'Stunning' Images of Unborn Animals Provide Proof of When Life Begins, LU Professor Says

An award-winning Liberty University English professor has argued that remarkable images of unborn animals are further proof of when life begins.

"I've never understood when people say they don't know when human life begins. Or why the United States Supreme Court opined in its 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion-on-demand, 'We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins," wrote Karen Swallow Prior in a blog on Thursday for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

"To deem this a difficult question seems only a way to make crooked the straight paths of the Lord (Acts 13:10). An acorn isn't an oak tree, pro-choice people say. True – but a sapling is."

Prior, who is a member of the Faith Advisory Council of the Humane Society of the United States, drew attention to images of various unborn animals, including elephants, dolphins and sharks, that were produced years ago for a National Geographic documentary called "Extraordinary Animals in the Womb."

The images, which have recently been reposted on several sites on the Internet, were made using small cameras, dimensional ultrasound scans and computer graphics to show how these animals develop in the womb.

"The images are stunning," Prior writes. "In them we can see that even in embryonic form, an unborn dog is a little dog, an unborn dolphin is a miniature dolphin and an unborn elephant is a teensy elephant. From the beginnings of all these creatures, there in the womb (or the petri dish, as the case may be), each is made according to its own."

The professor notes that in a way, this development is no different from human lives, and reminds readers of the verse "ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you," found in Job 12:7.

Her remarks come just after tens of thousands gathered Wednesday at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for the annual March for Life rally, marking the 41st anniversary of the Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, when abortion in the United States was legalized.

While Americans remain largely divided along pro-life and pro-choice lines, some members of Congress say that the pro-life movement is winning the fight.

"By the grace of God and because of you … we are winning," said New Jersey Republican Congressman Chris Smith Smith, whose House Bill 7, or the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," will soon be up for a vote in the House of Representatives.

"To the youth, especially, never quit or grow weary or discouraged. Your generation will end abortion."