Posted on 09/05/2013 3:16:39 PM PDT by NYer
Over the past decade NRL News and NRL News Today have collectively carried dozens and dozens and DOZENS of articles about the topic of the capacity of the unborn child to feel pain. So when colleagues tell you on your return to work of a must-read article, the first temptation might be to expect too little rather than too much. But after reading Eric Schulzke’s “The disputed science of fetal pain,” I can see why they say the article is balanced—a rarity—and comprehensive—even rarer.
Schulzke cleverly works backwards. He starts with newborns who were born premature. Their parents are absolutely convinced their twin sons experienced pain at birth. “The pain markers went well beyond facial cues,” Schulzke writes. “Even routine blood draws or IV insertions could cause measurable reactions.”
And in stark contrast to what prevailed not so long ago, “Anesthesia is now routine for both neonatal and fetal surgery, but a generation ago newborns were thought to not perceive pain, and they routinely underwent surgery without anesthesia.” That would be considered barbaric today.
He interviewed Dr. Ray Paschall about fetal surgery and the use of anesthesia. Dr. Paschall has performed around 260 surgeries on babies before birth and “was part of a team that developed fetal surgery for myelomeningocele, a type of spina bifida, where the spine fails to close correctly, leaving it exposed to corrosive amniotic fluid.”
Schulzke notes that “Pre-birth intervention has been found to significantly improve outcomes. The target age for these surgeries, Paschall said, is between 21 and 25 weeks of gestational age, which happens to be precisely the age targeted in fetal pain abortion legislation.” He “firmly believes” they feel pain.
You can read this fascinating account in its entirety so let me summarize some of what the story accomplishes.
It takes on the principle arguments against the idea that the unborn child can feel pain beginning at 20 weeks fetal age (equivalent to “22 weeks of pregnancy”). For starters, Paschall is deeply skeptical of those who argue that “the unborn fetus is immersed in a mix of fluids that chemically induce sleep, meaning that even if the brain wiring were in place, the fetus will still be oblivious.”
We have discussed this absurd contention at much greater length elsewhere. (See “Royal College of Ob-GYN ‘Fetal Awareness’ Report Does Nothing to Rebut Conclusion Unborn Can Experience Pain at 20 Weeks.”)
He also helpfully juxtaposes the work of Dr. Kawaljeet Anand, who affirms the reality of fetal pain, and a 2005 co-authored article published in Journal of the American Medical Association. Anand’s research is head and shoulders more persuasive, beginning with a landmark 1987 article in the New England Journal of Medicine in which “Anand proved that newborns not only perceived pain,” Schulzke writes, “but that they were literally dying from it.”
Schulzke adds, “In one of his studies, mortality dropped from 25 to 10 percent just through using anesthesia. By the turn of the 21st century, thanks largely to Anand, newborn anesthesia was standard.”
Anand then moved on to the question of pain experienced before birth. Not only did he find that it was a reality, Anand “argued that a fetus or premature newborn may actually feel pain more intensely than an older newborn,” Schulzke writes. “He asserted in 2007 congressional testimony on fetal pain legislation that ‘a fetus at 20 to 32 weeks of gestation would experience a much more intense pain than older infants or children or adults’ because certain pain mechanisms are in play much earlier, while ‘fibers which dampen and modulate the experience of pain’ are delayed until between 32-34 weeks.”
The reader is exposed to an important shift in the debate over fetal pain. The centrality of the cortex to pain has been challenged, indeed, one could argue, debunked by research that demonstrated children born without a higher brain structures (‘decorticate’ patients) are capable of experiencing pain and also other conscious behaviors.
In many ways, the most instructive portion of the story is that Schulzke explains the fork in the road over the debate about fetal pain. He quotes Maureen Condic, a neurobiologist at the University of Utah Medical School, who has testified before Congress on the question.
“’One camp gives a fundamentally psychological definition of pain perception,’ she said. ‘They say that to experience pain you must have conscious awareness. That, they argue, requires life experience to put sensations in context.’
“On the other side are those who, like Condic, see pain mainly as a biological reaction to trauma, one easily centered in the thalamus long before (and long after) the cortex is involved.”
Equally important Schulzke delves into the issue of where the deniers like Professor Stuart Derbyshire will eventually wind up. Derbyshire wrote in a widely-cited 2006 British Medical Journal piece that
“If pain also depends on content derived from outside the brain, then fetal pain cannot be possible, regardless of neural development.”
Schulzke draws the inevitable conclusion: “Not even a complete link between the cortex and thalamus would thus satisfy Derbyshire, who insists that pain requires experience only gained with time. Even a full-term newborn fails that test.” (my emphasis)
A terrific overview that addresses a ton of issues in a thorough but understandable way. Take ten minutes out and read “The disputed science of fetal pain.”
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in his National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
Dr. Joseph Bruner at Vanderbilt is known for his work in fetal surgery, especially on babies with spina bifida, a condition in which the spine does not close properly during development. Vanderbilt confirms that little Samuel Armus was 21 weeks-old in the womb which makes the surgery very risky because if anything goes wrong, the baby cannot survive on its own.
Dr. Bruner and his colleagues, however, have done numerous successful spina bifida surgeries on fetuses that are not yet viable. In this particular surgery, the baby's hand poked out of the incision in its mother's womb and Dr. Bruner says he instinctively offered his finger for the baby to hold. Most versions of the story say the baby reached out and grasped Dr. Bruner's finger, but in an article in USA Today on May 2, 2000, Dr. Bruner says both the mother and the baby were under anesthesia and could not move. Michael Clancy, the photographer who took the picture and who owns the copyright to it says, however, that out of the corner of his eye he saw the uterus shake and the baby's hand pop out of the surgical opening on its own. Clancy says that when the doctor put his finger into the baby's hand, the baby squeezed the finger and held on.
Ping!
Murderers have no feelings for the pain that they cause.
Whether they kill adults or are the mothers of a fetus. They are worried about themselves, not the life they kill.
Indeed. It is a peculiarity of fetal development that the fetus is wired with many, many nerves, far more than it needs. Towards the end of pregnancy, nerves die off until just the ones that are needed remain. One can think of nerve development in a fetus as somewhat analogous to an electrician wiring a house by connecting wires at every possible place, then removing the unneeded wires. With so many extra nerves, it is a logical conclusion that a fetus' (and a premie's) ability to feel pain is more acute than that of a full-term newborn.
Democrats don’t really care about scientific consensus.
Of course, but it won’t be in Time, NYTimes, CBS, ABC and all the other lying news channels.
bump
Very well said.
There is no more extreme barbarism than abortion. It is the quintessential act of evil.
If rending an unborn baby limb-from-limb because it’s inconvenient is not wrong, then nothing is wrong.
Back in the 1840s, a Belgium scientist observed the infusion of a rabbit sperm into a rabbit ovum under a microscope. For the first time the process of epigenesis was observed. The theory had been around for several generation, but not until the development of cell was it possible for observers to know what they were looking for. Within a few years, the Texas Medical Association was so convinced that induced abortion was the destruction of a human being that they persuaded the legislature to prohibit doctors from doing abortions.
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