Pregnant “Today Show” host moderates fascinating segment on fetal development

With refreshing candor, the hosts on NBC’s Today Show discussed the amazing journey of our lives before birth. The segment highlighted developmental milestones like taste, smell, movement, sight and hearing. New studies indicating unborn children are capable of learning nursery rhymes and respond to their mother’s stress level were also discussed.

Dr. Bill Fifer, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, said, “Everything that a newborn baby does, a fetus has pretty much done already.”

Most of this information comes as little surprise to the pro-life movement. Pro-life advocates have worked for years to educate the public on the incredible facts about our lives in what Today Show host Savannah Guthrie referred to as “Hotel Uterus.” (Guthrie is pregnant and due next month.)

We know that a baby’s tiny heart is beating as early as 18 days after sperm-egg fusion. Brain waves are detectable by 6 weeks and babies can experience dream (REM) sleep by 17 weeks. Substantial medical and scientific evidence has demonstrated that unborn children are capable of feeling pain by 20 weeks, if not earlier.

The Today Show segment also highlighted a new study on the development of taste: “Researchers have found that mothers who consistently ate carrots during the end of their pregnancy had babies who enjoyed that taste more than babies whose mothers hadn’t shared the same diet.”

Based on the results of the taste study, Guthrie’s baby probably has a “real hankering for junk food and sweets,” co-host Matt Lauer joked. Guthrie responded, “Mine would be like, at 20 weeks, your baby likes Indian food with beef jerky.”

Advancements in technology have offered a greater glimpse into our earliest moments of life. At the time Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court, a central question in the abortion debate was at what point life begins.

Now, even pro-abortion bloggers like Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check concede that life begins at conception. Jacobson made that point in a 2012 article entitled “Life Begins At Conception. That’s Not the Point.”

The debate has now shifted to the question of when life has value and deserves protection.

Editor’s note. The segment on the Thursday edition of The Today Show, “The Secret Life of Babies: New Research about what’s learned inside the womb,” was so informative and so insightful we are running two post. (The other can be read at nrlc.cc/UOtqCr.