Time magazine named Vladimir Putin its 2007 Person of the Year. This is no surprise, as Time gave Adolf Hitler a similar honor in 1939, naming him Man of the Year, so this tribute no longer carries much weight.

While General David Petraeus and our military should be at the top of everyone’s list, I’ve decided to veer off course and nominate the unborn for the title, because 2007 was truly the year that the zygote, embryo, and fetus often made headline news and will probably figure heavily in the 2008 election.

The best thing that happened in 2007 for the unborn was the emergence of truth in the saga of stem cell research. The mainstream press finally reported that there never was a ban on embryonic stem cell research. Billions have been spent privately on embryonic stem cell research, with little or no success. Research on adult stem cells, on the other hand, has had remarkable results.

The British scientist Ian Wilmut, who created the first cloned sheep, Dolly, is forgoing embryonic stem cell research and says a new method pioneered by Japanese scientists has better potential for creating embryonic stem cells by growing them from a patient’s own cells and avoiding the destruction of human life.

The head of the Japanese research team was Shinya Yamanaka, who said in a recent New York Times article, “When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters.” Dr. Yamanaka, 45, a father of two and now a professor at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences at Kyoto University, added: “I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.” If the Nobel Prize was still worth something, Dr. Yamanaka would certainly deserve it.

The unborn also made headlines in the tabloid arena. There’s been a baby boom among high-profile celebrities, whether married or not. J. Lo’s expecting twins, and Halle Berry and Jessica Alba are proudly displaying their “bumps.” But their news didn’t make the front pages like that of Jamie Lynn Spears. It seemed as if life was imitating art when Britney Spears’s 16-year-old sister announced she was pregnant. The feature film “Juno,” which deals with another 16-year-old who finds herself with child, had just opened. There’s nothing new about teenagers getting pregnant, but it is, it seems, huge news when they decide not to kill their unborn children.

What does this portend?

Ms. Spears was the star of a Disney television program, “Zoey 101,” with a bright future. Now what? A Linda Ellerbee Nickelodeon pregnancy program; more parenting books on how to tell your children about condoms? Perhaps we need to tell children that the only 100% effective birth control is abstinence, but Congress decided to cut spending for abstinence programs after a study showed they were ineffective. Who commissioned the study — Planned Parenthood? Schools can’t teach girls self-respect; only parents can, and many of them have abdicated this responsibility to MTV. I feel so sorry for Ms. Spears and any teenager who’s lost her precious years of innocence to adult folly.

Some of the unborn have identities if they are in utero of the well-known, but most are just numerical statistics. More than 43 million unborn have been aborted since 1973. Soon the first baby boomers will be applying for Social Security, which is in dire trouble. Aside from Fred Thompson, no other presidential candidate seems concerned about this, but not recognizing the unborn as future human beings has been detrimental to our future. European nations are just now realizing how close to extinction they are.

In 2007, the unborn was also the star of the film “Bella,” which against great odds is still in theaters across the nation. If the unborn must have a living human face, let’s consider the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner, Timothy Tebow of the University of Florida. He would have been but a statistic if his mother had listened to her doctor, who recommended that she have an abortion. She had become ill with dysentery while in the Philippines, and her doctor feared that medication taken for her recovery would result in irreversible damage to the fetus. Mrs. Tebow rejected his advice, and Tim was born healthy and robust in 1987. Today he stands 6-foot-3, weighs 235 pounds, and is a physical and athletic phenomenon.

So to all the expectant mothers of the world, I wish you a safe and healthy delivery. Remember, you are carrying a precious 2007 Person of the Year.

acolon@nysun.com