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Pain in the Unborn and
Newborn Baby: Part Three Part Three of Three Editor's note. The following is Part Three of a series which began Wednesday written by NRLC President Dr. Wanda Franz for Pro-Life Perspective.
These past few days, I have been talking about how newborn babies feel pain and the negative effects of exposing them to pain in the first days after birth. It is clear that the ability to feel pain is very well-developed at birth. Indeed, it is clear that newborn babies feel pain even more intensely than do adults. If this is true, then when does this ability develop in-utero. At what point can unborn babies feel pain? In order to answer this question, we must understand a little bit about the amazing nervous system of the human person. It is complex and there are many things that we have yet to learn about how it works. However, we have recently had many new technological advances that have greatly expanded our understanding of how we feel pain. In order to feel pain, we must have the basic structures of the nervous pathways and receptors that allow the feelings to be sent around in the body. Second, we must also have the chemicals that that allow the electrical impulses to be transmitted to the parts of the nervous system that will register the pain. All of these elements develop over time in the baby in the womb. Let's look at what we know about this development. As early as 18 days after conception, the brain begins to take shape. By 20 days, the brain has already differentiated into forebrain, midbrain, and hind brain. The spinal cord has also started to grow at 18 days. By 5 weeks after conception, the important pain receptors start to appear in the baby's body. The pain receptors first appear around the baby's mouth, followed by development of the nerve fibers, which carry the pain stimuli to the brain. By 18 weeks, the pain receptors have appeared throughout the baby's body, supported by the nerve fibers. The cerebral cortex develops between 6 to 18 weeks after conception. By 18 weeks, the cortex has a full complement of neurons. In adults, the cortex has been recognized as the center of pain consciousness. At 8 weeks, the thalamus develops. This part of the brain is essential because it is the main relay center in the brain for sensory impulses going from the spinal cord to the cortex. One of the most important sensory impulse is, of course, pain. By 18 weeks, the nerve tracts are established to transmit these impulses. It would appear that the structures are all in place by 18 weeks, and that is also the time when stress hormones can first be detected in the baby's body following painful stimuli. When doctors perform surgery on these babies, the stress hormones appear, indicating that the baby feels pain, just as happens in adults. However, if the doctors medicate the babies, no stress hormones are detected. Thus, our ability to measure stress hormones has greatly increased our ability to study pain in these unborn children. We can be more certain about the ability of these babies to feel pain if we see behavioral evidence of avoidance and escape when they experience pain. It is interesting that some of the earliest research on infants gives us clear evidence of such behavior. At six weeks, the unborn baby moves away from a pain stimulus applied to the mouth. By 18 weeks, the baby moves only that body part away from the particular point where the pain stimulus is being applied. This corresponds exactly to the time frame of 6 to 18 weeks when the pain receptors are developing in the body of the unborn baby. Thus, we have clear scientific evidence that, by 20 weeks in the womb, the unborn baby is capable of feeling pain, which is probably of greater magnitude than that felt by adults. Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com. |
