When Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers tell women abortions are “safe,” not only do they discount medical tragedies, but they also neglect to present important medical evidence to women about maternal-fetal attachment. While a woman can choose end her pregnancy, she has no choice in the changes that her brain undergoes from the moment her preborn baby’s life begins. The American College of Pediatricians (ACP) details new research in a medical position paper, revealing the astonishing changes the mother’s brain undergoes from the time she becomes pregnant.
“Positive maternal-child interaction during pregnancy” is part of a three-part series entitled, “The Infant – Mother Connection and Implications for their Future Health.” ACP stresses that the object of the paper is to “[encourage] all health care professionals to promote policies that respect and protect the mother-baby duo with their intricately interconnected systems.” As abortion providers continually attempt to remind the public they are “health care professionals,” they should be acting in accordance with the correct medical research, rather than omitting facts that may lead a woman to choose life.
READ: Guttmacher, Planned Parenthood’s former research arm, misleads women on basic pregnancy facts
The paper says (emphasis added):
At the very onset of conception, dramatic changes begin – in mother, and, of course, in her child. New research describes the interaction between mother and child during pregnancy … with an emphasis on the changes taking place in the central nervous system of each that promote maternal-infant attachment.
It is common knowledge that the unborn child grows and develops in utero, but less well known are the intricate ways in which the developing child influences many aspects of the mother’s life, including her brain development… The baby, via hormonal influence, affects the mother’s nutrition, alters her immune system, and directs the restructuring of the maternal brain.
As soon as the mother’s body can respond to the developing embryo, her immune system changes so that immune modulating cells… in her uterus alter their proportions… Other changes in the mother’s immune system occur which “… allows for successful coexistence between the mother and the semi-allograft that is the fetus/placenta expressing both maternal (self) and paternal (nonself) genes” (See link for research cited).
Pregnant women often joke that they have “mommy brain,” which is why they put their car keys in the refrigerator and the sour cream in the pantry. But this joke has biological grounding, and it’s not a joke at all.
The “mommy” brain, about which many mothers laughingly complain, truly does exist – and further, it is caused by specific neuronal and hormonal alterations that occur during pregnancy and after delivery. These changes are all adaptive to enhance the ability of the mother to care for her infant.
Early in pregnancy, the levels of estrogen and progesterone greatly increase, and later oxytocin, prolactin, arginine vasopressin, and endorphins are released, causing a remodeling of the brain as some regions increase in number and size of neurons and cellular receptors, while other areas decrease. Neurotransmitters, including dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin are also instrumental in brain remodeling.
And these changes in the brain begin virtually overnight:
Overall brain size of the mother is reduced during pregnancy, with the changes beginning at the time of embryonic implantation. … researchers documented a “reduction in brain size that was maximal at term and that reversed by 6 months after delivery,” while the pituitary increases in size during pregnancy.
New brain cells are produced during pregnancy… The new cells… become fully integrated into preexisting circuits and allow the areas to respond to new stimuli.
Maternal brains even change in ways that allow them to more effectively and efficiently respond to their infants.
The paper explains that Leiden University researchers conducted pre- and post-pregnancy brain scans on 25 women and found that “Researchers could accurately differentiate scans performed on women who had given birth from those who had not become pregnant by tracking brain changes, and the observed changes persisted at follow up two years later.”
A woman may choose to decide to abort her preborn baby, but abortion does not magically change her altered brain and biological systems. She cannot simply walk into an abortion facility pregnant, walk out not-pregnant, and move on, insisting she unaffected — because biologically, this is impossible. The expressions of that effect may vary, but the brain and body were not created to “make a pregnancy go away” with a giant suction machine. In fact, research says it likely will get worse, as Dr. Priscilla K. Coleman, from Bowling Green State University, reports in a presentation on maternal-fetal attachment, “In contrast to the pain of involuntary loss, which tends to resolve in 2 years, the pain of abortion is inclined to worsen as women learn more about prenatal development and have children.”
Once again, science proves the reality of the preborn baby, and reminds women that even if their health care professionals don’t tell them the truth about the biological effects of abortion, their bodies will do it for them — and it will impact women’s mental and physical health, sometimes for a lifetime.
