MANIFESTO

Transforming the Future Requires an Urgent Call to Action

A yearly World Pregnancy Day on March 22 will be a platform to showcase transformations in the field of prenatal well-being. To be aware of prenatal life’s relevance needs to become a fundamental human right in order to build a more sustainable, inclusive, and peaceful world.

Let’s generate a debate around how to better construct and strengthen prenatal awareness: prenatal health must be acknowledged as a public responsibility, a common good, to unlock the human potential in every person.

Education Starts in the Womb

We become parents from the moment we first start thinking about having a baby. Realizing how much we influence the physical and psychological development of babies in the womb, and before, is the key to the formation of thriving, peaceful, and healthy human beings.

Pre-conception, pregnancy, birth, as well as the fourth trimester, provide unique opportunities for improving human societies. Babies develop their emotions, their senses, and physical organs based on how the mother experiences life. Thus, the prenatal experience is key for nations to succeed in breaking the transgenerational cycle of war and selfishness.

“The way we grow before birth is influenced by many things including what our mothers eat during pregnancy and how much stress they are experiencing. This can have long-lasting implications for our mental and physical health in later life.”

Alexander Jones, Epidemiologist

During Pregnancy, Babies Are Conscious Observers

During pregnancy, babies are conscious observers. They bring their own characteristics and also influence their mother’s psyche.

All of their cells record everything the mother feels, and react to it — some genes are activated, others are silenced or even modified. Indeed, the mother’s experience of life becomes information that influences the baby’s physical and psychological development.

It is incredibly empowering to those considering parenthood that their thoughts, feelings, foods, and behaviors will be “engineering” almost all aspects of their child’s being.

“The quality of development that occurs in the womb has long-term effects on mood, affect, disposition, cognitive abilities, as well as the basic functions of the heart, kidneys, lungs, liver, and pancreas later in life.”

P. Nathanielsz, Researcher in Developmental Programming of Health and Disease in Later Life, University of Wyoming

A Parent’s Right to Be Educated and Informed

A parent’s right to be educated and informed about the importance of pregnancy is paramount in today’s world.

Conception and life in the womb orient the formation of the brain’s circuitry toward fear and defense, aggression, loneliness, anxiety, or toward love and cooperation, trust and safety.

Prenatal experiences influence the fine neural architecture of the brain. Excessive prenatal stress can have long-lasting effects on the mind and body of the future child and adult, favoring depression, mental disorders, psychosomatic symptoms, and a predisposition to aggression and violence.

Prenatal science and prenatal education need to be taught from preschool to college, and couples need to prepare for this transition and their new parenting roles.

“From the moment of conception, conditions in the womb shape the brain and lay the foundation for a child’s personality, emotional temperament, and logical thinking ability.”

Thomas Verny, Psychiatrist, Writer and Academic

If We Want World Peace, We Need Womb Peace

Prenatal life strengthens or weakens a wide range of abilities and talents. How we develop and learn depends on a dynamic interplay between nature — individual genetic endowment — and nurture: nutritional, emotional, and physical stimuli.

A pregnancy shrouded in violence tends to generate violent people. A peaceful pregnancy instead tends to engender people who love the world, are gifted in relationships, and are peace seekers.

Children born from a valued and harmonious pregnancy have a heightened capacity for learning and socializing. They respect nature and fellow humans. So, when pregnant women feel supported and safe, their children will contribute to building a world without war or misery.

“Low birthweight is associated with increased rates of coronary heart disease and the related disorders, stroke, hypertension and adult-onset diabetes. These associations have been extensively replicated in studies in different countries and are not the result of confounding variables.”

David Barker, Physician and Professor of Clinical Epidemiology

Thriving, Not Just Surviving

It’s time for our politicians to get invested in the beginning of life and foster prenatal well-being by applying what science and ancient wisdoms teach us.

In the words of Frederick Douglass, we can all acknowledge that “It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

By investing the minimal resources necessary on pregnancy worldwide, we can have immeasurable improvements in public health, drastically dropping expenses related to mental and physical illnesses, social violence, and criminality.

“The global burden of death, disability and loss of human capital as a result of impaired fetal development is huge and affects both developed and developing countries.”

World Health Organization

Well-lived pregnancies form the foundation of future generations who will experience kinship with all life.

By choosing to address the importance of the very beginnings of our human experience, we can legitimately change the course of every nation on earth.

This has to be the priority, and even the obligation, of every society.

January 1, 2024