Exploring Fetal Condition: A Comparative Study of Buddhist Perspective and Modern Medical Science View

Abstract

Nowadays, Happy Birthday is widely celebrated around the world. Actually, according to the Buddhist teaching, in the Visuddhimagga, the Buddha said, “Jātipi Dukkha.” Birth is suffering. In this paper, the author would like to explore the fetus's condition and how it suffers from both perspectives: Buddhist doctrine and modern medical science. Furthermore, the Dhammapada verses will be widely illustrated to aid a clearer understanding of the nature of the Embryo in the mother’s womb, and modern medical science will highlight the fetus's suffering while in the mother's womb and as it passes through the mother’s birth canal.
The aim of this investigation was to investigate and compare the Buddhist knowledge of fetal development including fetal placement inside mother’s body since Buddhism was originate concepts with the modern medical scientific explanation. This comparison aimed to identify similarities, or differences of great significance, between the anatomical and positional observations and developmental events that were described in materials from Buddhist sources and those from modern biomedicine.
This study used a comparative method of analysis. The author also studied the Buddhists’ own literal sources on fetal development, mainly from canonical and commentary literature. Anatomical and obstetric descriptions from contemporary medical school textbooks and clinical literature were compared with the skull.
The comparison indicated that the descriptions of fetal presentation and spatial relations in utero are largely compatible between Buddhist literature and medical science. Both models depict the fetus as being located directly posterior to the abdominal wall on a line between the mother's vertebral column and held in flexion during most of its time within the uterus. They also see the prevalence of (cephalic) head down position at birth as normal, though they acknowledge variations, in particular breech.