Research: Unborn Children Can Remember
Baby in ultrasound (Credit: Sam Pullara)
I wasn’t sure what to make of this when I first heard about it. Even being a pro-lifer, I was more than a little dubious. But now that I’ve had a chance to read up on it a little, it’s pretty interesting.
The Washington Times reports researchers have used some “gentle but precise sensory” stimulus to test memory and response of unborn children. They found that unborn children of about 30 weeks development onward could remember sounds up to four weeks later.
The article also mentions a 2003 experiment where it was discovered that unborn children could distinguish their mother’s voice from the voice of a stranger:
In 2003, psychologists and obstetricians at Queen’s University in Canada found a profound mother-baby link. In a study of 60 pregnant women, they found that the unborn babies preferred the voices of their own mothers – both before and after birth.
The heart rates of fetuses sped up when they heard their mother reading a poem, and slowed down when they heard a stranger’s voice – evidence of “sustained attention, memory and learning by the fetus,” said Barbara Kisilevsky, a professor of nursing who led the research.
Each of these experiments is especially interesting in that while still in the womb, the child has little experience interacting with the world to develop senses and memory. Being in that enclosed environment, they are almost completely sensory-deprived–though experiments have found that unborn children can feel pain perhaps at as little as 8 weeks development.
These findings would also seem to point strongly to the consciousness of unborn children. After all, in order to remember something, you usually have to be conscious of it in the first place.
Which brings up even more ghastly implications for abortion, especially late term abortions which can be done right up to the 9th month of pregnancy. What must it be like to feel all safe in your mother’s womb, having heard her voice for weeks or months…only to feel the sharp pain of the abortionist’s knife as it cuts you apart?
The article also says a call to NARAL Pro-Choice America for comment on these findings was not returned. Undoubtedly they were too busy burying their heads in the sand of indifference to human life.
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