UC Davis Doctors Perform Surgery On Baby Still In The Womb (w video)

UC DAVIS (CBS13) — A first-of-its-kind surgery at UC Davis Children’s Hospital had a happy ending just in time for the holidays.

Doctors are celebrating a successful fetal surgery on a baby boy while he was still growing inside the womb.

Bobby Angeles and Khae Saetern named their little boy Matthew, which means “a gift from God.” It’s a fitting name when you consider the loss they’ve experienced and the loss they almost faced.

In the last three years, they’ve dealt with infertility, miscarriages, a baby girl who was stillborn. Then their unborn son had a serious condition that threatened his life.

“Every moment, I am thinking when I’m driving, ‘Please God. Just take care of my son. Please God,’” Angeles said.

Matthew Tobias Saetern-Angeles was not expected to make it. But now two months later, he’s sporting a hearty head of hair and sleeping like a champ.

In 1981, the United States Congress conducted hearings to answer the question, “When does human life begin?” A group of internationally known scientists from around the world appeared before a Senate judiciary subcommittee (85). Here is what the U.S. Congress was told:

Harvard University Medical School’s Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, Principal Research Associate, stated, “In biology and in medicine, it is an accepted fact that the life of any individual organism, reproducing by sexual reproduction, begins at conception” (85; cf. 81:18; 72:149).

Dr. Watson A. Bowes, Jr. of the University of Colorado Medical School testified that “the beginning of a single human life is, from a biological point of view, a simple and straightforward matter—the beginning is conception. This straightforward biological fact should not be distorted to serve sociological, political, or economic goals” (100:114).

Dr. Alfred Bongiovanni of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School noted: “The standard medical texts have long taught that human life begins at conception” (100:114). He added: “I am no more prepared to say that these early stages represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty . . . is not a human being. This is human life at every stage, albeit incomplete, until late adolescence” (100:114).

Dr. McCarthy De Mere, who is a practicing physician as well as a law professor at the University of Tennessee, testified: “The exact moment of the beginning [of] personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception” (100:114).

World famous geneticist, Dr. Jerome Lejeune, Professor of Fundamental Genetics at the University of Descarte, Paris, France, declared: “. . . each individual has a very unique beginning, the moment of its conception” (85; cf. 81:18). Dr. Lejeune also emphasized: “The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence” (85; cf. 72:149).

The chairman of the Department of Medical Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, Professor Hymie Gordon, testified, “By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception” (85; cf. 72:149).

He further emphasized: “. . . now we can say, unequivocally, that the question of when life begins. . . . is an established scientific fact. . . . it is an established fact that all life, including human life, begins at the moment of conception” (85; cf. 72:149; 81:18). At that time the U.S. Senate proposed Senate Bill #158, called the “Human Life Bill.” These hearings which lasted 8 days, involving 57 witnesses, were conducted by Senator John East.

This Senate report concluded:

Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being — a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings. (85:7)

In 1981, only one scientist disagreed with the majority’s conclusion, and he did so on philosophical and not scientific grounds. In fact, abortion advocates, although invited to so, failed to produce even one expert witness who would specifically testify that life begins at any other point than conception (100:113).*

* A few held that life may begin at implantation. However, implantation, while important, in no way defines life. Many other biologists and scientists agree that life begins at conception. All agree that there is no point of time or interval of time between conception and birth when the unborn is anything but human.

Landrum B. Shettles, M.D., Ph.D., is one of the twentieth century’s titans in the field of embryology and reproductive science. He was the first scientist to consistently achieve in vitro fertilization of human eggs. This prominent scientist emphasizes, “The zygote is human life” (100:40).

G. L. Flanagan observes, “From their first hour the human cells are distinctly human” (71:12 in 90).

Dr. Margaret Liley and Beth Day state: “A human life begins with a single cell” (71:17 in 91).

Axel Ingelman-Sundberg and Claes Wirsen assert that, “It is a living being from the moment of conception” (71:17 in 92). World famous geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky states: “A human begins his existence when a spermatozoon fertilizes an egg cell” (71:16 in 93).

Another leading scientist, Ashley Montagu, confesses, “Every human being starts off as a fertilized egg” (71:16 in 94).

Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia states, “At the moment the sperm cell of the human male meets the ovum of the female and the union results in a fertilized ovum (zygote) a new [human] life has begun” (96:1087).

All of this evidence is why Professor Jerome Lejeune has stated: “If a fertilized egg is not by itself a full human being, it could never become a man, because something would have to be added to it, and we know that does not happen” (71:18). Biologically, no one can deny that we are human from conception.

In all stages of our growth, whatever the developing child is called, we are human. At birth humans are called babies. Inside the womb, humans are called “fetuses.” Before that, humans are called “embryos.” Before that, humans are planted on the uterine wall and called “blastocysts,” and before that, humans are called “zygotes.” Before that, only an individual sperm and egg existed, and not a human being.

Professor Roth of Harvard University Medical School has emphasized, “It is incorrect to say that the biological data cannot be decisive. . . . it is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception, when the egg and sperm join to form the zygote, and that this developing human always is a member of our species in all stages of its life” (85; cf. 81:18; 72:149).

In conclusion, we agree with pioneer medical researcher, Landrum B. Shettles, M.D., Ph.D., that “. . . there is one fact that no one can deny: Human beings begin at conception” (24:16).

Again, let us stress that this is not a matter of religion, it is a matter of science. Scientists of every religious view and no religious view — agnostic, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, Christian, Hindu, etc. — all agree that life begins at conception. This explains why, for example, the International Code of Medical Ethics asserts: “A doctor must always bear in mind the importance of preserving human life from the time of conception until death” (101:317).

What difference does it make that human life begins at conception? The difference is this: If human life begins at conception, then abortion is the killing of a human life. To deny this fact is scientifically impossible.*

*But to accept this fact and maintain that taking human life is not morally wrong is incredible. It is even reminiscent of Nazi Germany and yet today such arguments are increasingly accepted (e.g. 136:16).

excerpts from pdf: https://www.xinxii.com/gratis/122101rd1371492541.pdf

In 1973, the Supreme Court concluded in its Roe v. Wade decision that it did not have to decide the “difficult question” of when life begins. Why? In essence, they said, “It is impossible to say when human life begins.” (99:181; 410 US 113 at 159; cf. 6:81, cf. pp. 73-96; 35:64) The Court misled the public then, and others continue to mislead the public today.

Anyone familiar with recent Supreme Court history knows that two years before Roe v. Wade, in October of 1971, a group of 220 distinguished physicians, scientists, and professors submitted an amicus curiae brief (advice to a court on some legal matter) to the Supreme Court. They showed the Court how modern science had already established that human life is a continuum, and that the unborn child, from the moment of conception on, is a person and must be considered a person, like its mother (95:19, 29-30).

The brief set as its task, “to show how clearly and conclusively modern science — embryology, fetology, genetics, perinatology, all of biology — establishes the humanity of the unborn child” (95:7). For example, “In its seventh week, [the pre-born child] bears the familiar external features and all the internal organs of the adult. . . . The brain in configuration is already like the adult brain and sends out impulses that coordinate the function of other organs. . . . The heart beats sturdily. The stomach produces digestive juices. The liver manufactures blood cells and the kidneys begin to function by extracting uric acid from the child’s blood. . . . The muscles of the arms and body can already be set in motion. After the eighth week .. . everything is already present that will be found in the full-term baby” (95:13-14).

This brief proved beyond any doubt scientifically that human life begins at conception and that “the unborn is a person within the meaning of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments” (95:64, cf. pp. 19-20, 58-64).

In fact, prior to Roe v. Wade, virtually every medical and biological textbook assumed or taught that human life begins at conception. That human life begins at conception was an accepted medical fact, but not necessarily a discussed medical fact. This is why some textbooks did not devote a discussion to this issue. But many did. For example, Mr. Patrick A. Trueman helped prepare a 1975 brief before the Illinois Supreme Court on the unborn child. He noted:

We introduced an affidavit from a professor of medicine detailing 19 textbooks on the subject of embryology, used in medical schools today, which universally agreed that human life begins at conception, . . . those textbooks agree that is when human life begins. The court didn’t strike that down —the court couldn’t strike that down because there was a logical/biological basis for that law. (122:2)

Thus, even though the Supreme Court had been informed of the scientific evidence, they incorrectly concluded there was insufficient evidence to show that the pre-born child was fully human. Even during the growing abortion debate in 1970, the editors of the scientific journal California Medicine noted the “curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows: that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra- or extra-uterine until death” (97:67).

We will now turn to the scientific evidence that must be the foundation for our thinking on this question. Today, medical texts assume or affirm that human life begins at conception.

For example, Keith L. Moore is professor and chairman of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. His text, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented-Embryology, is widely used in core courses in medical embryology. This text asserts, The processes by which a child develops from a single cell are miraculous....

Human development is a continuous process that begins when an ovum from a female is fertilized by a sperm from a male. Growth and differentiation transform the zygote, a single cell ... into a multicellular adult human being.” (104:1, emphasis added)

The reference to the “miraculous processes,” in a purely secular text, is not surprising. Even a single strand of DNA from a human cell, contains information equivalent to a library of one thousand volumes. The complexity of the zygote itself, according to Dr. Hymie Gordon, Chief Geneticist at the Mayo Clinic, “is so great that it is beyond our comprehension” (101:5). In a short nine months’ time, one fertilized ovum grows into six thousand million cells that become a living, breathing person like you.

Further, medical dictionaries and encyclopedias all affirm that the embryo is human. Among many we could cite are: Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary; Tuber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary; and the Encyclopedia and Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing and Allied Health which defines the embryo as “the human young from the time of fertilization of the ovum until the beginning of the third month” (105:335).

excerpts from pdf: https://www.xinxii.com/gratis/122101rd1371492541.pdf

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