Despite Study's Claims, Expert Insists Unborn Babies Do Feel Pain
by Mary Rettig
August 26, 2005
(AgapePress) - Dr. Jean Wright, M.D., a Christian pediatrician and expert on fetal development, disputes the conclusions of a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that claims unborn babies feel no pain. She says that finding is wrong, and she suspects the authors of the study have an agenda. After completing their research, the investigators came to the conclusion that laws requiring discussion of fetal pain before a second trimester abortion should not be passed. Wright says they drew that conclusion because they are convinced babies in the womb do not feel pain until they are at least 28 weeks old. But Wright, who serves as Vice President over Women and Children at Memorial Health Center in Savanna, Georgia, says her professional experience has repeatedly negated that notion.
"Every day that I stand in our neonatal intensive care unit and see an infant that's 25, 26, or 28 weeks gestation, I don't have to have any of these fancy studies to say [whether these infants] feel pain," she contends, "because here's the same baby that, inside, you would be measuring and referring to as a fetus, that I'm seeing outside and calling him a premie baby. And that data is overwhelming."
According to the Christian doctor, those NICU infants are unmistakably aware of pain, and yet the authors of the fetal pain study continue to deny that unborn babies at the same stages of development as these premature babies are able to sense painful stimuli. She finds it hard to understand why these scientists refuse to consider that type of tangible evidence -- unless, perhaps, they are not entirely objective.
Of course, Wright points out, the JAMA editor refuted the idea that the article was in any way politically motivated -- an assertion that compels the doctor to smile. "I can't help but grin when I see that reaction," she notes, "because the very first paragraph of this article frames this piece in response to the legislation that we would call the Unborn Pain Awareness Act." In other words," she says, the authors "start in their very first paragraph to frame their article in the context of legislation -- and that is politics."
Regardless of what that editor said, Wright is convinced the article was written for political purposes. But although she expects the report in the AMA's journal will, as one researcher said, "stir up a hornets' nest," the pro-family pediatrician says the controversy may be necessary in order to get more people to examine the evidence that unborn babies really do feel pain.
Mary Rettig, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
