Amazing Image of 19-Week-Old Baby’s Hand Shows the Humanity of Unborn Children

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Oct 29, 2015   |   4:52PM   |   Washington, DC

What is the moral status of the unborn baby before birth? On the issue of abortion, that is the central question.

To help show that unborn children are truly human beings worthy of legal protection, one mother has posted an amazing image of her miscarried baby’s hand touching her fingers. Undoubtedly, this is a baby and not just a blob of cells or fetal tissue.

As LiveAction writes:

At 19 weeks gestation, baby Branson died as the result of a twisted umbilical cord. In September, his mother Haleigh shared photos of Branson’s hands on Facebook because the thought of her son was weighing heavily on her.

“[…] it completely amazes me how perfectly formed and how absolutely beautiful this child was,” she wrote. “I am so blessed to have gotten to hold him and tell him how much I loved and adored him. In a way, it was closure for me that I got to console him. I wanted to make sure that even though, I would never get to hear him cry, change his poopy diapers, or stumble out of bed at 3 am to make him a bottle, that he knew he would always be my baby and hold a special place in my heart.”

Haleigh labored for 13 hours and had a few select people there to support her. They all held him and they all cried. However, Haleigh writes that their tears were not just from pain and sorrow.

“This little guy touched my heart and even though the moments I had with him were not nearly enough, I’m reminded everyday how precious life is and how a child is nothing less than that of a miracle from God. So by sharing these photos, I have presented proof that yes, even at just 19 weeks, this tiny thing is a human being. This is a life…. A soul! So if you think that abortion or termination of pregnancy is okay, and that at this gestational age, a “fetus” has no right to his or her own life, think again.”

As LifeNews previously reported, In the United States, 18,000 unborn babies close to Jaxon’s age die in painful late abortions every year. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 9,709 abortions were done at 18-20 weeks and 7,325 abortions were done on babies older than 21 weeks in 2011 alone. However, it is likely that these numbers are lower than the actual amount of late abortions that occur in the U.S. because the CDC has a long-standing history of under-reporting abortion totals.

Although abortion proponents argue that most babies killed in late abortions suffer from rare fetal abnormalities, this is not always the case. The sponsor of the federal Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, Trent Franks (R-Arizona), explained, “More than 18,000 ‘very late term’ abortions are performed every year on perfectly healthy unborn babies in America. These are innocent and defenseless children who can not only feel pain, but who can survive outside of the womb in most cases, and who are torturously killed without even basic anesthesia.  Many of them cry and scream as they die, but because it is amniotic fluid going over their vocal cords instead of air, we don’t hear them.”

CLICK LIKE IF YOU’RE PRO-LIFE!

 

The brutality of late abortion doesn’t make them worse than other abortions performed earlier in pregnancy; however, it does stimulate the “moral imagination” of our culture, which is why it is important to share stories of women who have given birth to pre-term babies.

In 2014, Dr. Carter Snead, the director of Notre Dames Center for Ethics and Culture, explained that the science behind fetal pain has the ability to awaken America’s conscience. If America can see an unborn child’s humanity and sympathize with their suffering, then maybe there’s hope we change the way people view all abortion.

Unfortunately, pro-abortion Senate Democrats in Congress blocked the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (H.R. 36) with a cloture vote of 54-42, which prevented pro-life Republicans from getting the 60 votes needed to end debate and continue on to a vote on the bill.

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