I thought the recent Time magazine cover story on “How the first nine months shape the rest of your life” http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2020815,00.html was quite interesting.
I don’t know anything about the field of fetal origins discussed in the article. I was struck, though, by the assumption that the life of a human being begins ninth months prior to birth. There is no effort to focus on implantation or viabilty or some other point in development. That seems to be the case when the issue isn’t abortion. I remember looking at the Our Bodies Our Selves book years ago and the book is straightforward about a pregnant woman and her developing baby, except in the sections of the book dealing with abortion. People seem to easily grasp the underlying reality of when life begins, except when they have some reason not to respect the right to life.
Richard M.