Dancing With the Baby Stars - The Amazing Feats of Fetal Development

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Dancing With the Baby Stars - The Amazing Feats of Fetal Development
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by Maria Vitale

LifeNews.com Editorial Columnist
July 15, 2008
LifeNews.com

Note: Maria Vitale is a LifeNews.com Opinion Columnist and the Education Director of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation. Vitale has written and reported for various broadcast and print media outlets, including National Public Radio, CBS Radio, and AP Radio.
You may not think of yourself as the next Kristi Yamaguchi, but long before you could walk, you could dance. Not on the floor, mind you, but in the womb.
If you want proof of an unborn baby's dancing ability, check out http://www.yourdevelopingbaby.com/sampleChapters/7.htm. There, under the headline "Baby aerobics," you'll see a baby 15 weeks after conception, doing a unique form of hip hop.
The incredible video comes courtesy of two Harvard radiology professors, Peter Doubilet and Carol Benson, a married couple who have written an eye-catching book called "Your Developing Baby." The work includes some 250 images which underscore the humanity of the unborn child.
I think it can be argued that where there is dancing, there is life. Therefore, an abortion disrupts the dance of life, destroying the dancer's body and rendering him or her lifeless.
When the debate over abortion is reduced to a woman's quest for control of her body, the invisible dancer is forgotten. If abortion is considered tantamount to a tooth extraction, the "pro-choice" argument can seem convincing to the uninformed.


But the rhetoric does not jive with the reality, especially when you can see clips of a child jive-dancing in her mother's belly. The rule of self-determination should apply to the human who makes her home in the womb, as well as the human who supplies the womb. If a pregnant woman has a right to bodily integrity, which she does, so does the little woman inside of her.
An ultrasound image can leave us speechless, so breathtaking is it in its intensity. How, then, can we possibly justify leaving the subject of the image gasping for life?


Paging through "Your Developing Baby" can yield an "Aha!" moment, just as when Juno comes to the understanding that the child within her has fingernails. When the "it" becomes a "he" or a "she," the pro-life argument wins.
There may be no mirror ball trophies for the best unborn dancer of them all, but these little athletes deserve celebrity status. They should be treated with the utmost kindness and respect, as should their mothers. And no doctor should be permitted to bring their dances to an end.