George Bush: Day his mother showed him a foetus in a jar

IN AN astonishing revelation in his memoirs, former United States president George Bush reveals how his mother Barbara showed him a foetus in a jar after she had a miscarriage.

According to Mr Bush, his mother asked doctors to preserve the dead baby, which she showed to her son when he came to visit her after she had lost the baby. The incident happened when the former president was a teenager.

Reading from the book in an interview with Matt Lauer on US television last night, he said: "I never expected to see the remains of the foetus, which she had saved in a jar to bring to the hospital."

He said his mother calmly announced: "Here's the foetus."

Mr Bush said the experience had a profound effect on him and helped confirm his pro-life stance and his views on abortion and stem cell research.

"There's no question that affected me, a philosophy that we should respect life," he said. "There was a human life, a little brother or sister."

Mr Bush said he had asked the permission of his mother, wife of former president George Bush snr, about including an account of the incident in his book, and she agreed - even though she believes in a woman's right to choose.

Mr Bush said the point of the story "wasn't to try show the evolution of a pro-life point of view.

"It was really to show how my mom and I developed a relationship".