioning as it will in the fully grown baby… the fetus reaches a major landmark. Though barely longer than her father’s hand, it’s possible that she could survive outside the cradle of the womb.”
LITTLE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BRAIN OF FETUS & NEWBORN (33 WEEKS)
“At 33 weeks, just over eight months, the fetus may recognize a particular piece of music and even jump in time to it. Some scientists argue that there’s very little difference between the brain of a newborn baby and that of a 33 week old fetus. Where once it seemed that the mental development of a baby began at birth, now it appears that birth could be a relatively insignificant event in developmental terms.”
“She may have to support herself after birth, but for the process of thinking, learning, and remembering she’s already been hard at it for three months and her brain will continue to grow at the same rate for the next year.”
DREAMING (33-34 WEEKS)
“One of the many things revealed by the 4D scans is the fact that babies have rapid eye movement sleep… This gentle flicker of an eye could be a sign that the fetus, still with a month to go before being born, is already dreaming… In just over eight months, the brain has grown approximately 100 billion neurons with 100 trillion connections.”
BIRTH
“She’s gone from egg, to embryo, to fetus, to trillions of cells of newborn baby. Her birth marks the beginning of her journey in the world, but she has already traveled an incredible path during her nine-month odyssey in the womb… following her own unique genetic blueprint, she has grown a face, arms, eyes, and legs. She has a brain and nervous system to control her body, stomach and intestines to digest food, and a heart to pump blood. She has learned to breathe, to hear, to feed, to remember, and to tell her parents when she is hungry, tired, happy, or in pain… all before being born and now she is ready to face the world.”
*Roe v. Wade allowed abortion at ANY stage of pregnancy and forced States to legalize abortion up to 22-24 weeks.
The Yes for Life Amendment would prevent activist state judges from doing the same.
ALL quotes transcribed from In the Womb, National Geographic, 2005
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