From: nyikos@cc.uow.edu.au (peter nyikos)
Subject: THE REAL LOWDOWN ON "CLOT," "CLUMP OF CELLS," AND "FETUS"
Summary: A bizarre scene in a recent *Life* article is explained in dept.
Keywords: chorion, chorionic sac, fetus, abortion, miscarriage
Organization: University Of Wollongong
Date: Fri, 24 Jul 92 01:04:04 GMT


Planned parenthood "educational" materials which go into the details
of abortion will typically show a simplified picture of the chorionic
sac [related term: chorionic villi sampling], a structure enclosing
the amniotic sac and, with it, the embryo/fetus.  To the untrained
eye, the chorionic sac really does look like a formless "mass of tissue"
or "clump of cells".  In reality, it is one of the most marvelous
structures in nature, part of it evolving into the placenta at the end
of the first trimester and beginning of second trimester.

The "educational" materials do not label it "chorionic sac" [nor "chorion,"
a roughly synonymous word]. To do so would be to invite such questions
as "What's a chorion?" and "Where's the fetus?"

No.  They label it a fetus.

This falls somewhat short of fraud in the narrow legal sense, despite
the fact that it is so obviously self-serving. [Planned Parenthood
is the biggest single provider of abortions in the United States.]
After all, someone pointing to a locked trunk could hardly be said
to commit fraud if he said, "That's Houdini," if Houdini really is
inside.  It is a strange way of putting things, but you can't call
that fraud.

But in a broader moral sense, it is extremely dishonest and crassly
preys on the ignorance of most laymen [including many pro-lifers, who
understandably are more concerned with the developing human being 
inside] about the very existence of the chorionic sac.

{Query: is there a sex education course anywhere in the USA that teaches
students about the chorionic sac, showing pictures of it from the 
outside, not just cutaway views of the developing human being within?}

A ghastly example of this deception occurs right at the end of *Life*
magazine cover article on Operation Rescue.  A nurse working for a 
targeted clinic complains to *Life* reporters about the whole big fuss,
then unwraps "a dark, peanut-sized object looking like a blood clot,"
telling reporters, "This is an abortion."  The reporters straightfor-
wardly identify this object as a fetus.

[I am relying on memory here, so these quotes may not be exact.  I
hereby grant anyone reading this permission to re-post my article
with the relevant passage from *Life* inserted here, along with any
letters to the editor (if any) that refer to this scene.]

There is a double deception involved here.  Induced abortion, at the 
stage represented by this partly desiccated chorion-cum-contents,
employs a suction curette which tears the chorion and the embryo/fetus
apart, vacuuming the remains into a jar.  So badly is the fetus 
mangled that brain tissue usable in transplants only can be found in 
less than 10% of these abortions.

What the nurse showed the reporters was almost surely the result of
a spontaneous abortion, more commonly known as a miscarriage.  In these,
the resilient chorionic sac is usually expelled whole, its contents intact.

[Can I say "always" here instead of "usually" in first trimester 
miscarriages? can readers supply me with authoritative information?]

Hardly anyone would think to open the sac up, much less actually
go through with it.

In this case too, the deception stops short of fraud in the legal
sense, thanks to these two disparate meanings of "abortion."
But I find it ironic that the same article took the trouble to state
that the fetus handled by the Buffalo minister at the barricades was
the result of a miscarriage rather than abortion.  [Or did it 
qualify it by saying "probably"? Again, I am workilng  from memory.
The University of Wollongong Library does not subscribe to *Life*]
Of course, the essential point of the minister's demonstration was
that this is what is killed in late-term abortions; the minister
never claimed the "dead baby" was the result of an induced abortion.
No dishonesty, let alone fraud, involved here.

What is even more ironic is that less than a year earlier, *Life* ran 
a lavish treatment of prenatal development.  [So I am told, anyway.
I never saw the article.  A reprint would make a great Christmas 
present for me.]  It would be difficult to find a more shocking 
example of the right hand not knowing, or pretending not to know, what
the left hand is doing.

The use of the word "clot" in the *Life* report is fraught with historical
significance.  Many ancient writers thought that the fetus developed
from the menstrual blood of the mother, congealed by the sperm of the
father.  
[Joseph Needham, _A History of Embryology_, Arno Press, A New York 
Times Company, 1975]

I wonder whether this arose partly from the resemblance of an expelled
chorionic sac to a clot, and whether the ancient/medeaval distinction
between the "formed" and "unformed" fetus refers to the distinction
between what one sees in early miscarriages, and what one sees in later
ones.

[Some authors make "formed" synonymous with "animated,"
or "quickened," but some
do not: Bracton, the 13th century legal scholar whom Blackmun seems
to disbelieve in Roe v. Wade while quoting him in full,
[though not, I think, in the original Latin, which uses "animatum,"] made a 
very clear distinction when he wrote that one who induces abortion
in a woman with a fetus "formed and animated, especially if animated,"
commits homicide]

Perhaps today, perhaps Monday, I will post the message promised at
the beginning of this week, "Exciting News from Jerome Lejeune's Lab,"
which gives more information on the chorion.  I will juxtapose it
in one file with this message, with the combined file labeled:
  "The Chorion: Death and Life."
[The *Life* article belongs in the half marked "Death".]

At the end I will put the Biblical quote, "I have set before you
death and life.  Choose life."  Can anyone supply the reference?

Peter Nyikos