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Fetus in Stomach

By cortex on November 24, 2006.

Regardless of your political stance on abortion, I think we can all come together and agree that this fetus should be terminated.

A boy has been born in Chile with a fetus in his stomach in what doctors said was a rare case of "fetus in fetu" in which one twin becomes trapped inside another during pregnancy and continues to grow inside it.

Doctors carried out a scan on the boy's mother shortly before she gave birth on Nov. 15 in the southern city of Temuco and noticed the 4-inch-long fetus inside the boy's abdomen.

It had limbs and a partially developed spinal cord but no head and stood no chance of survival, doctors said.

Nature boggles the imagination, and not always in a nice way. When we sanctify every little bundle of human cells, we end up divinizing all sorts of arbitrary biological events. If there is a God, and if He is busy infusing every fetus with something special, then it's difficult to imagine what he was intending with this freakish set of twins. (I know, I know, God is inscrutable, but still.) I'm just glad the newborn is safe.

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