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THOUSANDS of abortions may cause pain to the unborn child, say doctors preparing to debate the contentious issue of "foetal awareness".
Prof Vivette Glover, of London, is calling for all terminations between 17 and 24 weeks to be performed under anaesthetic. Although 90 per cent of terminations take place before 13 weeks, when most medical opinion agrees that a foetus cannot feel pain, concern has resurfaced about those carried out during the next 11 weeks. At present, some abortions during the period of 13 to 24 weeks are carried out without anaesthesia.
Prof Glover, of Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital, who is to chair a conference on the issue at the Royal Institution in November, said yesterday that many questions remained about when the foetus became sentient. She said: "It is incredibly unlikely that the foetus could feel anything before 13 weeks because there is no linking to the brain at all. After 26 weeks it is quite probable.
"But between 17 and 26 it is increasingly possible that it starts to feel something and that abortions done in that period ought to use anaesthesia." Prof Glover acknowledged that by raising the matter she could be providing ammunition for anti-abortionists. She said: "I am pro-choice, but one should not muddle the two. One should think about how one is doing it in the most pain-free way."
According to one study, aborted foetuses have been heard to cry from 21 weeks and some doctors believe that distress can be felt as early as 13 weeks. Others question whether the foetus can feel pain before 26 weeks. Under present law, abortion can be carried out only until the 24th week of pregnancy unless there are exceptional circumstances, such as a threat to the life of the mother.
A study by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said that it was not easy to define or evaluate foetal awareness, in particular awareness of pain. It concluded that the foetus was not "aware" before 26 weeks.
Dr Gillian Penney, of the Aberdeen Maternity Hospital and chairman of the Royal College's induced abortion guideline group, said: "The foetus would not be capable of experiencing what we would perceive as pain." The evidence that underpinned the Royal College's conclusion focused on nerve connections between two crucial areas of the developing brain, the cortex and the thalamus. Until they develop after 26 weeks, sensations of pain cannot be experienced.
Prof Peter Hepper, of the foetal behaviour research centre at Queen's University, Belfast, said there was not enough evidence to say that the foetus experienced pain before 26 weeks. But he believed it was "better to be safe than sorry".
The Women and Children's Welfare Fund charity says that the foetus is less well protected from pain in Britain than animals. There was no legislation to protect the foetus, it said. But the Animal (Scientific Procedures) Act of 1986 for "pre-born vertebrate animals" such as rats, guinea pigs and hedgehogs, ensured that they were not subjected to undue suffering.
THOUSANDS of abortions may cause pain to the unborn child, say doctors preparing to debate the contentious issue
of "foetal awareness". Prof Vivette Glover, of London, is calling for all terminations between 17 and 24 weeks to be
performed under anaesthetic.
What moral morons. To the fetus: It's wrong for us to give you pain, but not for us to deprive you of being.
THOUSANDS of abortions may cause pain to the unborn child
No shit ?
I can't believe that they are actually debating this issue.
I doubt you'll get any pro-choicers on this thread.
VRWC_minion,
Thanks for saying what a fair number of lurkers and posters wanted to say.
If the "Abuse" button gets hit, it won't be me...more likely someone else punching
by accident as they fall from their chair and lay on the floor convulsed in fits of laughter
at the pithiness of your response.
That some doctors now say "wow, developing fetuses probably feel pain as we "terminate"
them, surely implies that they considered the opposite to be true.
As Churchill said..."An idea so preposterous that only an intellectual would consider it."
Why not replace Lethal Injection with the Partial Birth Procedure as the means of execution?
It must be humane,the entire Liberal establishment told us that it was!!!
You are murdering them, why do you give a flying flip if they feel pain!AAARRRGGGHHH!!!
I can't believe that they are actually debating this issue.
But I'd be willing to bet a diet cola that there are now a bunch of M.D.s on staff as
lecturers/professors in OB/GYN who are at this moment writing grant proposals to try to
get funding from the National Institutes of Health to figure out just how
pained the fetuses when they are "terminated" and other interesting (to academics) nuances
of their "pain experience".
Hey, 30 years ago, there were warnings that "bad things would happen to your kids, if drugs
were used and abused.
We just didn't figure out that it meant that so many of our generation would
have these sort of wacky, sadistic view of life.
You are murdering them, why do you give a flying flip if they feel pain!AAARRRGGGHHH!!!
I think you;ve just pierced the veil on this one.
A few of the abortionists have traces of conscience and would at least consider using
anesthesia to reduce the agony of the killing of the fetus.
But there are probably some abortionist who are going to get a "snuff film" rush
when they get fuller documentary evidence that not only are they killing the fetus...
they even will have quantitative levels about how much pain they inflicted on the little
parasite that the helped their patient to get rid of today.
I can just hear their inner thoughs "Not only am I a killer...I deal out punishment and pain.
I'm da' Man!"
or after an extremely hardy fetus puts up a good fight in a losing cause...
"Man, that was a tough sucker...but I showed him who runs this operating theater!"
"Why not replace Lethal Injection with the Partial Birth Procedure as the means of execution?
It must be humane,the entire Liberal establishment told us that it was!!!"
Outstanding suggestion!!! Would be interesting to see the liberals arguing out of both sides of their mouths on this one!!!
I doubt you'll get any pro-choicers on this thread.
Whatever happened to Free Sanity? I stopped reading his posts after he started defending abortion.
In the article, a Dr. Penney(?) comments that a foetus cannot feel pain before week 26. She has been given the evidnce that proves she is wrong, but she holds steadfastly to her claim. Why?... Because of what it will mean if she has been wrong and all these murders have been taking place at her authority!
Here is a story, for which I have rights to post, which illustrates a 24 week preemie and how much pain she felt! [Many abortion defenders claim fetuses cannot feel pain until they reach at least the 26th week! Oh how wrong they are.] The following is the way it arrived to me (I've added only the html commands).
Smell Of Rain: The story of Danae on God's chest
A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the Doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. Still groggy from surgery, her husband David held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news. That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency cesarean to deliver the couple's new daughter, Danae Lu Blessing.
At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound and nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor's soft words droppedlike bombs. 'I don't think she's going to make it', he said, as kindly as he could. "There's only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one".
Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Danae would likely face if she survived. She would never walk, she would never talk, she would probably be blind, and she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation, and on and on.
"No! No!" was all Diana could say. She and David, with their 5-year-old son Dustin, had long dreamed of the day they would have a daughter to become a family of four. Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away.
Through the dark hours of morning as Danae held onto life by the thinnest thread, Diana slipped in and out of sleep, growing more and more determined that their tiny daughter would live-and live to be a healthy, happy young girl. But David, fully awake and listening to additional dire details of their daughter's chances of ever leaving the hospital alive, much less healthy, knew he must confront his wife with the inevitable.
David walked in and said that we needed to talk about making funeral arrangements. Diana remembers 'I felt so bad for him because he was doing everything, trying to include me in what was going on, but I just wouldn't listen, I couldn't listen.' I said, "No, that is not going to happen, no way! I don't care what the doctors say; Danae is not going to die! One day she will be just fine, and she will be coming home with us!" As if willed to live by Diana's determination, Danae clung to life hour after hour, with the help of every medical machine and marvel her miniature body could endure.
But as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana. Because Danae's underdeveloped nervous system was essentially 'raw,' the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort, so they couldn't even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests to offer the strength of their love. All they could do, as Danae struggled alone beneath the ultraviolet light in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl. There was never a moment when Danae suddenly grew stronger. But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and an ounce of strength there.
At last, when Danae turned two months old, her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time. And two months later, though doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much less living any kind of normal life, were next to zero, Danae went home from the hospital--just as her mother had predicted.
Today, five years later, Danae is a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life. She shows no signs, what so ever, of any mental or physical impairment. Simply, she is everything a little girl can be and more-but that happy ending is far from the end of her story.
One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving, Texas, Danae was sitting in her mother's lap in the bleachers of a local ballpark where her brother Dustin's baseball team was practicing.
As always, Danae was chattering nonstop with her mother and several other adults sitting nearby when she suddenly fell silent. Hugging her arms across her chest, Danae asked, "Do you smell that?"
Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, "Yes, it smells like rain."
Danae closed her eyes and again asked, "Do you smell that?"
Once again, her mother replied, "Yes, I think we're about to get wet, it smells like rain.
Still caught in the moment, Danae shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced, "No, it smells like Him. It smells like God when you lay your head on His chest."
Tears blurred Diana's eyes as Danae then happily hopped down to play with the other children. Before the rains came, her daughter's words confirmed what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts, all along. During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Danae on His chest and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.
I wish we had an "abuse" in real life as well to protect the babies.
between 17 and 26 it is increasingly possible that it starts to feel something
I don't know about them British "scientists", but we know that unborn babies as young as 8 weeks after conception do feel pain. So, now we are going to kill them "humanely"? how about just plain letting them live? Anyhow, if the pain business makes any difference to you, try abortionfacts.com for a very complete discussion. As for me, killing a baby is murder, no matter how humane the method!
This is nothing new.
Many years ago there was a segment of video that was being pushed by pro-lifers called The Scream. It showed a baby being aborted (must have been a sonogram image...I don't remember)and right when it was being ripped from its maternal home its mouth opened up wide as if screaming.
I'll never forget the image and swore that if I ever had a child that needed surgery immediately after birth that I would not allow it. Back then they performed infant surgery without anesthetic because they thought that newborns felt no pain.
What a stupid notion. How can you measure an aborted fetuses pain if its dead? Kinda like asking a dead man how it feels to die.
I can't believe that they are actually debating this issue.
That was my reaction too. Wait.......if we are talking pain, aren't we talking "LIFE"? This barbarism is unfathomable. What kind of humans can unemotionally discuss whether or not the most innocent of us feels the pain that precedes his or her murder and then argue about how to treat said pain? Dear Lord please heal this sick culture.
"I can't believe that they are actually debating this issue."
My sentiments as well. Of course there are some neanderthals left who 'still' believe that animals do not feel pain. . .a popular theory and one that was not easily replaced with concepts of the 'humane' when it came to the pain and suffering of animals.
These same people who would ignore this about a foetus, will fight for the 'rights' of a tomato, all vegetables. . .trees et al; have a fundraiser for a Lobster. . .a bean sprout, play Mozart for their houseplants and feel guilty when they prune them. And yet??? Feel no empathy,sympathy or compulsion to even imagine for a moment the possibility of pain for the smallest of human life.
The disconnect of Liberals reaches even further of course. Today, caught some of Tony Snow (Rush 'subbing') when a caller explained the REAL fear of her Liberal friends; mostly Jewish and why as Leftists they do not fear Lieberman's religiousity. . .it is the CHOICE issue. . .they do not want the Religious 'Right' to take away CHOICE. . ."they remember Nazi Germany", the caller said. . .and it scares them to think of the power of the 'Right' and what they might do. . .
More than a mystery. . .
The disconnect of Liberals reaches even further of course. Today, caught some of Tony Snow (Rush 'subbing') when a caller explained the REAL fear of her Liberal friends; mostly Jewish and why as Leftists they do not fear Lieberman's religiousity. . .it is the CHOICE issue. . .they do not want the Religious 'Right' to take away CHOICE. . ."they remember Nazi Germany", the caller said. . .and it scares them to think of the power of the 'Right' and what they might do. . .
Cricket, sadly, Tony Snow hasn't the brains to deal with such an outrage. I was listening to Tony skate all over the radio today. That particular call would never even have made it from the board if Rush were *home*. Poor Tony. Seems nice enough but vacuous brained.
But there are probably some abortionist who are going to get a "snuff film" rush when they get fuller documentary evidence that not only are they killing the fetus... they even will have quantitative levels about how much pain they inflicted on the little parasite that the helped their patient to get rid of today.
There is a certain percentage of the population who are obsessed with the notion of a "population explosion", i.e. that there are already too many people and that we should somehow limit "new people". Doesn't it make sense that a percentage of that percentage are doctors? Your concept is not so far fetched.
Why not replace Lethal Injection with the Partial Birth Procedure as the means of execution?
Hm. Or maybe make an itty bitty electric chair to insert in the womb. Have a quick trial and pronouce the child guilty of some heinous crime, e.g., willful non-payment of rent, and then strap the little tyke (monkey? watermelon?) in. Finally: an abortion scenario that ought to tie the liberals up in knots--especially if the child also possesses the ever-elusive "gay gene."
"Poor Tony. Seems nice enough but vacuous brained."
. . .no doubt a little adrenaline could go a long way with Tony and maybe pump up the brain power as well; but he does not seem to have any. . .I keep hoping to see it. At the same time, of course, his mild-mannered challenges and responses make MY adrenaline flow.
Yes, a very nice, nice guy. . .and it just makes me crazy.
God feels the pain when ANY of his children are killed.
Actually had a liberal puke Doctor try to convince me that the murders were okay, 'because the unborn cannot possibly have any concept that they are about to die, are being killed, since they don't yet have any notion of life, being alive.'
I lost my cool with that one, and the rhetorical slaughter was amazing, but I'm not ashamed of the stripes with which I laced the demon! My final sentence was concerning where the quackery licenses came from ... certainly not AMA.
" THOUSANDS of abortions may cause pain to the unborn child
No shit ? "
It can't be said any better or any plainer......
Babies MAY feel pain of abortion?
How archaic! They actually think pre-birth babies wouldn't feel pain? Do they think we don't develop a nervous system until we're actually born?
This is the sickest part of the article:
But the Animal (Scientific Procedures) Act of 1986 for "pre-born vertebrate animals" such as rats, guinea pigs and hedgehogs, ensured that they were not subjected to undue suffering.
I guess that "pre-born vertebrate animals" are worthy of greater protection than babies.
We Freepers need to point out the obvious more often, especially when one considers the confused state a worried pregnant woman is in , being counseled to use the death cult's way out:
Once a woman chooses murder as a solution to pregnancy, she has a murder to live with for the rest of her life on earth.
Once a woman chooses to place for adoption, she possesses the grace of motherhood, albeit deferred, for she has given life, not resorted to murder.
Abortion is inhumanity to the unborn.
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