A new study put out by a British group of doctors makes the false claim that unborn children don't have the ability to feel pain . . . until the later parts of pregnancy, at about 24 weeks.
-- From "Unborn baby cannot feel pain before abortion limit: report" by Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor, London Telegraph 6/26/10
Research from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists . . . findings mean there is no scientific reason to reduce the abortion limit from the current 24 weeks, experts said.
It was found that connections in the brain are not fully formed until after 24 weeks meaning that the feotus is unable to feel pain and has no awareness.
It means that surgery conducted in the womb before 24 weeks does not need to be carried out with painkillers and has no benefit. It was suggested that because the feotus is effectively unconscious at this gestation, painkillers and anaesthetic may be harmful.
A second report also concluded that it would be unrealistic to determine a list of conditions for which it was 'acceptable' to abort beyond 24 weeks.
The question had been raised in response to concerns that women were aborting babies under the clause in the Act that they may be born with a 'serious handicap' but the feotus had in reality only minor abnormalities that can be corrected such as a cleft lip.
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From "Study From British Doctors Claims, Despite Evidence, Unborn Children Can't Feel Pain" by Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com Editor 6/25/10
Dr. Steven Zielinski, an internal medicine physician from Oregon, is one of the leading researchers into the concept of fetal pain and published the first reports in the 1980s to validate research show evidence for it.
He has testified before Congress that an unborn child could feel pain at "eight-and-a-half weeks and possibly earlier" and that a baby before birth "under the right circumstances, is capable of crying."
Dr. Vincent J. Collins, Zielinski and attorney Thomas J. Marzen were the top researchers to point to fetal pain decades ago. Collins, before his death, was Professor of Anesthesiology at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois and author of Principles of Anesthesiology, one of the leading medical texts on the control of pain.
"The functioning neurological structures necessary to suffer pain are developed early in a child's development in the womb," they wrote.
"Functioning neurological structures necessary for pain sensation are in place as early as 8 weeks, but certainly by 13 1/2 weeks of gestation. Sensory nerves, including nociceptors, reach the skin of the fetus before the 9th week of gestation. The first detectable brain activity occurs in the thalamus between the 8th and 10th weeks. The movement of electrical impulses through the neural fibers and spinal column takes place between 8 and 9 weeks gestation. By 13 1/2 weeks, the entire sensory nervous system functions as a whole in all parts of the body," they continued.
With Zielinski and his colleagues the first to provide the scientific basis for the concept of fetal pain, Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand of the University of Arkansas Medical Center has provided further research to substantiate their work.
He has said he and other specialists in development of unborn children have shown that babies feel pain before birth as early as 20 weeks into the pregnancy.
In Nebraska, lawmakers approved the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act by a large, bipartisan vote that bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy based on the well-established concept of fetal pain.
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