Dónal O'Keefe doesn't see anything valuable about an unborn child. One thing he thinks is that because it's small, the unborn child can't be as important as a grown human.
A human embryo as you can see, limbs not fully formed
but they are moving just the same!
Mr. O’ Keefe, I will just deal with your argument that size matters. Size is relative. From outer space, we are all so small we seem to have no importance. I’m sure you think you’re important, and I think I’m important as well, all grown-up and sentient as I am – with complex thought processes and needs, I must be, yes?
A zygote, embryo or foetus (unborn child, whatever you want to call the human in the womb) is indeed very tiny compared to a grown-up human. One would be tempted to think it’s almost a nonentity. But what this human lacks in size, it makes up for in oomph. The thing is, this human being would put you to shame if you were in a contest on the dance floor. You’d creep off, hot, sweaty, and clutching your chest, after 20 minutes of ‘Duela el Corazon’ to down a Ballygowan at your table while the zygote, tiny as it is, continued to dance. It would divide, develop, move, grow, divide, develop, move, grow, non-stop! Keep it up for hours. ‘How does it do it?’ you might ask as you crawl home. You’ll try again, next week, you won’t be beaten…but next Saturday night, the damn thing has doubled in size and energy. The third Saturday night, there’s a flippin’ Heart there and now the beat really begins, and its rhythm is twice as fast as yours too. Meantime, you’re wondering if you should ask your doctor if you should have a Stress Echo. This new human’s unstoppable – and you suspect that it’s practicing its moves all the week, even while you are inactive, flopped on the couch after a day’s writing. Somersaults, damn it, at 10 weeks! Still only the size of your hand and it has you beaten.
You look at your hand. The nails are a bit longer than last week, and that’s about all the change your body had, but this new person (according to the dictionary a human being is a person) has grown itself an entire set of organs - in just ten weeks! We’re degenerating, friend, while this boy or girl –and the gender is evident by now – is outpacing us in every way. The girl has her ovaries – eggs and all inside!
But there’s no real brain activity, you argue. Not really – a human without the ability to think and be sentient, can’t have the same importance as a grown up person who has the right to all kinds of things like life and education and a career and wine and books and holidays.
Alaska. It’s magnificent! Outside the capital, Anchorage, there’s a hill. Drive about 2,000 feet up and get out of the car and look down at the city. But Anchorage, with all its people including busy women, nerdy youth, middle-aged men, children born and unborn, is only a blip. Totally insignificant, swallowed up in the mountains and forests. Then you will realise, as I did, that we are all really very small. Very, very tiny.
But be careful, or you might get a creepy feeling you’re not alone. You turn around. There’s a grizzly bear staring at you from 30 yards away. This bird-brained lumbering beast thinks he’s better than you. He’s not afraid of humans, if he knew what a human was. He just sees something he can kill and eat, or eat while it’s still alive – he doesn’t care. No point in making a run for the car. He’s faster than Lightning Bolt. He’s bigger and faster than us and he knows that…we are completely in his power.
You see, everything is relative…
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