A year late on this but "up-front warning" seems to clearly refer to the baby, the idea being that being born is the first thing humans do in reality (or at any rate a major encounter with more of it than we'd experienced before). You do have a point that perhaps the problem is the common definition of dignity rather than the concept itself. I could certainly see a use for a word like "dignity" that refers only to things we can reasonably be expected to control.