Your Choice

If you are pregnant, you currently have a unique individual living inside of you. The great geneticist Jerome Lejeune has said:

"[the] voting process of the fertilization produces a personal constitution which is entirely typical of this very one human being which has never occurred before and will never occur again. It’s an entire novelty."

Though possibly still extremely small, this tiny human has all the complex genetic instructions necessary to build his or her body as long as they can have the right nutrients and protection. If you have stumbled onto this page, it may be you didn't intend to be pregnant. Perhaps you feel you aren't in the right circumstance to have a child or you aren't ready to be a parent. Regardless of whether someone is wanted or not, or what size they are, every human has immeasurable worth. That includes you and the small life inside you. Suuri Ihme's name comes from the Finnish translation of Psalm 139.

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth."

Depending on your circumstance, you may be offered to terminate the pregnancy. You need to know all of what that entails in terms of physical, psychological, and emotional effects. At the same time, the thought of continuing the pregnancy may feel overwhelming. Our doulas can assist you in mapping out all your options and walk with you through pregnancy, birth, and beyond.

When does a human life begin?

"Before an embryo there is a sperm and an egg, and that is it. And the sperm and an egg cannot be a pre-embryo because you cannot tell what embryo it will be, because you don’t know what the sperm will go in what an egg, but once it is made, you have got a zygote and when it divides it’s an embryo and that’s it. I think it’s important because people would believe that a pre-embryo does not have the same significance that an embryo. And in fact, on the contrary, a first cell knows more and is more specialized, if I could say, than any cell which is later in our organism."

-Jerome Lejeune, geneticist

"When 5,502 biologists were presented with statements about the beginning of individual life and asked their opinion, the majority (75–91 percent, depending on the wording) agreed that human or mammalian life begins at fertilization. Even among biologists who strongly described themselves as ‘very pro-choice,’ most acknowledged that human life begins at fertilization.

This fact is also highlighted in numerous embryology textbooks. For example, in the book ‘The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology’ (11th edition, 2020, p. 11) by emeritus professors Keith L. Moore and T.V.N. Persaud and associate professor Mark G. Torchia, it states: ‘Human development begins at fertilization when a sperm fuses with an oocyte to form a single cell, the zygote. This highly specialized, totipotent cell (capable of giving rise to any cell type) marks the beginning of each of us as a unique individual.’

-Dr. Marika Kaksonen

Biologists from 1,058 academic institutions around the world assessed survey items on when a human's life begins and, overall, 96% (5337 out of 5577) affirmed the fertilization view.

"It is clear that from the time of cell fusion, the embryo consists of elements (from both maternal and paternal origin) which function interdependently in a coordinated manner to carry on the function of the development of the human organism. From this definition, the single-celled embryo is not just a cell, but an organism, a living being, a human being.

The American College of Pediatricians concurs with the body of scientific evidence that corroborates that a unique human life starts when the sperm and egg bind to each other in a process of fusion of their respective membranes and a single hybrid cell called a zygote, or one-cell embryo, is created." ⁴

-The American College of Pediatricians