Can Fetuses Feel Pain?

This is a stupid quesiton. An unborn child achieves the ability to feel pain sometime between conception and birth. Is someone claiming that this is not true?
 
I really, really, REALLY don't buy Derbyshire's diagram if I'm interpreting it correctly - he says that an infant doesn't feel pain until sometime around 9 months? Is that right?
 
This reminds me of the old myth that children did not feel pain, which was used to justify things like surgery without anaesthetic. Most of the world's leading experts on pediatric pain would probably disagree with Stuart Derbyshire and would say that babies feel pain from about 25 weeks gestation onwards.

Here's an news article about some work done by Maria Fitzgerald, a pre-eminent pain biologist.
"Premature babies have only a limited repertoire of behaviour, so the question is how much pain are they actually feeling when they undergo hospital procedures," Professor Fitzgerald said.

"It has in the past been impossible to measure pain objectively in premature babies. What we have done for the first time is to measure the activity of nerve cells in the brain that are known to be stimulated by pain," she said.

The babies were aged between 25 and 45 weeks after conception and were monitored immediately before, during and after a routine blood test.

Even the youngest babies showed signs of being consciously aware of the pain caused by the needle stick, the study found.

"The importance of this is clear. The United Kingdom has the highest rate of low birth-weight babies in Western Europe. About 12 per cent of all babies born need some level of care at birth and 2.5 per cent need neonatal intensive care."

"Since pain information is transmitted to the pre-term infant's brain cortex from 25 weeks there is the potential for pain experience to influence brain development from a very early age as the brain is highly malleable at this stage of development," Professor Fitzgerald said.
Click to expand...

from here: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=204&ObjectID=10376361

And, some more from Dr. Fitzgerald: (from here: http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/313/7060/797 )

So can a fetus feel pain? Given the definitions of feeling and pain the answer must be no. But we cannot deny that the fetal nervous system mounts protective responses to tissue injury, starting just before the last trimester. The evidence for early exposure to noxious stimuli resulting in adverse effects on future neural development is increasing.16 17 18 19 20 In other words, noxious stimulation may not need to penetrate consciousness in order to substantially alter the course of sensory development.

If a fetus or preterm infant is to survive and mature into an adult it is essential to consider this issue. As with the clear change that has occurred in the past seven years in pain management in neonates,21 it may now be pertinent to consider pain control in medical procedures for fetuses in the last trimester. The effects of trauma of any kind on the developing nervous system should be minimised as far as possible to avoid changing the course of normal development.
Click to expand...

And, from JAMA,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ract&list_uids=16118385&itool=pubmed_Abstract

And another review:
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/313/7060/796

Also, google work by Drs. Bonnie Stevens, S. Anand, and Anna Taddio.

Dr. Derbyshire's suggestion that newborns don't really feel pain is very controversial and potentially dangerous.
 
You should be able to get a general idea of when a fetus can feel pain based on the physical development of the nervous system. I don't know when this is, but I'd be interested in learning about it.

When that phyiscal development links up with enough mental development to have an awareness that is required to feel pain, I have no idea. But I would think it's somewhat later than the point when the nervous system is adequately developed.

Of course the whole point of this is for religious fanatics to try to convince everyone else that abortion is evil after all, because it causes suffering in a fetus. They ignore the point completely that most abortions are performed before the fetus has a nervous system that is developed near enough to experience any kind of pain or sensation.
 
Here's the deal: doctors are required by federal law to inform women about to have an abortion that their fetuses may feel pain and thus certain numbing medication will be applied. The problem with that is that the physiology of pain is not present until approximately 26 weeks. So prior to this point, the application of this medication is unnecessary and like any medication has risks. Also, the doctors are required to disceminate misinformation, which is unethical.
 
Pain as a damage warning system is of no use if the organism can do nothing to get away from, or otherwise deal with the cause of damage.

Hard to explain its function in a foetus in those terms.

Same argument largely applies to a baby of course.

A hint of evolutionary history here possibly?
 
The concern of people is that the fetus will suffer during the process, not that the fetus will be reacting to the pain. There is no biological evidence that the fetus suffers.
 
Agreed that a fetus prior to the third trimester does not have the capacity for nociception. Into the third trimester and beyond it certainly does. In the case of an abortion, I think the physiological data that I linked to, and there is more out there, would suggest that a late-term fetus does indeed experience nociception. If anything, there is some evidence that our endogenous pain inhibition systems develop late, so that premies and neonates may actually experience greater nociception. If the baby/fetus is dying, then the humane thing is to provide some relief. If is not dying, it is even more important to provide relief because we know that unchecked nociception can have longterm consequences for neurological development.

Sam, I don't think your evolutionary explanation works. Pain signals damage and the baby communicates its need for pain relief. Just because a baby can't verbally communicate his/her pain does not mean it doesn't communicate it nonverbally. Pain behaviours are fairly robust in neonates and premies (see work by Bonnie Stevens). This is not so different from the way babies communicate their other needs.
 
Last edited:
Pain is more than just a sensation, however. Indeed, it's the associations we make with pain that adds to its unpleasantness.

Neonates are most definitely born with the ability to register sensations unpleasant enough they desire the sensation to stop. Anybody who's ever taken a heel-prick bleed knows that much. But how can we relate an infant's sensation of pain to our own? Afterall, some bacteria exposed to light will retreat hastily; our sympathy towards those suffering from 'pain' as a sensory reaction must be more than just stimulus-response.

Experience, anticipation, fear and emotion paint a much fuller picture. And these take time to develop.

It's a field that we have to be cautious with. On one side, pain during this developmental period can have adverse affects on the growing infant. On the other, extrapolating adult sensation on a non-adult organism can give erroneous information.

Athon
 
As far as a fetus feeling pain in the third trimester, how many abortions are performed that far along? As I understand it, late-term abortions are mostly performed when the life or health of the mother is at risk, and abortions of "convenience" are usually performed in the first trimester (as early as possibile).

Does anyone have stats on that?
 
athon said:
Pain is more than just a sensation, however. Indeed, it's the associations we make with pain that adds to its unpleasantness.

Neonates are most definitely born with the ability to register sensations unpleasant enough they desire the sensation to stop. Anybody who's ever taken a heel-prick bleed knows that much. But how can we relate an infant's sensation of pain to our own? Afterall, some bacteria exposed to light will retreat hastily; our sympathy towards those suffering from 'pain' as a sensory reaction must be more than just stimulus-response.

Experience, anticipation, fear and emotion paint a much fuller picture. And these take time to develop.

It's a field that we have to be cautious with. On one side, pain during this developmental period can have adverse affects on the growing infant. On the other, extrapolating adult sensation on a non-adult organism can give erroneous information.

Athon
Click to expand...

Agreed, which is why I refered to nociception rather than pain. Interestingly, there is emerging data that premies learn pretty fast which events will be associated with nociception. They exhibit more pain behaviours (such as guarding) in the presence of some staff or equipment than others. If they are anticipating it, then I think they are crossing your line into pain.

I am also concerned about your use of "adult". Are you saying children do not experience pain? There is a vast amount of evidence that they do.
 
Fetal pain never was the primary objection to abortion, just an additional way to get fence-sitters to be against it.

If it were really a question of murder, lack of fetal pain would be irrelevant to whether it should be illegal.
 
I agree Abdul. Murder isn't about how much pain the victim feels.

In truth, I am mostly interested in this as an issue of science. It's implications for late-term abortions are of less importance to me.
 
Abdul Alhazred said:
Fetal pain never was the primary objection to abortion, just an additional way to get fence-sitters to be against it.

If it were really a question of murder, lack of fetal pain would be irrelevant to whether it should be illegal.
Click to expand...

I thought of this right away, as well.

WHO CARES?!

If you're aborting the fetus, does it matter how much pain they were in? Or is this just an attempt to emotionally bias the issue?

I'm thinking the latter is definitely true.
 
Another way to measure fetal pain is to look at premature babies which this study did. It appears there is pain perceived at 25 weeks. It isn't clear in the article how much younger the fetus can be and still experience pain but I think the fetal development links in the thread more than cover that area.

Infants at 24 weeks are about as young as can survive outside the womb. A small percentage of those younger might survive. I didn't look up the record for age but from memory about 14 ounces is the smallest one can survive and at that size, very few do survive. Abortions are only done at 24 weeks or later as has been noted when the mother's life is threatened.

The vast majority of abortions appear to be done before the fetus is capable of feeling pain. The whole issue is clearly one of those anti-abortion political topics and not one of true medical concern.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom