Conclusions and Recommendations
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1. Pain is a universal language that can be understood by its vocal sounds, facial expressions, body movements, respiration, color, and even its crashing metabolism. Babies speak this language as well as anyone. We should listen seriously and react appropriately.
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2. Pain is as real and upsetting to babies as it is to the rest of us. The myth that their pain is not like our pain is ancient, insidious, and harmful. We should reject it.
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3. Pain makes a deep impression; babies are probably more impressionable than older children and adults. Protecting them from the impact of pain would prevent personal suffering at the beginning of life and the need for psychotherapeutic repairs later.
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4. The earlier an infant is subjected to pain, the greater the potential for harm. Early pains include being born prematurely into a man-made "womb," being born full-term in a man-made delivery room, being subject to any surgery (major or minor), and being circumcised. We must alert the medical community to the psychological hazards of early pain and call for the removal of all man-made pain surrounding birth.
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5. Physicians have made birth routinely painful for newborns, believing that they would not feel, not care, not remember, and not learn from painful experiences. In effect, they denied pain, and they failed to recognize babies as persons.
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6. Obstetrics was constructed on a false psychology, born in the 19th Century and generally indifferent to the mind of the newborn. The question is: Can obstetricians construct anew approach to infants on the foundations of a new psychology of babies who feel, think, learn and remember?