The battle over the sanctity of life is one that’s waged on the pro-death (i.e., pro-abortion) side by bullying, shallow catchphrases, poor logic, and, above all, many lies and deception. These tactics shouldn’t surprise us—after all, we’re engaged in a spiritual battle with an enemy who is “the father of lies” and “a murderer from the beginning,” who seeks to “steal and kill and destroy” (John 8:44, 10:10). This was on full display recently in a disgusting tweet from California Representative Ted Lieu.
A “Pregnancy” at 9 Weeks?
Here’s what he tweeted:
He wrote: “Below is pregnancy at 9 weeks.”
Is that true? Well, Rep. Lieu is a Democrat and most Democrats pride themselves on being the party of “science,” so of course what he tweeted was scientifically accurate, right? Now, our artists here at Answers in Genesis spent months researching the scientific literature and consulting with our staff anatomist (before he sadly passed away), who taught medical students at Washington University School of Medicine for 34 years, so they could carefully sculpt babies at various stages of development for our gorgeous and powerful Fearfully and Wonderfully Made pro-life exhibit at the Creation Museum. Here’s what they sculpted as a nine-week-old baby. You may notice a few differences from Lieu’s picture.
There are just a few differences, right? Yes, Rep. Lieu is bald-faced lying to his 1.6 million Twitter followers about the humanity of the unborn—so much for being “pro-science,” right? The photo he tweeted is not the remains of a baby (which he callously refers to by the dehumanizing term “pregnancy”) in a petri dish. As others have pointed out, it appears to be the gestational sac that the baby lives in, but the baby itself is missing from the photo! And this isn’t just ignorance. Despite many pointing out to him that what is in that dish is not a 9-week-old baby, he doubled-down on his deception with another tweet:
Again, he is lying. That’s not what a six, seven, eight, or nine-week-old baby looks like. Here is what a baby actually looks like at 28 days of life—that’s the six-week gestational age of the youngest “baby” he supposedly shared a picture of:
That Baby Has Fingers, Toes, and Taste Buds!
Pro-death activists aren’t concerned with the truth—they will often lie because they want women to be deceived into thinking they are just removing a “pregnancy” or merely a blob of tissue, not a baby. Their baby. Their baby who at nine weeks isn’t a clump of white tissue but is a baby with:
- Tiny fingers and toes
- All his or her major organs
- Tiny eyelids
- Reproductive organs
- Tastebuds
The abortion pill that Rep. Lieu desperately wants to keep legal kills that tiny baby by cutting off his or her food and oxygen supply. But to make this crime seem less heinous, he dehumanizes the baby—the same tactic evil men have used throughout history to get the masses to accept the killing (such as the Holocaust of the 1940s) or enslavement of any particular people. It’s evil, and the Lord hates it.
Proverbs 6:16–19 KJV – “These six things doth the Lord hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.” (emphasis added)
In Your Inbox
“Are Those Human Beings?”
Lieu asks, “Are those pictures of human beings? I don’t know.” Well, I have a thought experiment for him that my friend Mark Spence, senior vice president of the Living Waters ministry, shared with a staff member. (This is an analogy they use in their excellent film that’s releasing next month, What Is It?;I encourage you to support this pro-life film!) Mark said,
Suppose you’re in charge of demolishing a building. Right before you hit the button to blow it up, you see a flicker of movement in an upstairs window. It could be a shadow or a curtain fluttering in the breeze. But you can’t be sure. Do you hit the button and blow up the building or do you stop and make sure there’s no one in the building? Any sane human would stop and make sure!
I would say the same thing to Lieu. If you don’t know when a human life begins, don’t just plow ahead, condoning the killing of human beings. Stop and research the question—figure it out!
Appearance Doesn’t Determine Humanity
I can even help him figure it out! Rep. Lieu: one’s appearance does not determine one’s humanity! You see, ultimately, it doesn’t even matter whether a baby at nine weeks’ gestation “looks” like a baby or not. If Lieu’s pictures were what a baby actually did look like (which they are not), would that ultimately matter to the question of abortion? No!
A newborn doesn’t look like an adult, but that in no way means he or she is less human than an adult. Past generations claimed that those with a dark shade of skin were not fully human and could be enslaved and treated like animals. But, I’ll repeat myself: one’s appearance in no way determines their humanity.
And, by the way, neither does one’s level of development. A newborn is less developed and more dependent on his or her mother or father than a toddler, but that in no way makes that newborn less human. Life is a continuum of development from fertilized egg through birth and through the newborn, toddler, preschooler, and elementary ages and so on until natural death. Level of development doesn’t determine one’s humanity!
But you know what does? The words of our Creator:
Psalm 139:13–16 KJV – “For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.”
A human life begins right at the moment of fertilization, when an egg and sperm come together (right then, you have all the information that makes you you, and no new information is added after that—a person exists right from that moment!), because our Creator says “[I] knitted [you] together in [your] mother’s womb.” Yes, you were you even before you were born.
Life begins at fertilization because our Creator, the ultimate authority, says so.
