Image courtesy News 4 San Antonio

When an 82 year-old Colombian woman went to the doctor for her stomach pains, she never expected to hear that she was carrying a 40-year-old “stone baby.” The condition, known as lithopedion, or stone baby, occurs when the baby begins developing outside the womb. Because a woman’s stomach is not suitable to sustaining life, the body fights what it believes to be an infection by calcifying the unborn child. The result is a “stone baby” that can go undetected for years.

It’s interesting to note that even the laymen’s term for this condition, “stone baby” makes reference to the fact that what is inside the woman is indeed a baby. Just as kidney stones or gall stones refer to the type of stone growing inside a person, so too does this name, stone baby, refer to what is inside the woman: a baby.

Even when things don’t happen as they should in order to produce a healthy, living baby, the humanity of the unborn can be seen. Click here for original article.