ABSTRACT
In the last quarter of the twentieth century, discourses surrounding child health reached such a pitch and complete incompossibility that to trace current discourses back to them is both shocking and enlightening in the present. On one hand, the United States experienced an unprecedented rise in medicating children for “behavioral” conditions. On another, the medical community was becoming more conscious of a long-standing tradition of denying child vulnerability to pain, which had resulted in undermedicating neonate pain. Though antiabortion activists spread appeals based on the “silent scream” trope, they did so seemingly unaware of the fact that dominant hospital methods for circumcision, and even invasive surgeries on premature babies, were still to forego any anesthesia or analgesia as both unnecessary and risky. In contrast, pain activists like Jill Lawson promoted greater public understanding of children’s pain-relief rights with a resulting call for anesthetic therapy. But the lack of a consistent public awareness about children’s pain and whether to medicate their bodies betrays how readily many of those arguing did so to serve adult, ideological angles, not the actual needs of hurting children.
