As oral arguments proceeded Wednesday in the Supreme Court case of Dobbs v. Jackson, pro-life supporters were energized by the dialog coming to light regarding life in the womb and its earlier beginnings than previously understood in the times of Roe v. Wade.

Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie cited current studies revealing medical evidence not only establishing viability, but the age at which a fetal life is able to experience pain. Dr. Christie, herself a practicing diagnostic radiologist, utterly refuted Justice Elena Kagan’s ill-conceived arguments that “not much has changed” since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, as reported by The Washington Times.

“As a practicing diagnostic radiologist, I can attest that advances in ultrasound technology continue to astonish the medical community as to the humanity of the unborn child, a truth and medical reality that we can now see clearly in the earliest weeks of life,” said the senior fellow for the TCA.

At a rally where pro-lifers gathered outside the courthouse, Dr. Christie continued to reveal how technological advances and resultant scientific evidence now contradict antiquated assumptions about the earliest weeks of human life. In opposition to Justice Sotomayor’s assertions that only “fringe doctors” believe in early viability and the existence of fetal pain as a right to restrict abortion, Dr. Christie put forth facts about rapid scientific advancements in fetal medicine.

“As recently as last year, doctors in the Journal of Medical Ethics wrote, ‘Current neuroscientific evidence supports the possibility of fetal pain before the ‘consensus’ cutoff of 24 weeks,’ and may be as early as 12 weeks.” As a result, she continued, “contrary to the arguments of Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, incredible advances in science and fetal medicine have rendered viability a totally incoherent legal standard.” See full article here.

Dr. Christie’s comments were also referenced in a Catholic News Service article where Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori urged all Catholics, people of other faiths, and people of good will to join in prayer that the high court will overturn Roe v. Wade in its ruling on Mississippi’s abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy – a move which would save over 600,000 unborn babies’ lives taken each year in the US alone.

An article by Autumn Jones in the Catholic News Agency further purported Dr. Christie’s assertions supporting an infant’s early ability in utero to demonstrate human qualities as well as suffer pain, calling Justice Sotomayor’s comments “wholly ignorant” of current findings.

Said Christie, “Not only does medicine agree that fetal anesthesia be administered for fetal surgery, a clear reflection of the medical consensus that unborn babies can feel pain, but like viability, the line marking when they feel pain continues to inch earlier.”

In another repudiation of Justice Sotomayor’s remarks likening unborn babies to corpses, Dr. Christie noted, “To compare an unborn child to a brain-dead person or a corpse flouts science which tells us that at 15 weeks gestation, a baby’s organs are fully formed, her heart pumps 26 quarts of blood a day, and her lungs are already practicing drawing breath.”

The continual emergence of medical data revealing new understanding of early life in the womb consistently supports the need for re-thinking the ethics that resulted in Roe v. Wade, and continually diminishes abortionists’ arguments that a fetus is less than human and unable to suffer inhumanely from the act of abortion.

This revelation is becoming harder to mask as data reaches the public at large in greater ways than ever before. As Dr. Christie was quoted as saying by the Catholic News Agency, “This case is before the Supreme Court today in large part because Americans have seen the evolving science and increasingly want a voice in a question of great moral consequence.”