Six-week baby

A baby floats head-down in the tear-drop shaped amniotic sac, or bag of waters, which protects the rapidly developing embryo.

The picture shows a little boy removed from the fallopian tube of his mother's womb at six weeks after conception. The importance of the developing brain is reflected in the size of the baby's head in proportion to the rest of the body. Observe the budding arms, the dark area in the centre which is the liver and the umbilical cord threading its way through the neck of the 'tear-drop' to the chorion (afterbirth) in the hand at the top.

Conception or fertilisation - the beginning of human development - usually occurs in the fine tube which leads from the womb's cavity to the ovary. The embryo or "conceptus" usually travels down the tube and implants in the womb. This child never completed the journey but lodged in the tube (the most common site of ectopic - literally "out of place" - pregnancy).

Doctors had to remove the tube containing the baby, because the growing child was about to rupture the tube, with fatal consequences for himself and potentially for the mother also. There is no moral objection to this treatment, which does not involve deliberately killing the embryo but is done to avert the threat to the mother's life.

The legality of these operations in the UK does not depend on the 1967 Abortion Act, and they are not recorded as abortions under the Act. Of 170,000-plus abortions performed annually under the Act, almost none are now recorded as "emergency" life saving procedures.

10-week baby