Factsheets Available from the NRLCEducational Trust Fund; Fetal Pain, Supreme Court Abortion Decisions, and Deaths Associated with RU486.

Does an unborn baby feel pain when she is aborted? Have there been any maternal deaths associated with the use of the abortion pill RU486? In what ways has the Supreme Court affirmed or modified its original 1973 Roe v. Wade decision? These are important questions.

Three new important factsheets which have recently been added to the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund's arsenal of educational materials can help you answer those questions with solid scientific data and carefully documented information.

The Trust Fund's latest offering, "Pain of the Unborn," documents the development of pain sensation and transmission structures in the unborn's body. There is no longer any doubt that the unborn child possesses the capacity to feel pain no later than 20 weeks after fertilization, at the time when most partial-birth abortions are performed.

Going further, the fetal pain factsheet offers scientific data indicating that the unborn child's experience of pain may actually be heightened at this stage. While everything needed for pain transmission is in place at 20 weeks, pain inhibition mechanisms don't develop until three months later. Moreover, between 20 and 30 weeks there is a higher concentration of pain receptors than at any other time before or after birth, which means abortion may be excruciatingly painful for babies this age.

The factsheet also documents how, under current U.S. law, even commercial livestock must be more protected against suffering than are unborn children. The reader will also learn why anesthesia given to the mother does not and cannot provide adequate pain protection for the child she carries.

A recent poll cited by the factsheet demonstrates how a substantial majority of Americans support legislation that would give information on fetal pain to women considering abortion at 20 weeks. The transcript of testimony from one of the recent partial-birth abortion trials reveals the callousness of abortionists who never even consider the pain of the children they kill.

This factsheet should prove invaluable to those who will be making the case for the fetal pain legislation now being considered in the U.S. Congress.