Do unborn children feel pain?

Two new reports in research journals shed light on some of the latest scientific thinking on the deeply charged question, an ever-present part of the debate over abortion rights.

One paper is a study finding that prematurely born babies feel pain.

Anti-abortion activists immediately cited this to support their contention that fetuses, too, feel pain. But a second report dismisses this notion, claiming the true experience of pain can arise only after birth.

This paper wasn’t a formal study, but rather a personal commentary by a psychologist who researches how the brain processes pain.

In the first report, scientists at University College London described how they measured pain responses in premature babies’ brains. They concluded that these responses probably represent “true” pain, not just reflexes as some researchers had suggested.

The study, published in the April 5 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, was billed as the first direct scientific measure of pain in premature babies. Brain scans taken while babies were having blood tests registered a surge of blood and oxygen in sensory areas in babies’ brains, according to the researchers, showing that the pain was processed in higher levels of the brain.

A key brain area involved, called the somatosensory cortex, helps process sensations from the body surface and is also linked to pain sensation in adults, according to the researchers. They studied 18 babies aged between 25 and 45 weeks from conception.

“Repeated painful procedures are a significant stressor and lead to increased sensitivity to other non-painful procedures,” said Maria Fitzgerald of University College. The researchers said the study points up the need for better pain-control methods for infants.

They insisted, though, that the study says nothing about pain in unborn children.

Yet other scientists in recent years have repeatedly pointed to pain in premature babies—or its supposed absence—as one line of evidence suggesting fetuses either do, or don’t, feel pain.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in the Aug. 24/31, 2005 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association that babies born before 30 weeks’ gestation lack “functional pain perception.” That’s one indicator, they suggested, that “fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester.”

Abortion opponents seized on the new British study as evidence for their longstanding argument that the unborn do feel pain, and that this is further grounds for criminalizing abortion.

The study “backs up research… that babies feel pain before birth as early as 20 weeks into the pregnancy,” wrote Steven Ertelt on lifenews.com, a news website for the anti-abortion rights community. Ertelt is the site’s editor and CEO, and former executive director of Montana Right to Life.

Many scientists consider the jury still out on the question of whether the unborn feel pain; experts can be found on either side of the debate.

One opinion comes from Stuart Derbyshire, a psychologist at the University of Birmingham, U.K. and expert on how the brain processes pain. He wrote in an “analysis and commentary” in the April 15 British Medical Journal that the presence of pain in already born children is not a sign that the unborn can feel it. There’s “good evidence that fetuses cannot experience pain,” wrote Derbyshire.

Essentially, he argued, the complex mental processes necessary for the experience of pain cannot begin until the jolt of life outside the womb kick-starts them.

The brain circuitry for processing pain seems to be complete by 26 weeks’ gestation, he wrote. But true pain requires not only development of the brain but also development of the mind to accommodate the subjectivity of pain.

This mental development occurs only outside the womb, he added, through the baby’s actions and interactions with caregivers. The chemical environment in the uterus encourages sleep and suppresses higher-level brain activity necessary for pain perception, wrote Derbyshire, who uses brain scans frequently in his research.

In the United States, anti-abortion groups are pushing for federal and state laws requiring doctors to tell women who are late in pregnancy, and considering an abortion, that their baby will feel intense pain during it.

Such laws are unwarranted, Derbyshire wrote. However, he agreed on one point with many abortion opponents: even if fetuses don’t feel pain, this doesn’t by itself mean abortion should be legal. Findings of no fetal pain won’t resolve the debate over abortion’s morality, he wrote.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Science writer Jack Lucentini is founder and editor of the World Science science news webzine. He has worked as a staff writer at three daily newspapers, and as a freelance science writer for a range of publications including The Washington Post, Discover magazine and The Scientist magazine. He earned his bachelor's degree at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio in 1993.