{"id":7048,"date":"2004-07-09T08:08:33","date_gmt":"2004-07-09T08:08:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/ready_to_be_born.html"},"modified":"2004-07-09T08:08:33","modified_gmt":"2004-07-09T08:08:33","slug":"ready_to_be_born","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/ready_to_be_born.html","title":{"rendered":"Ready to be Born"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Tablet interview with Dr. Stuart Campbell, the Scottish doctor responsible for those remarkable 4D images of unborn babies that came out a couple of weeks ago.<\/a><\/p>\n

The doctor has changed his views on abortion – a bit – he believes that the legal limit for abortions (now 24 weeks there) should be gradually dropped to a much lower point, but believes that early abortions should remain legal. It’s an interesting interview because it shows the limits of a purely functional view of the human person. There’s no sense that this being is a person, but really merely a collection of functions, and its right to be protected from being killed is rooted in how much those functions are like the functions of a born human being.<\/p>\n

Professor Campbell remains pro-choice in the sense that he does not believe in banning early abortions. But what makes him interesting is how his view of abortion has changed. He believes that it would make sense to challenge the 24-week limit on the grounds that the age of viability \u2013 the age that a baby can survive outside the womb, by which the 24-week limit was set \u2013 has now dropped to about 22 weeks thanks to medical advances. But it is what he has seen on the scans in his clinic that has really caused him to rethink his position.<\/p>\n

Above all, it is the technique known as 4-D scanning, which updates the image of the foetus three or four times a second, which has changed the way he sees life in the womb. The technology means that the foetus\u2019s movements can be seen clearly. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy views on abortion have certainly been coloured by 3-D and 4-D scans,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen you see these images you realise that between 18 and 24 weeks the baby is so advanced neurologically, at such an advanced stage of development, that abortion at 24 weeks is just unacceptable.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Tablet interview with Dr. Stuart Campbell, the Scottish doctor responsible for those remarkable 4D images of unborn babies that came out a couple of weeks ago. The doctor has changed his views on abortion – a bit – he believes that the legal limit for abortions (now 24 weeks there) should be gradually dropped…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nReady to be Born - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/ready_to_be_born.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ready to be Born - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Tablet interview with Dr. Stuart Campbell, the Scottish doctor responsible for those remarkable 4D images of unborn babies that came out a couple of weeks ago. The doctor has changed his views on abortion – a bit – he believes that the legal limit for abortions (now 24 weeks there) should be gradually dropped…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/ready_to_be_born.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-07-09T08:08:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Ready to be Born - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/07\/ready_to_be_born.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Ready to be Born - Via Media","og_description":"A Tablet interview with Dr. Stuart Campbell, the Scottish doctor responsible for those remarkable 4D images of unborn babies that came out a couple of weeks ago. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}