Reply #11: What will they see in the first four weeks? [View All]

[JDPriestly]

4 weeks
(6 WEEKS after the first day of the last normal menstrual period)

* The embryo is about one-sixth (1/6) of an inch long.
* By the end of the first month, the embryo has a head and a trunk.
* Structures that will become arms and legs, called limb buds, begin to appear.
* The heart, now in a tubular form, begins to beat by the 25th day.

http://www.pregnantpause.org/develop/doh.htm

Watch the video animation.
fetal development video
At Four Weeks
At four weeks from gestation, the human embryo could easily be mistaken for that of another animal , but its bond with its mother is already complex, and becoming more so with each passing day.
video Watch the video animation.

There is a picture, but I don't know how to copy it.

http://health.discovery.com/convergence/ultpregnancy/video.html

Pictures also here: http://www.pregnancy.org/pregnancy/fetaldevelopment1.php

There isn't really much to see. The baby is from 1/8 to 1/6th of an inch at this stage.

Not until week 10 do you see much of a form at all although you might see an eye earlier if you could see it on ultrasound. Ultrasounds were not that clear when I was pregnant. Maybe they are now. By week ten you are getting very close to the end of the first trimester. I can't imagine that abortion is ever a happy choice, but I doubt that giving ultrasounds will have much of an effect on women who choose to have them early. They might affect some women who are seeking abortions later on. Also, even if the legislature can force women to have ultrasounds, it can't force them to look at their ultrasounds. I suspect that many women who have decided to have abortions won't want to see ultrasounds.

I object to this bill because it is an unwarranted intrusion into the privacy of women. The ultrasound will be a record of the fact that the woman had a fetus and aborted it. Should abortion one day be retroactively punishable by law, those records could be used to punish thousands and thousands of women. Of course, the men who impregnated the women would bear no responsibility for anything. Hey! Wouldn't that be a great way to show women who is boss? Keep 'em barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. After all, isn't that what women deserve? And, above all, don't we need more children? How will our race or nation survive if we decrease the birthrate? (intended sarcastically of course)