We all Look the Same in the Womb

Special thanks to Ryan Fletcher of Standing Small for sending me a link to a recent Live Action blog post: "The Power of a Portrait". It introduced me to two remarkable photos taken by a medical student in India and posted to flickr for the whole world to see. As much as any other pictures on flickr's massive network, these are photos the world needs to see. And thanks to the Creative Commons license granted them, the world will see.

The image above is now prominently featured on Abort73's Prenatal Development page, and the second image is no less powerful. Each offers an incredibly rare glimpse at what is usually hidden from the human eye. We've all seen babies eight weeks after birth. This is what a baby looks like eight weeks after fertilization (10-weeks gestation) – a full 30 weeks before birth. Sadly, this baby will never be born. The photographs were taken immediately after the mother's uterus was removed–a procedure deemed necessary when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer.

If there is a silver lining to this tragedy, it is the fact that this young life – a life that lasted for a mere eight weeks – will be long remembered through these photographs. And the existence of these photographs will save countless other young lives. This child lost its life not to an abortion, but to a hysterectomy. And because of that, the body remained beautifully intact. These pictures stand in stark contrast to the pictures of abortion, a procedure that tears bodies and limbs apart in the process. These pictures testify to the remarkable creativity of God. Abortion pictures testify to the remarkable brutality of man.

And these pictures also show us something else. If you didn't know this was an Indian baby, would you be able to guess the race? You wouldn't, because skin pigmentation, eye pigmentation and hair pigmentation don't appear until much later. In the womb, all races and all ethnicities look the same – a reminder that we're all created by the same God and we're all descended from the same ancestral parents. And as C.S. Lewis notes at the conclusion of Prince Caspian, "that is both honor enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth."