Whether or not there is cognition does not matter when
discussing pain. It most certainly does not matter when
discussing the pain of abortion. As you point out, the
esoteric jargonistic definition of "perception of pain"
wouldn't even apply until a child is 2 - it's probably more
like 3 - years old.
Nevertheless, you're basing your discussion on old
information. New information is now available, through
functional scans on premies. We know that there is cortical
processing of the pain.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=41011
http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/abstract/26/14/3662?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=pain&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT
(I also contrasted the old with the new on my blog last week.
http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/2006/04/science-confirms-true-pain-in-25-week.html)
Many thanks. It is always best to argue with the facts. Clearly Dr. Derbyshire needs to rethink his argument based on the UCL work.