Report: Fetuses Don't Feel Pain

FOXNews ^ | 8/23/05 | AP

[workerbee]

A review of medical evidence has found that fetuses likely don't feel pain until the final months of pregnancy, a powerful challenge to abortion opponents who hope that discussions about fetal pain will make women think twice about ending pregnancies.

Critics angrily disputed the findings and claimed the report is biased.

"They have literally stuck their hands into a hornet's nest," said Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand, a fetal pain (search) researcher at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, who believes fetuses as young as 20 weeks old feel pain. "This is going to inflame a lot of scientists who are very, very concerned and are far more knowledgeable in this area than the authors appear to be. This is not the last word -- definitely not."

[A. Pole]

I wonder if these folks would consider it OK to rape someone if they were unable to feel it for some reason - sound asleep, dead drunk, drugged ... This "victim can't feel it" defense does not make sense.

Cannot feel and cannot remember. A sound scientific approach. Also there is no scientific proof for the objective reality of moral rules. Besides, rape, homosexuality, cannibalism, incest are all in nature - the science has proved it.

Instead of man created in religious image of God we are getting man made in the image of animal.

There is only one problem with this wonderful advance of science. When the remains of the old morality disappear and the quaint medieval customs of pursuit of objective truth for its own sake by the scholarly community is gone what will stop science by being absorbed by the profit oriented business and change in the end into deceptive marketing device?

[Michael Goldsberry]

Priests' Organization Comments on Moral Aspects of Fetal Pain

To: National and City Desks

Contact: Dan Matejek of Priests for Life,
718-980-4400 ext. 260

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 /U.S. Newswire/ -- "The disputed report coming out of the University of California, indicating that pain may not be felt by unborn children during abortions in early pregnancy, hardly settles the matter scientifically," said Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life. "Other studies over the last 15 years around the world show evidence of earlier fetal pain. Research has to continue. Meanwhile, it makes sense to err on the side of caution."

Fr. Pavone also pointed out that while the possibility of pain should give us pause regarding abortion, the absence of pain does not justify killing unborn children. "There are many painless ways to kill both born and unborn. That doesn't make it right."

---

Priests for Life is the nation's largest Catholic pro-life organization dedicated to ending abortion and euthanasia. For more information, visit http://www.priestsforlife.org.

[Guenevere]

#13..well said!

[GoLightly]

Here's an example of the things I came across:

http://www.cirp.org/library/pain/fitzgerald/

I'm not a professional, but from personal experience, I was told the livers of normal newborn infants take a lot longer to metabolize things than for people later in life.

After birth their livers are already very busy, so giving them more things to deal with needs to be done with great care. For example when mother's are given pain killers to ease delivery, it can take about a week to ten days for a full term infant to metabolize whatever medicine crossed through to them during their mother's labor.

The livers of full term infants are already working overtime, as they have a lot of dead red blood cells to metabolize. Since the lungs of preemies are generally less developed then full term infants, I'm not sure which direction their bodies are in the area of need for red blood cells, so it may either be a greater problem or less of a problem for them.

As far as wriggling:

http://quickmedical.com/olympicmedical/circumstraint/index.html?reload=1

[veronica]

I just don't believe this.

I have a close friend whose baby kicked like mad, every time she ate something really cold, like a popsicle. And that started fairly early in her pregnancy. That may not be "pain" but it's something.

[workerbee]

#173 -- absolutely so. While the woman herself is ultimately responsible and accountable for the abortion, it is impossible to deny the overwhelming pressure she is usually subjected to from so many sides. I wish more pro-lifers would tone down the "murdering whore" rhetoric and understand that it's just one more in a long list that drives women towards the killing industry.

[jwalsh07]

:-} I could agree more I suppose but I'm not sure how.

[Coleus]

New report discounting fetal pain stirs debate: Were authors biased?

Fetal pain article stirs controversy
Report on fetal pain stirs up debate
Study of fetal pain fuels more debate
Pioneer Press - San Jose Mercury News Update on Fetal Pain Study

Tim has covered the story regarding a new study on fetal pain which said an unborn child was unlikely to feel pain before 28 weeks.

A new story out today reveals something that I could have only guessed at: One of the authors in this case heads an abortion clinic. Why am I not surprised?

It does not mention that one author is an abortion clinic director, while the lead author - Susan J. Lee, a medical student - once worked for NARAL Pro-Choice America.

JAMA editor-in-chief Catherine D. DeAngelis said she was unaware of this, and acknowledged it might create an appearance of bias that could hurt the journal's credibility. "This is the first I've heard about it," she said. "We ask them to reveal any conflict of interest. I would have published" the disclosure if it had been made.

I wonder why a former NARAL employee and an abortion clinic director didn't want the JAMA to know that they were involved in the abortion industry?

Posted by JivinJ at August 24, 2005 08:05 AM

Subscribe with Bloglines

[jwalsh07]

Here's the abstract Coleus. Pay close attention to the "context". It isn't science , it's scientists playing politics.

Anybody tells you that science is devoid of politics is telling you a fairy tale.

[Theophilus]

Danae's underdeveloped nervous system was essentially 'raw,'

Wow, just as anyone with an intuition worth a fig could imagine. That's a really good story! My most recent child, 16 months now, would violently (really violently) jerk his foot away when you touched his feet, no matter how much or how little pressure you used. Whether an embryo with one neuron or a fetus with 5 billion, you can be sure that they the brand spanking new neurons work almost flawlessly and an inability to express the pain as well as an adult on death row, does not make it OK to torture and kill a little one, like my 16 month old.

[TBP]

Tell it to preemies born before that time.

[F.J. Mitchell]

Interpretation: The numbing effects of the wealth being amassed by abortionists, immunizes them from the pain being suffered by the unborn humans they they are murdering.

[F.J. Mitchell]

It apparently makes sense to the senseless and the conscionceless.

[Kevin OMalley]

BFLR = Bump for later reading.

[Victoria Delsoul]

Unborn babies suffer pain while they are being killed by abortion.

That is the startling conclusion of doctors and researchers, whose recent discoveries reveal the previously unknown sensory capacities of unborn children.

Until recently, most neonatalogists believed that babies in the womb were mostly immune to feeling pain. With the advent of sonograms and live-action ultrasound images, doctors and nurses began to see unborn babies at 20 weeks gestation react physically to outside stimuli such as sound, light and touch.

More recently, surgeons entering the womb to perform corrective procedures on tiny unborn children have found that those babies will flinch, jerk and recoil from sharp objects and incisions.

Unborn babies feel pain early The existence of fetal pain is one of the many discoveries that have come from new studies of the intricate, mysterious world of the unborn child.

"In instances when a fetal bladder is obstructed and we need to go in and puncture it to drain the bladder, the unborn baby will pull away," explains Dr. Steven Calvin, a practicing perinatologist and chair of the Program in Human Rights in Medicine at the University of Minnesota, where he also teaches obstetrics. "The neural pathways are present for pain to be experienced quite early by unborn babies."

The pain is agonizing

Since medical researchers now widely agree that unborn babies at 20 to 24 weeks gestation experience pain during prenatal surgery, they most certainly feel pain during abortion.

The obvious and horrifying conclusion is that millions of aborted unborn children have silently suffered greatly in their final minutes of life.

The sense of touch is so acute that even a single human hair drawn across an unborn child's palm causes the baby to make a fist. Link

[Coleus]

thanks.

[cpforlife.org]

Thanks Victoria,

I had seen this page in the past but will will be adding from it to my lesson.

The one thing that gives me some peace with this subject is Jesus' own condemning words about those who would harm a child; and the full confidence that God is INFINATLY JUST.

Never put an innocent or honest person to death.
I will not allow anyone guilty of this to go free.
Exodus 23

[WinOne4TheGipper]

See my new tag:

[Barnacle]

Fetuses Don't Feel Pain

More of the old tactic of dehumanizing victims to justify the hienous acts of the perpetrator.

It's right out of the Nazi playbook.

[The Red Zone]

Oh you are speaking of circumcision I thought you meant general surgery.