LIFE ISSUES NO. 36-20

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

(Senechia/Stem Cells)

What is a senechia?  This is an adhesion inside of the womb.  You see, when the abortionist suctions and scrapes the inner wall of the womb to remove the growing baby, he must also cut and slice the deeply rooted afterbirth away from the inner wall.  This is a very touchy thing to do, for, as pregnancy progresses, the wall of the womb changes from being a rigid, muscular wall to a much thinner, vascular wall.

If he scrapes too hard, he can cut right through the endometrial lining, or, if you want, the mucous lining of the womb.  It’s sort of like playing golf—you have a ball lying in the grass, and you swing at it with your club.  You’d like to hit it directly, but sometimes you chop deeper and pick up a piece of sod along with the ball.  This leaves a scar—well, sort of like a scar—in the ground.  Now, grass is friendly and ultimately will grow back over that, but the inside of the womb is not as capable of regenerating.  And if he’s dug too deep, in healing, this will cover that area with a scar.

The next step is important.  Let’s assume, now, that we have two scars produced in this fashion, and they happen to be on exact opposite sides of the inside of the womb so that they touch each other, or, as we say, so they “kiss.”  Guess what happens—these two scars, instead of merely covering the surface, grow and stick together.  They grow together, and now you have an adhesion, or a senechia, which glues the two sides of the inside of the wall together.  There’s a name for this – Asherman Syndrome – named after a man who some years ago reported on this kind of adhesion in two out of three women who had had two or more induced abortions.

Needless to say, if the walls of the womb are stuck together, she doesn’t have much chance of getting pregnant, and less yet of carrying the baby to term.  She will almost certainly have repeated miscarriages.

What is a stem cell, and can’t one develop into a full human?  We don’t have all the answers yet for stem cells, but we know and have found and identified stem cells as present after a few days or weeks of development in a human embryo.  They are transitional, that is, they’re no longer the original single cell, like a fertilized egg—or one of the early divisions of that tiny embryo—but they are a cell that will still yet grow into, let’s say, a liver or perhaps into some other organ.

Stem cells, however, while they can become various organs, cannot grow into an entirely new human being.  They can only grow into specialized organs of that human being.

[12/06/02]