Right Opinion World's Tiniest Surviving Preemie Shows Abortion Isn't in Line With Science or Common Sense

Editor’s note: This piece was originally published on June 1, 2019.

Last summer the nation’s imagination was captivated by a beautiful newborn baby girl called Saybie, who left the hospital weighing 5 pounds, 6 ounces. Doctors said she was born in December only 23 weeks into her mother’s pregnancy and was just about the size of an apple, weighing less than 9 ounces.

Her parents were told that Saybie — a name used by her care team — couldn’t survive. But Saybie’s parents didn’t give up hope. Modern medical science saved this tiny baby’s precious life and she is now thriving.

The San Diego hospital where she was born said Saybie is believed to be the world’s smallest surviving newborn, according to the Tiniest Babies Registry kept by the University of Iowa.

I and other pro-life Americans noted on Twitter and other platforms that Saybie is living proof that science is on the side of the pro-life cause. Her very survival must raise questions for our nation regarding current law on abortion.

The late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun famously said regarding the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court that legalized abortion nationwide: “If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.”

And, of course, we are there now. Sonograms — 3D, 4D, and HD — have settled the question of when life begins. At conception, a child has his or her own DNA separate and apart from the mother. We can see the baby’s beating heart as early as 18 days. At 30 days the developing little boy or girl has a nervous system.

At 12 weeks the child has fingernails. At 20 weeks the baby has all the major organs we have, along with toenails and eyebrows. The child can sleep, can hear, can respond to the mother’s voice, and can feel pain.

Clearly, sweet Saybie was not just a clump of cells, nor was she ever “a part of the mother’s body.” Saybie was and is a distinct and precious human being with intrinsic value. And now she has the opportunity to grow up and hopefully live a full life for many decades to come.

Reports say that doctors performed an emergency cesarean section because Saybie’s mother’s life was in danger; yet, precious Saybie and her mother survived.

Sadly, 31 states currently allow an abortionist to take the life of other babies at the same stage in development as Saybie. Why do the lives of their children not matter?

According to abortion advocates, life depends upon the state of mind of the mother — whether the child is “wanted.” That’s a nonsensical argument refuted by science.

Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry make billions of dollars each year from scared mothers and dead babies. We are at a tipping point in our nation in which the facts can no longer be denied. Roe v. Wade is no longer in line with either science or public opinion.

People of conscience refuse to ignore the human right of a living human being to not be dismembered and discarded by a utilitarian society that finds the baby inconvenient.

More and more Americans agree and are overwhelmingly rejecting the radical abortion extremism we have seen in states like Virginia and New York.

Recent pro-life legislation in states like Missouri, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana is partly a response to the left’s rejection of truth. Americans are now in the process of setting new boundaries, given these undeniable scientific facts of human life like Saybie.

Roe v. Wade must go because it is no longer supported by science or common sense. States will fight out their own boundaries, but one thing is certain: Saybie is living proof that science is pro-life.