Pushback: "Wow--this is incredible, Glenn...you can write 15 pages on this topic and NEVER MENTION the fact that this was a curse God put on women in Genesis 3?! How could you ignore such a clear teaching of the bible, and still call yourself an evangelical, etc. etc. etc."
And related to this is: "The bible talks about Eve giving Adam the Apple from the tree.........so God says she will have pain with child birth. I also know that God will forgive us for our sins and I have a hard time believing that Eve wasn't forgiven for her sin? "
Well, the reason I didn't mention Genesis 3 in this topic is that I personally no longer believe it is directly related to the subject of female physiology--apart from the fact that only the Serpent and the ground were actually "cursed" in the passage. Let me try to answer the second (less abusive, smile) question first, and in the process, maybe I can set forth how I now understand Genesis 3--as a conservative evangelical...
The Genesis 3 passage, of course, reads like this (from traditional translations):
To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth, In pain you shall bring forth children; Yet your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.”
17 Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it'; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life. 18 “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you shall eat the plants of the field; 19 By the sweat of your face You shall eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.” [NASB]
To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” [NIV]
To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”
17 And to the man he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” [NRSV]
To the woman he said: “I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, and he shall be your master.”
17 To the man he said: “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat, “Cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life. 18 Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, as you eat of the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat, Until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; For you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return.” [NAB]
Western interpreters have traditionally understood these references to the pains of childbirth (even to the point of resisting the introduction of anesthesia into labor/delivery in the 19th century!), but I have lost my confidence that this is the correct exegesis of the passage, for the following reasons and considerations:
1. The effects of the first 'sin' (i.e, disruption and dissonance in the universe) were massive, and not at all restricted to Adam's workload and Eve's childbearing. The cosmic disruption (like ripples you can't ever call back) had BOTH a moral aspect to it (i.e., 'sin' or 'moral failure' or 'crime) which WAS forgiven both Adam and Eve; AND a physical aspect to it (i.e., consequences) which can only be softened or worked around. [For example, I can give someone a black eye, and get them to forgive me instantly, but the swelling won't instantly go away/down...some consequences ripple-through...and if I had chopped off their right thumb in anger, it would NEVER grow back or be restored, even though they could completely forgive me.
2. In this first case, the disruption affected the physical processes of life, throwing them out of synch with one another...various cycles of agriculture, for example, would now be out-of-phase, creating 'pain' for the man-gardener [the Hebrew word for 'painful toil' in verse 17 (cf. also Genesis 5.29: "the toil of our hands"), 'asab, for the man is the SAME Hebrew root used for the 'painful toil' of the woman in childbearing--the difficulty for each is to be equal for each, essentially], just as the muscle systems can work against one another in childbirth, sometimes...
3. This Great Disruption affected processes everywhere--for example, human life span began to decrease over time right after the Garden--but the only aspects mentioned in Genesis 3 are the one's 'closest' to the initial 'jobs' given Adam and Eve. Adam was a 'farmer/gardener' and so his initial and perhaps most vivid encounter with this large-scale disruption would be in his day-to-day work; Eve was the 'mother of all living' and it would be in that role that she would encounter the effects of the disruption most vividly. The Disruption was not at all confined to these two aspects of cosmic experience (Paul used the phrase "all creation" in Romans).
4. Actually, I should also point out that the word translated 'pain' there, might actually mean 'sorrow' instead--it is NOT the normal word in the bible for childbirth pain (which is hebel)...and this sorrow could refer to bringing children into a post-Eden world, a world that contained deception, treachery, and failure in it.
· "There is no doubt that this term refers to physical pain. Its root lies in a verb that means 'to injure, cause pain or grief.' Whether the pain would lie in the agony of childbirth or in the related grief that accompanies raising that child cannot be finally determined; the text would seem to allow both ideas." [HSOBX]
· The meaning of the two words given by TDOT are "sorrow, labor" (for woman) and "sorrow, toil" (for men)--there is a different word for childbirth pain (hebel: "very intense pain in childbirth" [Louw-Nida Dict of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Old Testament )
· The HAL gives the following meanings for the word:
1. hurt: a hurtful word : Pr 15.1;
2. strenuous work Pr 10.22 , 14.23 ; pl. what is acquired with difficulty Pr 5.10, bread acquired with pain, or bread of anxious toil Ps 127.2,
3. pain (of childbirth) Gn 3.16
· The Louw-Nida definitions focus largely on the difficulty, trouble, hard work of doing something (e.g., labor!)
· "Neither the word used here for 'pain,' nor the earlier one, is the usual one for the pangs of childbirth." [WBC, in. loc.]
· "The next clause strengthens the one we have been discussing by adding 'in sorrow [or pain] you will bring forth children'. Once again note that bearing children in itself was a blessing described in the so-called orders of creation of Genesis 1:28. The grief lies not so much in the conception or in the act of childbirth itself, but in the whole process of bringing children into the world and raising them up to be whole persons before God."[HSOBX]
· "Some believe that the Hebrew root underlying "pains," "pain" and "painful toil" should here be understood in the sense of burdensome labor (see Pr 5:10, "toil"; 14:23, "hard work")" [NIV Study Bible Notes]
5. [See
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/wgencurz.html for a discussion on the "he shall master you"...]
6. The 'increase your pain in childbearing' is literally 'increase your pain/toil/sorrow and your pregnancies'...the Disruption Factor would have created much more "vulnerable" lives (which it did, through both harsher living conditions, shorter lifespans, and through increasing amounts of human treachery/violence), and for the human race to continue, expand, and thrive would have required a faster child-production rate (as it would also require a faster and higher-yield agricultural production rate, to compensate for the effects of the curse on the ground)...there is a certain amount of exertion-pain with normal childbirth (severe muscle exertion pain, as an extreme weight-lifter might feel in spurts), and this could have stayed constant with only the SUM TOTAL of the discomfort increased, through increased FREQUENCY of childbirth events (to offset natural death rates). As death invaded the world, infant mortality would also have arisen, and nothing bears so much sorrow/pain/grief for a mother than the loss of a child. This too, would have increased, with the required increase in childbirth rates.
7. Finally, let me also point out that there are a couple of very important textual problems in the passage, and that a strong case can be made for a radically different understanding of this passage. Let me give the summary from HSOBX on this:
"Katherine C. Bushnell, in God's Word to Woman, suggests that verse 16 be translated differently since the Hebrew text could support such a reading. She noted that some ancient versions attached the meaning of 'lying in wait', 'an ambush', or a 'snare' to the word generally read as 'multiply.' This idea of a snare or a lying in wait, however, may have been moved back to Genesis 3:15 from its more normal position in Genesis 3:16. Bushnell would render the opening words of verse 16 this way: "Unto the woman he said, 'A snare has increased your sorrow and sighing.' "
"This translation is not all that different in meaning from the more traditional "I will greatly multiply..." The difference between the two readings is found wholly in the interlinear Hebrew vowel signs which came as late as the eighth century of the Christian era. The difference is this (using capital letters to show the original Hebrew consonantal text and lowercase to show the late addition of the vowel letters): HaRBah AaRBeh, "I will greatly multiply," and HiRBah Ao-ReB, "has caused to multiply (or made great) a lying-in-wait." The participial form ARB appears some fourteen times in Joshua and is translated as "ambush" or "a lying in wait."
"If this reading is correct (and some ancient versions read such a word just a few words back in verse 15, probably by misplacement), then that "lier-in-wait' would undoubtedly he that subtle serpent, the devil. He it was who would increase the sorrow of raising children. This is the only way we can explain why the idea of "a snare" or "lying-in-wait" still clings to this context.
"But another matter demands our attention in verse 16, the word for conception. This translation is difficult because the Hebrew word HRN is not the correct way to spell conception. It is spelled correctly as HRJWN in Ruth 4:13 and Hosea 9:11. But this spelling in Genesis 3:16 is two letters short and its vowels are also unusual. The form is regarded by lexical authorities such as Brown, Driver and Briggs as a contraction or even an error. The early Greek translation (made in the third or second century before Christ) read instead [...] meaning "sighing." The resultant meaning for this clause would be "A snare has increased your sorrow and sighing..."
"Furthermore, it must be remembered that this statement, no matter how we shall finally interpret it, is from a curse passage. In no case should it be made normative. And if the Evil One and not God is the source of the sorrow and sighing, then it is all the more necessary for us to refuse to place any degree of normativity to such statements and describe either the ordeal of giving birth to a child, or the challenge of raising that child, as an evil originating in God. God is never the source of evil; he would rather bless women. Instead, it is Satan who has set this trap."
[Note: in addition to the LXX rendering of "conception" as "sighings/groanings", Augustine comments on this clause in a similar fashion: "For she clearly has her pains and sighs multiplied in the woes of this life." (Manicheans 2.19.29).]
What this would mean--if this understanding is correct--is that the passage may simply be a descriptive one (instead of a prescriptive one), in which God is reminding the woman that the Evil one was not a dispenser of blessings and life, but of sorrow, grief, and toil...
Whether this last point is correct or not, it seems to me that the passage is focused on the subjective aspect of birthing and raising a child in a post-Eden world.
[There is not even a hint in the biblical text, by the way, that this applied to anyone other than or anyone after Eve(!), so to argue for extensive physiological changes in female anatomy which occurred at that time, and which were passed on to her female progeny is going way beyond the textual data...I cannot imagine the subjective/emotional aspect alone of having actually lived in the Garden and then bringing each child into a fallen world of alienation and hardship...its hard enough to do that NOT having seen the Garden, if you know what I mean...]
So, that's why I didn't bring it up here...smile...
I am just...incredulous (that's the kind adjective) You just like to dig yourself deeper and deeper into this weird corner of yours.....So because animal can't COMMUNICATE like humans do, this establishes a pain free life....?!?!?!!? 
and if there was no pain before the fall, that would mean no nervous system period! Also not possible because we couldn't feel anything, heck we couldn't function, without the nervous system