#248 - The Debate Continues

Another round fired from the cannon. A new study has been released in the Journal of Neuroscience indicating that premature babies can, indeed, feel pain. For many years the argument has been that preemies (and, by extension, unborn babies) cannot truly feel pain and therefore are merely reflexively responding to stimuli. This study would seem to contradict that presumption, and gives the right to life argument some figurative teeth.

One of the worst falsehoods perpetuated by the abortionists has been that since a fetus is "incapable" of processing pain, abortion can be regarded as just another procedure. Something that (in their dogma) corrects a mistake without violating the sanctity of life. Pro-lifers have, on the other hand, always believed that this simply could not be true. Since scientists still have a hard time pinning down the precise moment at which pain processors develop in the fetus' brain, who's to say that they cannot feel pain, or at what point in the pregnancy it becomes painful for the victim to be subjected to such a procedure?

This new study would seem to sharpen that argument. For myself, I have always harbored the belief that these unborn children are far more aware than abortionists are willing to concede. When I was still ambitious enough to try to improve my mind, I took a creative writing class at a local college. For my term assignment, I wrote a report on pre-natal psychology, a discipline still lambasted by many psychologists today. Probably the liberal ones, would be my guess, although I have no imperical evidence of that.

These papers were subject to peer review, and I remember one gentleman in particular remarking that my paper sounded less like a creative writing assignment, and more like a doctoral thesis. That was a compliment, given that the assignment was to write a paper based on research, and I had given this one hours of my life. I learned that there were numerous instances of people having memories that had formed while still in the womb. People whose mothers had sung a particular melody while pregnant, and who hadn't sung it after the baby was born. The person then hears that melody in another context and it sounds familiar. It's only when describing the melody to their mother that the mystery is resolved. I was (and still am) fascinated by this premise. Whether or not people choose to accept it as real science, I think this new study helps to support the notion.

Now, I don't for a moment believe that this new argument will sway the abortionists one whit. Their rationalizations are too firmly rooted in societal norms to be easily swayed by a mere study. In fact, I predict (this is a sucker's bet, I realize) that the nay-sayers will quickly talk down this study and argue against every point it makes. This is, after all, what government grants are all about. Still, I find it encouraging that even in this "enlightened" twenty-first century, scientists can still verify - even without intending to - that God really does know what he's doing.

If, in the meantime, this kind of study makes just one woman waver in her decision to get an abortion, it will have been worth it. We need to be far more conscientious about this decision than the pro-choice executioners would have us be. We need to understand that deciding to end a pregnancy does not correct a mistake. It ends a life. This is not a convicted felon who deserves to die for his or her misdeed. This is an innocent child who is as yet incapable of committing sin*.

God understands that. And he is not pleased.

* I realize that there are and will be times when an abortion may be necessary, especially in preserving the life of the mother. I'm just saying that such should be our moral compass that even to consider such a thing would be personally abhorrent and only undertaken under such an extreme condition.