A Tablet interview with Dr. Stuart Campbell, the Scottish doctor responsible for those remarkable 4D images of unborn babies that came out a couple of weeks ago.

The doctor has changed his views on abortion – a bit – he believes that the legal limit for abortions (now 24 weeks there) should be gradually dropped to a much lower point, but believes that early abortions should remain legal. It’s an interesting interview because it shows the limits of a purely functional view of the human person. There’s no sense that this being is a person, but really merely a collection of functions, and its right to be protected from being killed is rooted in how much those functions are like the functions of a born human being.

Professor Campbell remains pro-choice in the sense that he does not believe in banning early abortions. But what makes him interesting is how his view of abortion has changed. He believes that it would make sense to challenge the 24-week limit on the grounds that the age of viability – the age that a baby can survive outside the womb, by which the 24-week limit was set – has now dropped to about 22 weeks thanks to medical advances. But it is what he has seen on the scans in his clinic that has really caused him to rethink his position.

Above all, it is the technique known as 4-D scanning, which updates the image of the foetus three or four times a second, which has changed the way he sees life in the womb. The technology means that the foetus’s movements can be seen clearly.

“My views on abortion have certainly been coloured by 3-D and 4-D scans,” he says. “When you see these images you realise that between 18 and 24 weeks the baby is so advanced neurologically, at such an advanced stage of development, that abortion at 24 weeks is just unacceptable.”