Fetal Psychology

Behaviorally speaking, there's little difference between a newborn baby and a 32-week-old fetus.
A new wave of research suggests that the fetus can feel, dream, even enjoy The Cat in the Hat.
The abortion debate may never be the same.

The scene never fails to give goose bumps: the baby, just seconds old and still dewy from the womb, is lifted into the arms of its exhausted but blissful parents. They gaze adoringly as their new childstretches and squirms, scrunches its mouth and opens its eyes. To anyone watching this tender vignette, the message is unmistakable. Birth is the beginning of it all, ground zero, the moment from which the clock starts ticking.

Not so, declares Janet DiPietro. Birth may be a grand occasion, says the Johns Hopkins University psychologist, but "it is a trivial event in development. Nothing neurologically interesting happens."

Armed with highly sensitive and sophisticated monitoring gear, DiPietro and other researchers today are discovering that the real action starts weeks earlier. At 32 weeks of gestation--two months before a baby is considered fully prepared for the world, or "at term" --a fetus is behaving almost exactly as a newborn. And it continues to do so for the
next 12 weeks.

As if overturning the common conception of infancy weren't enough, scientists are creating a startling new picture of intelligent life in the womb.

Among the revelations:

* By nine weeks, a developing fetus can hiccup and react to loud noises.
By the end of the second trimester it can hear.

* Just as adults do, the fetus experiences the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep of dreams.

* The fetus savors its mother's meals, first picking up the food tastes of a culture in the womb.

* Among other mental feats, the fetus can distinguish between the voice of Mom and that of a stranger,
and respond to a familiar story read to it.

* Even a premature baby is aware, feels, responds, and adapts to its environment.

* Just because the fetus is responsive to certain stimuli doesn't mean that it should be the target of efforts to enhance development. Sensory stimulation of the fetus can in fact lead to bizarre patterns of adaptation later on.

The roots of human behavior, researchers now know, begin to develop early--just weeks after conception, in fact. Well before a woman typically knows she is pregnant, her embryo's brain has already begun to bulge. By five weeks, the organ that looks like a lumpy inchworm has already embarked on the most spectacular feat of human development: the creation of the deeply creased and convoluted cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that will eventually allow the growing person to move, think, speak, plan, and create in a human way.

At nine weeks, the embryo's ballooning brain allows it to bend its body, hiccup, and react to loud sounds. At week ten, it moves its arms, "breathes" amniotic fluid in and out, opens its jaw, and stretches. Before the first trimester is over, it yawns, sucks, and swallows as well as feels and smells. By the end of the second trimester, it can hear;toward the end of pregnancy, it can see.

<SNIP>

Pulled from Quora.........

Children are born human beings. They are not in the womb.

No one advocates abortion. People realize it is a tough decision that only the woman involved has the right to decide, not a politician who has never met her, not some blithering idiot who thinks a clump of cells is a child. Not some religious sorts who have never actually read their religious book. Only the person involved has the right to determine if a bunch of cells will continue to become a child when it is born. Females are actually more than incubators obeying a strange man they have never met.

I note the righties don’t cry and wail about living breathing children getting shot in schools, they just shrug. At best they will mouth a platitude about “thoughts and prayers” then ignore the weeping parents, the bereft friends and relatives. But let a sperm get close to an egg and it is the most precious thing on earth, till it is born and becomes a child. Then it is fair game to be murdered.

They want you dead.

Do NOT comply.

Children are born human beings. They are not in the womb.

No one advocates abortion. People realize it is a tough decision that only the woman involved has the right to decide, not a politician who has never met her, not some blithering idiot who thinks a clump of cells is a child. Not some religious sorts who have never actually read their religious book. Only the person involved has the right to determine if a bunch of cells will continue to become a child when it is born. Females are actually more than incubators obeying a strange man they have never met.

I note the righties don’t cry and wail about living breathing children getting shot in schools, they just shrug. At best they will mouth a platitude about “thoughts and prayers” then ignore the weeping parents, the bereft friends and relatives. But let a sperm get close to an egg and it is the most precious thing on earth, till it is born and becomes a child. Then it is fair game to be murdered.