Researchers attending the Infant Consciousness Conference, 28 February to 1 March, in New York have concluded that recent evidence indicates that fetal consciousness might begin before 24 weeks gestation. The event was sponsored by New York University.
A survey of conference delegates assessing evidence of fetal consciousness found that forty-seven per cent believed it first develops between 24 weeks gestation and birth (the later prenatal period), while only thirteen per cent believed it comes six months after birth (early postnatal).
However, ten per cent of delegates said consciousness arose before 24 weeks gestation (early prenatal). Over half of the delegates therefore agreed that human consciousness arises at some point before birth.
Bioethicist and co-organiser of the conference Claudia Passos-Ferreira said that “whatever you claim about this, there are some moral implications”, including the issue of abortion.
Delegate Topun Austin, a neonatologist at the University of Cambridge who voted for the “later prenatal” stage, said on the abortion debate: “I think you need to work your way down… Then it’s for society to decide what is acceptable.”
While there is much debate about when consciousness begins in the brain and how to define it, the relay of sensory and motor information between the thalamus and the cortex of the brain, which is considered by many scientists to be essential to consciousness, exists at around 24 weeks of gestation.
Medical researchers at the conference also looked at recent studies, including Magnetoencephalography (MEG), a neuroimaging technique measuring magnetic fields produced by electrical activity in the brain, which has been used to test if unborn babies’ brains react to sound patterns being disrupted, which would indicate a memory and consciousness.
The team from the University of Tübingen reported in 2021 that unborn babies at least as young as 35 weeks gestation reacted to the non-invasive MEG test.
It is also now possible for babies born as prematurely as 22 weeks to survive in neonatal intensive care units. In 2022, a baby girl born at 22 weeks in Swansea was given a 10% chance of survival. Imogen is now a healthy toddler, having spent 132 days in hospital.
Abortion in most cases is legal up to 24 weeks around the UK, though it is permitted up to birth in instances of disability, such as Down’s syndrome, and when the mother’s life is said to be at risk.
However, as SPUC reported this week, Labour MPs have indicated that they may use a government bill to push for abortion to be removed from criminal law entirely.
On the matter of fetal pain, Austin admitted that such an experience likely required “a degree of consciousness”, implying that abortion would inflict pain on unborn babies, though he resisted making any “absolute” pronouncement on it.
But as one major science outlet reported this week, the conference and its conclusion certainly “veered into more unsettled territory” for the medical community and broader society.
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