A Matter of Perception

How low have we fallen. I know that there are some who would like to believe that babies do not feel pain in the womb, and I have seem some studies that seem to support that, if only I were ignorant enough to believe them. On paper, whether a baby "feels" pain has more to do with whether the child is wanted and/or if the doctor supports the abortion industry. For example, if your baby was planned and precious and long awaited by all parties and something goes wrong, requiring in-utero surgery to fix it - you will want to sign that little document that allows the medical team of crack surgeons to use top of the line anaesthetics to ensure an improved medical outcome (the survival of your little bundle of joy). Now maybe you can be fooled into thinking that this young child lacks the specific structural developments to "feel" the pain or, more precisely, "recognise" the pain it feels on an intellectual level (apparently it isn't smart enough yet to recognise why it is writhing in agony). But the child fares much better if it is not exposed to the pain it is not supposed to be able to feel yet. That is practical medical reality, not wishful theory.Of course, if the child is unwanted and a royal inconvenience to your plans to go to where-ever to do whatever, then any abortionist will tell you - of course it can't feel pain - everything is there (the brain, the nerves, etc.), but the brain just isn't developed enough to recognise the pain for what it is.Bull!!!! This arrogance was behind the practice not only of performing in-utero surgeries without pain relief measures, but also performing circumcisions on young boys without pain relief measures. After all, those very studies that suggest that babies do not feel pain until after 29 weeks, also say that we really don't develop the cognitive ability to recognise pain until well after we are born. Yet, an experiment designed to test baby boys and their response to circumcisions under various methods of pain relief had to be stopped very early in the testing stage because it became immediately apparent that the babies did feel pain to a much greater degree than adults do. The remaining patients were given their circumcisions with the maximum pain relief measures. And modern in-utero surgeries do make use of pain relief measures for the baby.The mistake was that "everyone" assumed that the developing brain lacked the ability to feel pain until it was older, that all the parts weren't all working together yet; when the reality is that developing brain lacks the ability to deal with the pain - the brain can't shut it down. The Baby may not be able to identify what the pain is the way that we can as adults - but, the pain is not only present but much more intense in developing babies.I don't know exactly when babies do begin to feel, but I would not touch a fetus after seven weeks gestation - after 12 weeks, your doctor would have to be a cruel, sadistic SOB to proceed with an abortion (either that, or just old and out of touch with modern medicine). I would even wonder about babies as early as seven days when the neural tube begins to form, but I can at least hope that one week is too soon.We try to protect animals because they lack our intelligence and understanding. But, we recognise that they feel pain. Why do we assume for humans that it doesn't really hurt until it can be identified and labelled.
As posted elsewhere on 5/31/2006 3:13 PM