Do Unborn babies feel when the mother has an abortion?

from the point of view of a devout christian, I really do think that from the moment of conseption the baby is alive, and I have heard that yes they can. it kind of bothers me that abortion is even leagl, but … no I dont think a baby before about four weeks can FEEL the pain.

My moms a nurse, and we actually talked about this when we watched JUNO. yeah, they can. they can even feel when they die. And of coruse they wouldnt remember, toadaly, they’d die if they had an abortion.rofl.

but yes, they actually can.

No-one really knows, since no-one has memories of being in utero.

However, prior to the development of pain receptors (no earlier than 7 weeks, and no later than 20 weeks) they do not exhibit any signs of pain.

OH BOY THIS ONE HURTS… YES THEY CAN. I HAVE DONE SOME STUDIES ON ABORTIONS JUST BECAUSE a lot OF MY FRIENDS HAVE HAD THEM. THE SALINE ALONE HURTS THEM IT EATS THEIR SKIN. THERE IS A TRUE STORY ABOUT A WOMAN THAT WAS ACTUALLY A BABY THAT SURVIVED A ABORTION. HER MOTHER QUIT IN THE MIDDLE. THEY SWALLOW THE STUFF… LIKE THEY SWALLOW YOUR FLUIDS… AND IT BURNS THEM. IF YOU ARE ASKING BECAUSE YOU WANT TO NOT FEEL GUILTY… 95 PERCENT OF WOMAN THAT HAVE ABORTIONS HAVE POST TRAMATIC STRESS SYNDROM .. GUILT… THEY BASICALLY KILLED THEIR LITTLE ONE. HOW CAN YOU LIVE WITH THIS. I KNOW I COULDNT.

People for and against all say in medical studies that yes ther thing that forms the heart beats but no they can not feel pain until 20 weeks. That is what this girl asked and that is the answer. :) They do not have the nerve endings formed before then But they do say that after they start forming they feel the pain worse than we would because they are new and sencitive so imagine those people who abort after that time. Thats cruel. Before 12 weeks is better if thats the decision you make.

yes I agree,the baby does feel pain,I have seen youtube, of course babies feel pain,if a baby is born early it feels pain so it can in the womb,all these women that want to be free from guilt why should they,if they chose to kill a baby,which that is what it is, no matter how early,its still a life, to me any woman that has an abortion for no good reason then they are murders.

If they don’t feel pain, why do they flinch?? Some studies have shown that they even squeal from the pain! In my opinion, if you truly don’t wish to raise your child, put him or her up for adoption. There are tons of women who can’t conceive and would love to accept such a gift!

Research:

“Your heart began beating at three weeks and has set the ‘rhythm of life’ for all your days. Your brain began to form and soon would send out impulses throughout your body. In a mere four weeks you looked every bit like a tiny baby and even began to react and respond like one.”

“This unborn child has been able to experience pain from the sixth week << and can even be taught conditioned responses… The fetus now sleeps and wakes, “breathes” amnionic fluid regularly to exercise and develop the respiratory system, and also drinks, digests and excretes portions of the fluid. He will drink more fetal fluids if sweetened and less if they are made bitter or sour.”

Speaking strictly from a clinical viewpoint, and sidestepping the moral issues here, it does appear that fetuses can perceive pain and discomfort. They will withdraw from painful stimuli, and they seem to display awareness. Be aware that in most abortions, the baby is torn out of the mother’s body in pieces. Arms, legs, ripped off the fetus. Now, stepping back into the moral issue, frankly, I don’t know how ANY human being could do something like that to a fetus. If you don’t want the baby, there are adoption agencies who would be delighted to provide the loving home that you don’t seem willing to provide. Contact them early so they can arrange placement at birth. Your baby - and it IS YOUR baby - will be eternally grateful. And I do mean, ETERNALLY!

Even the websites for being against abortions say that studies have shown that before a certain time a fetus can not feel any pain. People who dont like abortions (usually who havent been in your situation before) will say that they do but they will also call the the fetus a baby at 8 weeks when it is really not totally functioning and is medically termed a fetus. Its a hard call because no one likes to think how someone would do this to something that they made but sometimes you have to do what is best for you. Like I have said before if you are thinking about this because you think you wont cope there is always help available but if you are thinking of doing this because its what you want then do whats good for your future. No one deserves to give you cr*p because its your body and your life.

I hope this helps

Pain perception in a developing fetus probably doesn’t occur until the third trimester of pregnancy, researchers said Tuesday, citing medical evidence that was promptly criticized by abortion opponents.

The findings by researchers at UCSF were based on a comprehensive review of existing medical evidence on such topics as fetal pain, use of anesthesia and facial expressions of fetuses in reaction to a stimulus.

“There’s no physical capacity for pain prior to 22 weeks” of pregnancy, said Peter Ralston, a UCSF neuroscientist and coauthor of the study. It appears to take several more weeks for the brain circuitry of a fetus to start functioning in a way to allow pain signals to reach the brain, he said.

The results, which appear in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, challenge one of the central tenets of the anti-abortion movement, whose supporters are using state and federal legislation to bring the issue of fetal pain into abortion clinics either to dissuade women from having the procedure or at least to increase routine use of fetal anesthesia.

A bill has been introduced in Congress that would require clinics to give information about fetal pain any time a woman seeks an abortion at 20 weeks or longer after fertilization. At least two states, Arkansas and Georgia, have passed fetal-pain measures, and similar legislation has been proposed in several other states, including California.

Wendy Wright, senior policy director at Concerned Women for America, an organization opposed to abortion, said the review was politically motivated. She said there is no evidence that fetuses necessarily need the same brain circuitry as newborns to experience pain and that pain in a fetus may play out in circuitry that shows up very early in development.

Wright accused the researchers at UCSF of being “fully invested in the abortion agenda,’’ minimizing any evidence that would dissuade medical students and doctors from performing abortion procedures.

About 1.3 million abortions are performed in the United States annually, and 1.4 percent are done at or after 21 weeks.

Scientists have long debated at what point the fetal nervous system develops sufficiently for the sensation of pain to arise. Hard evidence is limited in part by the difficulty of conducting experiments on humans and of finding appropriate “pain models” in animals.

That led a team of doctors and neuroscientists at UCSF to conduct the “systematic multi-disciplinary review” of the medical data described in the journal.

The review cited studies suggesting that the nerve fibers needed to carry pain signals into the brain only appear after about 22 to 24 weeks, and it may take another five to seven weeks for those fibers to start functioning.

Ralston, the study’s coauthor, said he had no illusions about settling a matter that combines limited medical evidence with abortion politics and moral philosophy.

“This is not going to change anyone’s mind,” he said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “But I would hope this will lead to a more reasoned debate about this.”

He was joined in the analysis by Dr. Mark Rosen and Dr. Eleanor Drey, both physicians in the UCSF obstetrics and gynecology department; Susan Lee, an attorney on the UCSF faculty; and Dr. John Colin Partridge, affiliated with the university’s pediatrics unit.

Their study began with a definition of pain as an inherently subjective “sensory and emotional experience that requires the presence of consciousness to permit recognition of a stimulus as unpleasant.”

That is markedly different from the mere ability to take in a noxious stimulus, known medically as “nociception.” Pain, in fact, can occur even without a physical stimulus, as often happens in cases of chronic pain syndromes.

Just because a fetus can sense a surgical procedure that an adult would clearly find painful, or even react in a manner that seems to mirror a pain response, doesn’t mean the fetus actually experiences pain, the researchers said.

An early-stage fetus may withdraw from a needle stick, for instance, but studies show that sort of reaction is driven by firings at the level of the spinal cord. In order for the pain sensation to occur, the signal has to move from the spinal cord level up through a relay structure called the thalamus, and then jump into the brain’s seat of consciousness, known as the cerebral cortex. Researchers said several studies indicate the functional “thalamocortical” circuitry needed for all this to happen seems relatively late to appear in the womb.

The concept of “suffering” is even more subjective – an emotional coloring that can come with a painful sensation but is subject to some degree of conscious control.

“Pain is in the brain,” Ralston said. “That’s what people often don’t really recognize. The cortex must participate for any sensation.”

He and his colleagues argued against mandatory discussion of fetal pain control for first- or second-trimester abortions. They also questioned the need for experimental methods of delivering painkillers to the fetus in abortions, given “little or no evidence” that this actually benefits the fetus and concern that such efforts might harm the woman.

“Because pain perception probably does not function before the third trimester, discussions of fetal pain for abortions performed before the end of the second trimester should be noncompulsory,” the researchers wrote.

“Fetal anesthesia or analgesia should not be recommended or routinely offered for abortion because current experimental techniques provide unknown fetal benefit and may increase risks for the woman.”

Wright disputed that conclusion.

One of the first questions women have when considering an abortion is whether the fetus has the capacity to feel pain, Wright said.

A 2004 report on fetal pain, given to a legislative panel in Virginia by Dr. Jean Wright, a professor and chair of pediatrics at the Mercer University School of Medicine in Savannah, Ga., who is unrelated to Wendy Wright, also came to a much different conclusion than that reached by the UCSF researchers.

Jean Wright’s study found that a fetus “clearly possesses the ability to experience pain from 20 weeks of gestation, and aspects of pain perception are present from as early as six-seven weeks gestation and continue to mature and organize until the 20th week.”

She cited evidence that the highest density of pain receptors in the skin occurs from 20 to 30 weeks. Combined with the lack of pain-modulating abilities, this suggests, Wright concluded, that “the pain perceived by a fetus is probably more intense than that perceived by term newborns or older children.”