Pain

"Pain is universal. We all experience pain, loss, and death the same way"

"The sword of time will pierce our skin It doesn't hurt when it begins But as it works its way on in The pain grows stronger watch I bring That suicide is painless It brings so many changes And I can take or leave them if I please."

"The pain was what it was. Beyond that there is nothing to say. Qualities of feeling are as incomparable as they are indescribable. They mark the limit of the capacity of language to communicate. If someone wanted to impart his physical pain, he would be forced to inflict it and thereby become a torturer himself."

"Pain is temporary, glory is forever."

"Pain is weakness leaving the body."

"[F]alling from the stars: Drenched in my pain again; becoming who we are."

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people."

"Maybe life is good and everything is fine. Maybe take a breath; maybe do it twice. I know you're in pain, but that's a part of life."

"PAIN, n. An uncomfortable frame of mind that may have a physical basis in something that is being done to the body, or may be purely mental, caused by the good fortune of another."

"In this last context, food refusal, weight loss, commitment to exercise, and ability to tolerate bodily pain and exhaustion have become cultural metaphors for self-determination, will, and moral fortitude."

"According to the doctrine of informed consent, even when it is “for the good” of the patient no one else-neither relative nor expert-may determine for the embodied subject that medical risks are worth taking, what procedures are minimally or excessively invasive, what pain is minor."

"Whether, and at what stage a fetus feels pain has been a matter of much debate. The RCOG 2022 report Fetal Awareness Evidence Review concluded that the “evidence indicates that the possibility of pain perception before 28 weeks of gestation is unlikely”. The BMA recommends that doctors should give due consideration to the appropriate measures for minimising the risk of pain, including assessment of the most recent evidence. The BMA suggests that even if there is no incontrovertible evidence that the fetus feels pain, the use of fetal analgesia when carrying out any procedure (whether an abortion or a therapeutic intervention) on the fetus in utero may go some way in relieving the anxiety of the woman and health professionals."

"But pain... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?"

"If everyone could feel everyone else’s pain, who would torture?"

"Beauty is pain and there's beauty in everything, what's a little bit of hunger? I can go a little while longer."

"Douleur toujours nouvelle pour celui qui souffre et qui se banalise pour l'entourage."

"In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice."

"It never occurred to me to call 911 or my physician. […] As foolish as it may appear, you are, in a sense, a prisoner of the pain, which was intolerable. You're thinking, what could I do to relieve myself of it. If it becomes intense enough, you're perfectly willing to accept cardiac arrest as a possible way of getting rid of the pain."

"No pain, no gain."

"Wait another minute, can't you see what this pain has fucking done to me? I'm alive and still kicking."

"So great was the extremity of his pain and anguish, that he did not only sigh but roar."

"Pain is just Mother Nature’s little way of telling you not to do something again in a way you’ll remember."

"The multidimensionality of pain perception, involving sensory, emotional, and cognitive factors may in itself be the basis of conscious, painful experience, but it will remain difficult to attribute this to a fetus at any particular developmental age."

"Tell me your relation to pain, and I will tell you who you are!"

"We cannot soothe the pain we do not know."

"One focus for the discussion of the 'problem' of late abortion has been based on the claim that a fetus feels pain. The debate about fetal pain originated with discussion which began in the late 1980s, as a consequence of research which indicated that a fetus is capable of a behavioral response to sensory stimulation. Advances in fetal surgery, which include placing valves into the heart and injecting red blood cells into the liver to prevent anaemia, meant that neonatal surgeons and experts in embryology were becoming more and more concerned about the potential consequences of invasive fetal surgery. This concern was given a major boost when Dr Anand, then of the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, demonstrated that new-born babies (neonates) undergoing surgery did better if they were given anaesthetics of a kind usually used only in adult surgery (until very recently, neonates were not given anaesthetic before surgery). In 1992, the New England Journal ran an editorial calling on clinicians to 'Do the Right Thing' concluding that 'it is our responsibility to treat pain in neonates and infants as effectively as we do in other patients'. Since this time, and extensive discussion has taken place in the pages of medical journals, about the nature of pain, with many eminent scientists concluding that they have much more to learn about this phenomenon. Greater knowledge about the causes of pain can only be beneficial to society, and it is important that clinicians do 'do the right thing' where neonates and infants are concerned. It is however extremely unfortunate that a discussion about best clinical practice for new-born babies has led to a debate, based on the notion that a fetus can feel pain, about the 'problem' of late abortion."

"Issues associated with the science of pain have been discussed extensively elsewhere. For the purposes of this briefing we will simply state our position very briefly. The ascribing of the term 'pain' to the responses of a fetus to stimuli is perhaps best understood as an emotional process on the part of those who do so, rather than an objective analysis of pain. Since a fetus moves, or screws up its face, it can appear to be 'suffering pain'. However, the fact that no-one has any memory of being born - which if a fetus can indeed feel pain would be expected to be a very painful process indeed - suggests that there is a great deal of difference between what might look like pain, and what the experience in fact constitutes. What needs to be said is that fetuses do not, an cannot, feel pain - not at 10 weeks, 26 weeks or 30 weeks - because pain-experience depends on consciousness and fetuses are not conscious."

"Pain is a gift that God gives to His creatures."

"Everything that happens to us, such as pain and joy, blessings and misfortunes, significant events (such as successes and good fortune, accidents or the death of loved ones), insignificant events (such as daily work at home, in the office or at school), everything, everything will take on a new meaning because it is offered to us by the hand of God who is Love. He wants, or allows, everything for our own good. And sooner or later we will realize, looking with the eyes of the soul, that a golden thread links events and things and composes a magnificent embroidery: God's design for each of us."

"pain acts like a leaven for both word and thought, quickening your sense of reality and the true logic of this world. Without pain you cannot distinguish the creative element that builds and sustains life from its opposite-the forces of death and destruction which are always for some reason very seductive, seeming at first sight to be logically plausible, and perhaps even irresistible."

"The term 'psychogenic' assumes that medical diagnosis is so perfect that all organic causes of pain can be detected; regrettably, we are far from such infallibility... All too often, the diagnosis of neurosis as the cause of pain hides our ignorance of many aspects of pain medicine."

"Doctors should not be required to discuss fetal pain with women seeking abortions because fetuses likely can’t feel pain until late in pregnancy, according to a review critics say hardly settles the contentious topic. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco reviewed dozens of studies and medical reports and said the data indicate that fetuses likely are incapable of feeling pain until around the seventh month of pregnancy, when they are about 28 weeks old. Based on the evidence, discussions of fetal pain for abortions performed before the end of the second trimester should not be mandatory, according to the study appearing in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association. The review, researchers say, is an attempt to present a comprehensive, objective report on evidence to inform the debate over fetal pain laws aimed at making women think twice before getting abortions. Critics angrily disputed the findings and claimed the report is biased. “They have literally stuck their hands into a hornet’s nest,” said Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand, a fetal pain researcher at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, who believes fetuses as young as 20 weeks old feel pain. “This is going to inflame a lot of scientists who are very, very concerned and are far more knowledgeable in this area than the authors appear to be. This is not the last word — definitely not.”"

"Proposed federal legislation would require doctors to provide fetal pain information to women seeking abortions when fetuses are at least 20 weeks old, and to offer women fetal anesthesia at that stage of the pregnancy. A handful of states have enacted similar measures. The review says medical evidence shows that brain structures involved in feeling pain begin forming earlier but likely do not function until around the seventh month, when fetuses are about 28 weeks old. Some scientists say younger fetuses show pain by moving away from a stimulus, but that likely is a reflex action and not an indication that they are actually feeling pain, said UCSF obstetric anesthesiologist Dr. Mark Rosen, the study’s senior author. Offering fetal pain relief in the fifth or sixth month, when brains are too immature to feel pain, is misguided and might result in unacceptable health risks to women, the authors said. Dr. Nancy Chescheir, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at Vanderbilt University and a board director at the Society of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, said the report “will help to develop some consensus” on when fetuses feel pain. “To date, there hasn’t been any.”"

"For I consider that the sufferings of the present time do not amount to anything in comparison with the glory that is going to be revealed in us. For the creation is waiting with eager expectation for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but through the one who subjected it, on the basis of hope that the creation itself will also be set free from enslavement to corruption and have the glorious freedom of the children of God. For we know that all creation keeps on groaning together and being in pain together until now."

"There is an art in taking the whiplash of suffering full in the face, an art you must learn. Let each single attack exhaust itself; pain always makes single attacks, so that its bite may be more intense, more concentrated. And you, while its fangs are implanted and injecting their venom at one spot, do not forget to offer it another place where it can bite you, and so relieve the pain of the first."

"Now, all of this raises important questions about what one means by "evidence,"or "medical information,"because the ultra-sound image is presented as a document testifying that the fetus is "alive," is "human like you or me,"and "senses pain.""The Silent Scream has been sharply confronted on this level by panels of opposing medical experts, New York Times editorials, and a Planned Parenthood film. These show, for example,that at twelve weeks the fetus has no cerebral cortex to receive pain impulses;that no "scream"is possible without air in the lungs;that fetal movements at this stage are reflexive and without purpose;that the image of rapid frantic movement was undoubtedly caused by speeding up the film (cameratricks);that the size of the image we see on the screen, along with the model that is continually displayed in front of the screen, is nearly twice the size of a normal twelve-week fetus, and so forth."

"May my pain remain drunk singing its own love songs."

"(May) the dead body of agony remain asleep resting its head on a pillow of flowers."

"A portion of life, every moment gets torn out of me hurting, and flees away."

"My heart itself is a wound, no medicine can cure it. It deepens further if stared at, and hurts more if touched."

"Let my pains remain with me."

"“A 20-week fetal pain bill is actually teaching people that it’s OK to kill children under 20 weeks,” said Ragon. “The incrementalism actually even teaches people that that’s morality. Because some people, unfortunately, derive their morality from the legislation that goes on around them. It’s supposed to be the other way around.”"

"Editor-Peter McCullagh and P J Saunders link the theoretical possibility that the fetus may feel pain (albeit much earlier than most embryologists and physiologists consider likely) with the procedure of legal abortion. Doctors for a Woman's Choice on Abortion consider this to be unhelpful to women and to the scientific debate. In Britain virtually all surgical terminations of pregnancy take place under general anaesthesia, which will affect the fetus. The question of whether the fetus experiences pain is not an issue as far as abortion is concerned, although those experts in fetomaternal medicine who are operating on the more mature fetus in utero need to consider whether women should have general anaesthesia for these procedures."

"Pain don't hurt."

"A man who only becomes a husband brings pain to his parents, and a person who only becomes a son brings pain to his wife."

"By dreaming of his company, I could forget my worries and pain."

"Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them. I cut myself in the finger, and it pains me: this finger is a part of me. I see a friend hurt, and it hurts me, too: my friend and I are one. And now I see stricken down an enemy, a lump of matter which, of all the lumps of matter in the universe, I care least for, and it still grieves me. Does this not prove that each of us is only part of a whole? For ages this idea has been proclaimed in the consummately wise teachings of religion, probably not alone as a means of insuring peace and harmony among men, but as a deeply founded truth. The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one."

"Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing."

"The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is selfcreated as long as the unobserved mind runs your life."

"Sunny days wouldn't be special if it wasn't for rain; joy wouldn't feel so good if it wasn't for pain."