

40. Life and Death Before Birth
-–
A Journal Account
I have personalized this stark journal account to
dramatize the humanity involved:
Week 1 -- This is the first day of the rest of my life.
My parents do not know it yet as I am as tiny as a
grain of sand, but it is I, for sure. And I am to be a
boy. I shall have brown hair and brown eyes. Much
has already been determined, even the fact that I shall
love.torun and play. My human life has beg_un. It's
an amazing thing. Even before implantation, the
gender of my new life can be determined. And at
implantation, my new life already consists of hundreds
of cells. Additionally, I have developed a protective
hormone to prevent my mother's body from rejecting
me as foreign tissue.
Week 2 -- There are those who say I am not yet a
real person and that only my mother lives. However,
I am real, just as a small slice of bread is not truly the
whole loaf. My mother is, and I am, too. My new life
has developed its own blood cells. The placenta is part
of my new life and not of my mother. Toward the end
of this week
I
will experience occasional pulsations of
a muscle that will become my heart.
Week 3 -- My mouth has been formed, and I can
open it. In less than a year, I shall be laughing and.
two years from now talking.
~
would be ungrateful ·if
my first word
I
said wasn't "Mama." My eyes are
starting to develop, too. The foundation of my entire
ner\lous system has been laid out. What a week this
third week has been! My heart began beating all by
itself. From now on it shall gently beat for the rest of
my life without ever stopping to rest. After many years
it will tire.
It
will then stop, and I shall probably die of
old age as all mortals do because their earthly parents
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