British Fetal Pain Study Adds Fuel to Late-Term Abortion Debate.(Brief Article)

The deeply disturbing concept that an unborn child feels pain while she is being destroyed in an abortion refuses to go away. Not only does the idea of fetal pain make intuitive sense, more and more research clearly suggests that the unborn child may well be able to feel pain as early as 20 weeks and certainly no later than 24 weeks.

More evidence to buttress this growing medical consensus comes from Great Britain in the form of a report issued in late August by an expert group appointed by the Medical Research Council (MRC). The 11-member expert group, made up of leading experts in areas ranging from pediatrics and obstetrics to basic neuroscience, said that pain relief measures should be considered for the 2,500 extremely premature babies born there each year who may be subjected to such painful procedures as heel pricks, blood monitoring, injections, and insertion of breathing tubes.

"We ought to study this carefully," said Prof. Eve Johnstone of Edinburgh University, who chaired the MRC-appointed group.

Demonstrating how much new knowledge has been acquired, only four years ago, a working group of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) argued that the theoretical fetal pain limit was 26 weeks even as it noted that there were areas where more research should be conducted.

In 1999 the Department of Health approached the MRC with a request to review the progress made, "and in particular to look at the feasibility of the research areas recommended in the earlier report."

Those areas included "the developmental pathways for transmission of noxious stimuli in the fetus and neonate, i.e., how the ability to experience pain develops during fetal life," and the possible effects of pain-relieving drugs on the child's developing brain.

The implications for later-term abortions of the latest ...