Time: “Your life as a fetus”

September 30, 2010 By 12 Comments

The cover story for the October 10 issue of Time Magazine is “How the First Nine Months Shape the Rest of Your Life.” An excerpt:

But there’s another powerful source of influence you may not have considered: your life as a fetus. The kind and quantity of nutrition you received in the womb; the pollutants, drugs and infections you were exposed to during gestation; your mother’s health, stress level and state of mind while she was pregnant with you–all these factors shaped you as a baby and a child and continue to affect you to this day.

This is the provocative contention of a field known as fetal origins, whose pioneers assert that the nine months of gestation constitute the most consequential period of our lives.

via Touchstone Magazine – Mere Comments: The Pro-Life Cover of Time.

So Time is acknowledging the life of the fetus?  And that the life of the fetus is part of a single continuum that constitutes the people who read its magazine?

Filed Under: Life Issues, Media Tagged With: , , , 12 Comments
About Gene Veith

Professor of Literature at Patrick Henry College, the Director of the Cranach Institute at Concordia Theological Seminary, a columnist for World Magazine and TableTalk, and the author of 18 books on different facets of Christianity & Culture.

  • TE Schroeder

    Sadly, I doubt that anyone will find Time’s “life of a fetus” feature meaningful. Even if people concede that the life of a fetus is real, it will still be real only in theory — as in, the fetus is a living being, but only if the mother wants to keep the baby. Otherwise it’s not a living being. If the unborn baby is undesired, then it is merely an appendage that the mother gets to discard by choice, like it’s a tumor (probably viewed worse than a tumor).

    While I would hope the Time article would raise some eyebrows and some meaningful discussion, I doubt it will. I fear that people will continue to conventiently ingore any logical consistency that a living born baby was once a living unborn baby; and abortion will remain America’s most infamous form of birth control and sexual irresponsibility.

  • TE Schroeder

    Sadly, I doubt that anyone will find Time’s “life of a fetus” feature meaningful. Even if people concede that the life of a fetus is real, it will still be real only in theory — as in, the fetus is a living being, but only if the mother wants to keep the baby. Otherwise it’s not a living being. If the unborn baby is undesired, then it is merely an appendage that the mother gets to discard by choice, like it’s a tumor (probably viewed worse than a tumor).

    While I would hope the Time article would raise some eyebrows and some meaningful discussion, I doubt it will. I fear that people will continue to conventiently ingore any logical consistency that a living born baby was once a living unborn baby; and abortion will remain America’s most infamous form of birth control and sexual irresponsibility.

  • Winston Smith

    Just think of abortion as an assassination of a terrorist in utero.

  • Winston Smith

    Just think of abortion as an assassination of a terrorist in utero.

  • Alejandra
  • Alejandra
  • DonS

    These kinds of basic inconsistencies are no problem for the committed abortionist. We have had statutes for many years permitting murder to be charged when someone injures a pregnant woman and she loses her baby, or capital murder to be charged when a pregant woman and her baby are both killed (one of the special circumstances required to charge capital murder is multiple killings).

  • DonS

    These kinds of basic inconsistencies are no problem for the committed abortionist. We have had statutes for many years permitting murder to be charged when someone injures a pregnant woman and she loses her baby, or capital murder to be charged when a pregant woman and her baby are both killed (one of the special circumstances required to charge capital murder is multiple killings).

  • http://www.toddstadler.com/ tODD

    I don’t know. I’m optimistic. Yes, there will always be people who hate babies, who hate procreation, who hate parenting, who hate, in so many words, life. Sure.

    But as science continues to progress, it seems that it must only further validate the idea that life and humanity begin at conception, even though at least one of those terms isn’t scientific, as such.

    I mean, no one’s going to accuse Time of being a valid source for science information, so it’s easy to accuse them of scientific sloppiness when referring to things that impacted “you” (or the human, whoever he is) before you were born. And yet, it’s hard to get around that phrasing, at least at a philosophical level, isn’t it?

    How can I — this entity that is, as all agree, alive and human — have my current personality, my current humanity, impacted by a time when I was but a blob of tissue without life? When did I become me (to say nothing of when, exactly, did I become alive)? If that wasn’t me in the womb, who or what was it?

    Science itself isn’t going to answer these questions, but all the same, I see the progress of prenatal science giving fewer and fewer dark corners to hide in for those who want to deny life and humanity in the womb.

  • http://www.toddstadler.com/ tODD

    I don’t know. I’m optimistic. Yes, there will always be people who hate babies, who hate procreation, who hate parenting, who hate, in so many words, life. Sure.

    But as science continues to progress, it seems that it must only further validate the idea that life and humanity begin at conception, even though at least one of those terms isn’t scientific, as such.

    I mean, no one’s going to accuse Time of being a valid source for science information, so it’s easy to accuse them of scientific sloppiness when referring to things that impacted “you” (or the human, whoever he is) before you were born. And yet, it’s hard to get around that phrasing, at least at a philosophical level, isn’t it?

    How can I — this entity that is, as all agree, alive and human — have my current personality, my current humanity, impacted by a time when I was but a blob of tissue without life? When did I become me (to say nothing of when, exactly, did I become alive)? If that wasn’t me in the womb, who or what was it?

    Science itself isn’t going to answer these questions, but all the same, I see the progress of prenatal science giving fewer and fewer dark corners to hide in for those who want to deny life and humanity in the womb.

  • S.Weiss

    I’ve found it helpful to address the philosopical presuppositions in the Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice debate, particularly what one’s definition of “life” really is. More often than not, for a Pro-Choicer, life is generally defined as “subsistent” and “independent”. (In simple terms, since the “fetus” is biologically dependent upon the “carrier” in terms of nutrients/sustenance, it does not yet measure up to such a definition of “life”.) Yet if such a definition holds, then how can we see that any human being of any age is truly “alive”, whether in or outside the womb? Our world as an “ecosystem” demonstrates an undeniable symbiotic, interdependent reality to it….and as our marketplace shows the interdependency between producers and consumers. Do we not depend upon the farmer for food to preserve our earthly life, and the police officer for safety and order to defend our earthly life, and the doctor for health to extend our earthly life? In fact, the only one whom such a definition of life would apply would be God, which in fact shows the perversity of an atheistic Pro-choice spirit, denying both the apects of tthe reality of humanity and human life as it really is and can be seen, and denying the aspects of the reality of God even in what has been revealed through nature (i.e., natural revelation). Actually, Martin Luther argued much the same over/against Erasmus in his work, “Bondage of the Will”, which is actually just as much about fallen man’s misconception about God as being “bound” as it is about humanity being “free”.

  • S.Weiss

    I’ve found it helpful to address the philosopical presuppositions in the Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice debate, particularly what one’s definition of “life” really is. More often than not, for a Pro-Choicer, life is generally defined as “subsistent” and “independent”. (In simple terms, since the “fetus” is biologically dependent upon the “carrier” in terms of nutrients/sustenance, it does not yet measure up to such a definition of “life”.) Yet if such a definition holds, then how can we see that any human being of any age is truly “alive”, whether in or outside the womb? Our world as an “ecosystem” demonstrates an undeniable symbiotic, interdependent reality to it….and as our marketplace shows the interdependency between producers and consumers. Do we not depend upon the farmer for food to preserve our earthly life, and the police officer for safety and order to defend our earthly life, and the doctor for health to extend our earthly life? In fact, the only one whom such a definition of life would apply would be God, which in fact shows the perversity of an atheistic Pro-choice spirit, denying both the apects of tthe reality of humanity and human life as it really is and can be seen, and denying the aspects of the reality of God even in what has been revealed through nature (i.e., natural revelation). Actually, Martin Luther argued much the same over/against Erasmus in his work, “Bondage of the Will”, which is actually just as much about fallen man’s misconception about God as being “bound” as it is about humanity being “free”.


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