Words such as ’embryo’ or ‘fetus’ serve the same purpose as calling human beings ‘infants’, ‘children’, ‘adolescents’ or ‘adults’ at other stages of their lives. They are simply scientific terms used to indicate where a person is in his or her development: in no way do they mean the unborn child is not human.
Personhood does not begin at a specific point in time. It belongs to a being of human origin – a being who has a human father and mother. A human being is always a person at every stage of life.
Some advocates of abortion claim that the unborn child is a mere clump of cells. But the scientific facts are that a living, unmistakably human organism exists from the moment the ovum is fertilized: it will not develop into a cat or a plant – only a human being, because it is already a human being.
The unborn child while still in the womb can be viewed by ultrasound. He or she can receive blood transfusions and even be treated surgically.
