Do unborn children feel pain?

[Melo 1]

April 14, 2005

Two new reports in research journals shed light on some of the latest scientific thinking on the deeply charged question, an ever-present part of the debate over abortion rights.

Courtesy National Institutes of Health

One paper is a study finding that prematurely born babies feel pain.

Anti-abortion activists immediately cited this to support their contention that fetuses, too, feel pain. But a second report dismisses this notion, claiming the true experience of pain can arise only after birth.

This paper wasn’t a formal study, but rather a personal commentary by a psychologist who researches how the brain processes pain.

In the first report, scientists at University College London described how they measured pain responses in premature babies’ brains. They concluded that these responses probably represent “true” pain, not just reflexes as some researchers had suggested.

The study, published in the April 5 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, was billed as the first direct scientific measure of pain in premature babies. Brain scans taken while babies were having blood tests registered a surge of blood and oxygen in sensory areas in babies’ brains, according to the researchers, showing that the pain was processed in higher levels of the brain.

A key brain area involved, called the somatosensory cortex, helps process sensations from the body surface and is also linked to pain sensation in adults, according to the researchers. They studied 18 babies aged between 25 and 45 weeks from conception.

“Repeated painful procedures are a significant stressor and lead to increased sensitivity to other non-painful procedures,” said Maria Fitzgerald of University College. The researchers said the study points up the need for better pain-control methods for infants.

They insisted, though, that the study says nothing about pain in unborn children.

Yet other scientists in recent years have repeatedly pointed to pain in premature babies—or its supposed absence—as one line of evidence suggesting fetuses either do, or don’t, feel pain.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in the Aug. 24/31, 2005 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association that babies born before 30 weeks’ gestation lack “functional pain perception.” That’s one indicator, they suggested, that “fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester.”

Abortion opponents seized on the new British study as evidence for their longstanding argument that the unborn do feel pain, and that this is further grounds for criminalizing abortion.

The study “backs up research… that babies feel pain before birth as early as 20 weeks into the pregnancy,” wrote Steven Ertelt on the website lifenews.com, a news website for the anti-abortion community run by established anti-abortion activists. Ertelt is the site’s editor and CEO, and former executive director of Montana Right to Life.

Many scientists consider the jury still out on the question of whether the unborn feel pain; experts can be found on either side of the debate.

One opinion comes from Stuart Derbyshire, a psychologist at the University of Birmingham, U.K. and expert on how the brain processes pain. He wrote in an “analysis and commentary” in the April 15 British Medical Journal that the presence of pain in already born children is not a sign that the unborn can feel it. There’s “good evidence that fetuses cannot experience pain,” he wrote.

Essentially, he argued, the complex mental processes necessary for the experience of pain cannot begin until the jolt of life outside the womb kick-starts them.

The brain circuitry for processing pain seems to be complete by 26 weeks’ gestation, he wrote. But true pain requires not only development of the brain but also development of the mind to accommodate the subjectivity of pain.

This mental development occurs only outside the womb, he added, through the baby’s actions and interactions with caregivers.

In the United States, anti-abortion groups are pushing for federal and state laws requiring doctors to tell women who are late in pregnancy, and considering an abortion, that their baby will feel intense pain during it.

Such laws are unwarranted, Derbyshire wrote. However, he agreed on one point with many abortion opponents: even if fetuses don’t feel pain, this doesn’t by itself mean abortion should be legal. Findings of no fetal pain won’t resolve the debate over abortion’s morality, he wrote.

[almaty 19]

hmmmmmmmmmmm

[Welshcookie 17]

Oh Lordy........I don't feel up to doing this right now....

I will join in later...

[ace13 0]

Yes they do, and they are sad, too.

[Welshcookie 17]

Yes they do, and they are sad, too.

well one told me they didnt feel a thing......

[almaty 19]

heard that too

[Welshcookie 17]

heard that too

Well I trust you Bro Dean cos ppl tell you stuff.....

[almaty 19]

heard that too

Well I trust you Bro Dean cos ppl tell you stuff.....

sister welch cake...same here..to you

[dalegg 143]

....must....resist....urge....to....debate...again....

[almaty 19]

....must....resist....urge....to....debate...again....

let it go..it's friday

[arwensun1965 1]

What I want to know is...how did they complete these studies? I am having difficulty in assessing how they came to know that the baby felt pain while in the mothers womb? Did they do a kung fu style kick to the womb? Was it a full blow punch?? How was it done??

Janice

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

[Aymerlu 3]

ditto

[Sharon 1]

Well, from personal experience, I can pretty well definitively say yes to both questions.

- My son was born 2 months premature 18 years ago. Preemies veins in their arms and legs are too small for an IV line to be placed into them so most often docs/nurses put an IV into a preemie's little head, in their scalp where a vein is easier to access. My son's IV line slipped out once and I was there to watch the nurse replace it...it wasn't fun He DEFINITELY felt pain because a split second after she slipped it into his little scalp, first his eyes got huge and then he immediately started crying a cry that was one of definite pain (you mommies will know what I mean), and I in turn started crying along for/with him.

- Then several years later when I was pregnant with my youngest daughter, I had just begun my eighth month of pregnancy and started encountering complications. I was badly diabetic (gestational diabetes to the tune of 4 shots of insulin a day) the baby was breech and stuck under my right rib and to make matters worse, I started having premature labor. They held off the labor with meds but decided to do an amniocentesis to determine whether or not the baby's lungs were mature enough for her to breathe on her own if they were to deliver me via c-section asap. Make a long story short, it's not often an amnio is done when a woman is so far along as the baby is fairly large by 8 months and it's difficult to find a pocket of amniotic fluid to draw from. Well the nurse had the sonogram machine on my belly so they could see where the baby was and to search for a pocket of fluid. They found one, inserted the needle and at that very second, my baby decided to do a flip...right against the needle inside of me. It scratched her little rib and everyone in the room, including myself (I felt this inside of me as well of course), watched as the baby quickly drew her legs up and twisted her body away from what had hurt her (the doc had withdrawn the needle by then but it was too late). Alli still, to this day, bears a scar on her rib that she was BORN with because of that incident. And it was more than obvious to everyone who watched the sonogram monitor that day that she definitely FELT pain.

Rant off.

Edited April 15, 2006 by Sharon

[almaty 19]

i going to be quiet too....