The Charmed Circle & The First Ache 

Today's edition is based on an extraordinary article that appeared in the New York Times, titled, "The First Ache." Let's begin with four representative quotes from Annie Murphy Paul's lengthy piece, published yesterday in the Times's Sunday magazine. Carefully contrast the first two with the latter two.

"New evidence, however, has persuaded him [Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand] that fetuses can feel pain by 20 weeks gestation (that is, halfway through a full-term pregnancy) and possibly earlier. As Anand raised awareness about pain in infants, he is now bringing attention to what he calls 'signals from the beginnings of pain.'"

"To be certain that his fetal patients feel pain, [Dr. Nicholas] Fisk says, 'I would need one of them to come up to me at the age of 6 or 7 and say, 'Excuse me, Doctor, that bloody hurt, what you did to me!'  In the absence of such first-person testimony, he concludes, it's 'better to err on the safe side' and assume that the fetus can feel pain starting around 20 to 24 weeks."

"'A fetus is biologically human, of course,' he [Dr. Stuart Derbyshire] says. 'It isn't a cow. But it's not yet psychologically human.' That is a status not bestowed at conception but earned with each connection made and word spoken. Following this logic to its conclusion, Derbyshire has declared that babies cannot feel pain until they are 1 year old."

"'By personifying the fetus, they're trying to steer the woman's decision away from abortion,' says Elizabeth Nash, a public-policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-rights group." [www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/magazine/10Fetal-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=fetal+pain&st=nyt&oref=slogin]

Partial-birth abortion stirred up a hornet's nest almost from the first day NRLC began to make the world aware of this crime against the humanity of unborn babies. But public response to the debate over fetal pain, while growing, has been slower to coalesce.

The tougher sledding can be explained in many ways, beginning with the "mainstream" media's relative level of response. As mouthpieces for the Abortion Establishment, they eagerly parroted the lies, distortions, and omissions on partial-birth abortion. But any discussion--even attempts to debunk the hideousness of what this "technique" does to unborn babies--furthered the interest of educating the public and whetting their appetite for more.

Without imputing conscious agreement, neither the Abortion Establishment nor the Media Elite have spent nearly as much time on fetal pain. But…. it is only a matter of time.

Paul's essay is good journalism. She balances those who think fetal pain is hooey with those who carefully explain why all the evidence suggests that, at the latest, unborn babies at 20 weeks can experience pain.

I've given you the link to the article which must be read in its entirely to be fully appreciate. Let me offer a few summary points.

First, the issue of fetal pain challenges the received wisdom at a number of junctures. Just remember, by way of preface, that Dr. Anand's interest was sparked by the evidence that newborns in neonatal intensive care units came out of operating rooms in terrible shape. Why?

Because (in the bad old days) they received only a paralytic to keep them still but no anesthesia! "Everybody knew" that "newborns' nervous systems were too immature to sense pain." To withhold pain medication now would be considered a "violation of medical ethics." Dr. Anand just kept investigating to answer the question, "Could it be that this pain system is developed and functional before the baby is born?"

The debate over fetal pain runs into the conventional wisdom that for pain to be felt the pain signal must make its way all the way to the cerebral cortex. These connections are not made until the beginning of the third trimester, ergo "there can be no consciousness and therefore no experience of pain." Paul writes.

Anand and others flatly disagree. Let me offer a lengthy quote from the article:

"Anand acknowledges that the cerebral cortex is not fully developed in the fetus until late in gestation. What is up and running, he points out, is a structure called the subplate zone, which some scientists believe may be capable of processing pain signals. A kind of holding station for developing nerve cells, which eventually melds into the mature brain, the subplate zone becomes operational at about 17 weeks. The fetus's undeveloped state, in other words, may not preclude it from feeling pain. In fact, its immature physiology may well make it more sensitive to pain, not less: the body's mechanisms for inhibiting pain and making it more bearable do not become active until after birth." (Emphasis mine.)

Second, the disagreement is not just about physiology. It is intertwined with the perplexing question of the origins of consciousness. Paul writes about the work of Dr. Bjorn Merker who has investigated children with hydranencephaly--a condition in "which the brain stem is preserved but the upper hemispheres are largely missing and replaced by fluid."

Yet there was considerable evidence from parents that these children "seemed to demonstrate awareness." Merker proposed in an article in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences that "the brain stem is capable of supporting a preliminary kind of awareness on its own."

Merker wrote, the "tacit consensus concerning the cerebral cortex" that it is the "organ of consciousness" may "have been reached prematurely, and may in fact be seriously in error."

One other fascinating point, though more conjectural. Some research, Paul writes, "shows that pain may leave a lasting, even lifelong, imprint on the developing nervous system."

Pain is usually a passing sensation for adults. But "Infants, and perhaps fetuses, may do something different with pain: some research suggests they take it into their bodies, making it part of their fast-branching neural networks, part of their flesh and blood." Paul writes. In other words, "Early encounters with pain may alter the threshold at which pain is felt later on, making a child hypersensitive to pain -- or, alternatively, dangerously indifferent to it."

As you read the full article, notice the incredibly convoluted hoops through which disbelievers of fetal pain must jump in order to disagree. Dr. Derbyshire, whom I quote at the beginning, has a theory that "the experience of pain has to be learned -- and the fetus, lacking language or interactions with caregivers, has no chance of learning it." Goodness gracious!

Paul concludes with a fascinating insight about how "The capacity to feel pain has often been put forth as proof of a common humanity." A contrary conclusion has historically been used to justify exclusion.

"Many 19th-century doctors believed blacks were indifferent to pain and performed surgery on them without even that era's rudimentary anesthesia," Paul writes. "Over time, the charmed circle of those considered alive to pain, and therefore fully human, has widened to include members of other religions and races, the poor, the criminal, the mentally ill -- and, thanks to the work of Sunny Anand and others, the very young."

By all means go to www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/magazine/10Fetal-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=fetal+pain&st=nyt&oref=slogin  and read, "The First Ache.