Jivin J’s Life Links 7-2-09
by JivinJ
One ruling prevents the parents of a teen who received an abortion at Planned Parenthood from obtaining PP’s medical records. The parents wanted the records to bolster their civil case against PP for failing to notify them….
The other ruling finds that the OH legislature can regulate the off-label use of RU-486 and prevent abortion providers from prescribing after 7 weeks into pregnancy.
The clinics will reopen at their former sites in Pembroke Pines and Oakland Park and offer exams, HIV testing and access to birth control. In the winter, the sites are likely to add add abortion services.
Last year, four PP clinics in Broward and one in Boca Raton were shut down amid financial mismanagement, and the national organization severed its ties.
PP of South Palm Beach and Broward Counties could not account for about $440k of its $3 million budget, and there were allegations that an annual financial report had been falsified.
Part of this research involved the effect of music on fetuses. While we knew that mothers often sing to their unborn children, we weren’t sure that the unborn child could hear them. We are now. A segment of The Music Instinct featured Sheila C. Woodward of the University of Southern CA, who has studied fetal responses to music. A camera and a microphone designed for underwater use were inserted into the uterus of a pregnant woman. And then Woodward sang.
The hydrophone picked up two sounds: the “whooshing” of the uterine artery and the unmistakable sound of a woman singing a lullaby. Then something extraordinary happened. Upon hearing the woman’s voice, the unborn child smiled….
Perhaps understandably, the connection between fetal responses to music and abortion weren’t mentioned in the show. What is not so understandable is that the program’s website contains no mention of Woodward and her findings. It’s as if someone realized the implications and hoped nobody would notice.
I don’t think that there’s some kind of conspiracy afoot. I just think that the PBS people’s worldview won’t allow them to make the obvious connection. Abortion on demand is only possible if people minimize the similarities between the fetus and us.
“We need to keep in mind that iPS cells are not perfectly similar to embryonic stem cells,” said Lowry, an assistant professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology. “We’re not sure what this means with regard to the biology of pluripotent stem cells. At this point our analyses comprise just an observation. It could be biologically irrelevant, or it could be manifested as an advantage or a disadvantage.”
[Photo attribution: timesonline.typepad.com]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
When I worked at Priests for Life, I did some research on what sorts of studies have been done to find out what sort of awareness of the outside world the preborn child has in the womb.
I remember one study (and I don’t think this was especially recent) that tested the ability of unborn babies to learn. The way they tested this was to use music. I don’t remember details, but here is the basic idea. . .
While the child was in the womb, a certain piece of music was played at a regular interval (say, daily) in the presence of the pregnant mom. Then, shortly after birth, several songs were played. One of them was the same piece they had been exposed to regularly while unborn. The others, the mothers had never played while pregnant. They watched for the babies’ reactions, and concluded with certainty that the babies after being born definitely recognized the song they had come to know while they were in the womb. They reacted to it in a way that showed recognition, as compared to how they reacted to the other songs they had not heard before.
What the study was looking for was learning ability (which was proven to be present) of unborn babies. But, in the process they showed clearly that babies hear the outside world and even can learn and recognize things they hear regularly while unborn and this carries through to their state of life after being born.
This basic understanding that babies hear and retain awareness of what they hear before and after birth, has been known for some time. There is another study (fairly old, if I recall) that conclusively found that babies clearly recognize their mother’s voice and can pick it out from all other voices, even immediately after birth. They react in a unique, positive way to her voice in a way that they do not to any other voice. This is because they recognize her voice from when they were in the womb. Awesome stuff!
There are other things too, like the sensation of taste. The baby (because of the amniotic fluid they are constantly bathed in) has a taste preference for the mother’s usual diet during pregnancy. The way this manifests is the baby’s reaction to breast milk. If the mother makes a radical change in her diet, it will change the way her breast milk tastes to the baby. A major change in diet might cause the baby to reject nursing because the baby expects the same taste profile as he was already familiar with from the womb, via amniotic fluid.
“UCLA researchers have found that there molecular difference between induced pluripotent stem cells and embryonic stem cells:”
Since embryonic stem cells produce mostly tumors, I would hope there is a “difference”.
Man that thing with the music is so cool. I would be interested to see if the type of music can affect the reaction. Studies suggest that infants have a greater frequency of movement while listening to “happy” music than while listening to no music or “sad” music; the ability to hear and “notice” tempo, mode, contour, etc seems to start pretty early. (see also: infant directed speech, by adults — higher pitch, slower pace, etc — which holds up across cultures.) I would always listen to Stravinsky’s Petrushka ballet music, and I remember my infant sister would cry at the sad parts, stop crying at the happy parts, almost without fail.
I remember being somewhat disappointed with Levitin’s book, (he appears to be the co-host of the PBS thing?) on how music affects the brain, because he seemed too eager IMO to chalk music-inspired reaction up to cultural conditioning. ie we are conditioned to find minor keys “sad,” etc. Studies show that musical preferences can be influenced by what we hear in the womb, so it could all just come down to conditioning. And certainly there is an argument that conditioning is involved when you get into pentatonic scales versus diatonic, chromatic, etc; but when you look at the math behind things like harmonics, timbre, etc, it’s plausible to me at least that the human brain is set up to understand some of these things almost innately. It has been found that regardless of culture, infants seem to prefer consonance over dissonance. Pretty cool.
That’s cool, Alexandra. Music is powerful! In my opinion, there is nothing more amazing than music.
If for some random reason I ever decide to have a child, there will be an awful lot of Iceland, Stevie Nicks, and Elvis music…oh, and maybe Mozart. :)
any family that has musicians will tell you most certainly that babies recognize the tunes either sung or played by their mothers before birth.
One of the conductor’s for the orchestra I play was pregnant last year. She plays cello. Now you can imagine the sounds this little guy heard since the cello is right near mom’s stomach!:)
And yes, mom says he responds with recognition to pieces she plays!
I’ve had the same experience with my daughter who would come and gnaw on the piano bench while I played pieces that were familiar to her from her days in the womb.
I would have loved to see the unborn babies reaction to it’s mothers voice. So sweet!
I wonder what was on the playlist?
I saw the PBS special & it was some really amazing stuff–analyzing babies’ cries, the experts determined that babies cry in perfect fifths. It reminded me of a fascinating book I read with prenatal studies. One found a newborn’s cry is actually based on the fundamental frequency of his or her mother’s voice.