3D Printing Could Change Sonograms and the Pro-Life Movement

3D Printing Could Change Sonograms and the Pro-Life Movement

RUSSIA – When expectant mothers go to sonograms, they come home with grainy black and white pictures of their children. But now, thanks to modern technology, they could be coming home with a much more tangible, life-like image.

New technology allows mothers to bring home 3D printed models of their unborn children. Technology developed by Embryo 3D helps doctors to print a life-like model of a baby in utero during sonograms.

Read more: Sometimes We’re All a Little “Surprised By Life”

Ivan Gridin, head of Embryo 3D, started thinking about how 3D printing technology could be a help to others when one of his friends was worried about the health of her pregnancy.

“I have a friend, her name is Veronika, she was worried about the health of her child and wanted to see it,” Gridin explained. “She had an ultrasound several times, but it wasn’t enough. I was fond of new technologies at that time and 3D-printing. And I said ‘let’s print it.”

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The Embryo 3D team began by printing models of unborn babies in plastic, but they’ve since started making plaster models, too.

Not only can 3D sonograms be a gift to mothers, as a tangible way to see their baby grow, but these sonograms can also prove to be helpful when it comes to research and studying. They can be used to track health, growth, and development in a baby’s development during gestation. And that’s great news for the pro-life movement.

“No matter how hard they try, abortion advocates cannot hide from the technology that will continue to make their arguments moot,” a pro-life advocate website wrote last year. “The latest business to capitalize on the advances in ultrasound technology may not be one every parent longs to patronize, but it is another reminder of the reality of life in the womb as a 3D printer will create a virtual baby for parents.”