"We need to remind ourselves that there was once a time when genetic technology did not determine the beginning—and nuclear technology the end—of life. People had a different relationship with pain and with themselves. They had fashioned a language which shared and made sense of pain." (Soelle, Against the Wind)

What do we lose if we lose our pain? This is a question that Soelle reflects on and positions it specifically in the history of the pains of birth. She reflects on the way that the technical world views pain as "an avoidable hazard," something that can be overcome or denied. For Soelle, this is a betrayal of what makes us human.

"We are neither machines nor beings domesticated to run the treadmill of consumerism. We are capable of suffering because we are capable of love. Activities like loving, suffering, giving birth, and dying are already a form of resistance against the imperatives of the economy under which we live." (Soelle)

What do we lose if we lose our pain? Our capacity to love, to hope, to fight for a better world? Perhaps.