Saved from post-hurricane flooding years before his birth, today he's in the Army

Noah Markham was rescued from flood waters in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history, hit the city in August 2005 — yet Noah hadn't actually been born, and wouldn't be born for another two years.

A year before Katrina made landfall, Noah was created in an IVF facility and then frozen. Despite rhetoric from the pro-abortion media, Noah, now 18, was very much alive and in existence from the moment of fertilization.

Key Takeaways:

• Noah Markham was created along with five other embryos in an IVF procedure. His brother, Witt, was implanted and born in August 2004. Noah and the four other embryos remained frozen.

• In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, where Noah was being stored. He and his siblings were rescued, but his parents did not have him thawed and implanted for another two years.

• Today, Noah is grateful that his life was saved in 2005. Though today he is an adult, he knows he is the same person as he was when he was saved as an embryo.

The Backstory:

Noah's parents, Glen and Rebekah, used in vitro fertilization (IVF), and in August 2004, their son Witt was born. They kept five other embryos frozen at a fertility business in New Orleans, but a year later, Hurricane Katrina was threatening the Gulf Coast.

As it approached, 1,200 canisters holding precious young lives, including Noah, were relocated from the fertility clinic to Lakeland Hospital. The power went out, and temperatures topped 100 degrees. It was unknown if the embryos would survive, but in a rescue effort on September 11, police agencies carried the embryos to safety on flat-bottom boats.

That was the first great adventure of Noah's life. He was completely unaware of it, but was very much alive and in existence for over a year.

"The older I get, I definitely think I wouldn’t be here if not for them," he told PEOPLE. "And I’m very, very thankful to people that saved me.”

It was another two years before his parents released him from his frozen state, naming Noah after the Biblical figure who survived the great flood.

"Nobody believes you were frozen"

Noah was born in January 2007. It is unclear what happened to the remaining siblings that had been frozen with him, but Noah became something of a celebrity, with photographers and reporters waiting outside the hospital when he was born.

"So everyone really kind of already knew," he said. "It just kind of sounds not believable. Nobody believes you were frozen."

He added that he considers Witt, born three years before him, his "twin" because they were conceived at the same time.

"That's the hardest thing to explain to people," he said. "I've been on this earth for more than 21 years — but technically, I've only been born for 18."

The Details:

PEOPLE Magazine correctly refers to the embryo as Noah in some of its reporting when it states that he and his brother "were embryos together," and in saying Noah "Was Just a Frozen Embryo When He Was Rescued from Katrina..." But PEOPLE also refers to him as if he (the embryo and the 18-year-old) are two separate entities. (They're not.) The article states (emphasis added):

Noah Markham was born two years after Hurricane Katrina because his embryo was rescued from the catastrophic flooding

His embryo was not rescued from flooding — his parents' embryo was; he was.

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Medical groups are clear: human embryos are human beings at an early stage of existence. According to the Cleveland Clinic:

The fetal stage of development begins around the ninth week and lasts until birth. This is when the embryo officially turns into a fetus.

The fetus is not 'sprung forth from' the embryo; the fetal stage is simply the next stage of life after the embryonic stage.

Noah was an embryo when he was frozen, but he was still an embryo after he was transferred to his mother's uterus. He was an embryo for weeks after implantation before his stage of life changed to fetus, and then newborn — and now he's an 18-year-old man serving in the military.