USA: Fetal Pain Bill Defeated

2006 Christian Medical Doctors Assoc | The bill would have required that the women be offered the choice of having anesthesia administered to the fetus. NARAL Pro Choice America, one of the nation's leading abortion rights groups, was neutral on the bill. Other groups, including the National Abortion Federation, opposed it, arguing that the evidence that fetuses feel pain is inconclusive. "Requiring misleading mandated communication is an inappropriate and dangerous intrusion of Congress into private health care decisions," the heads of seven abortion rights groups and health care providers wrote in a letter to lawmakers.

CMDA Chief Executive Officer Dave Stevens, MD: I think excerpts from Representative Chris Smith floor speech in support of the Unborn Child Awareness Act which he co-sponsored, give the best commentary. He said:

"Not only is abortion violence against children but we now know that abortion is painful to the baby as well.

"In expert testimony provided to the Northern District of the US District Court in California during the partial birth abortion trials, Dr. Sunny Anand, Director of the Pain Neurobiology Lab at Arkansas Children's Hospital Research Institute said, ‘the human fetus possesses the ability to experience pain from 20 weeks of gestation, if not earlier, and the pain perceived by a fetus is possibly more intense than that perceived by term newborn's or older children’.

USA: Premature Babies Feel Pain

CMDA 2006 | Premature babies can actually feel pain and are not just displaying a reflex reaction to a stimulus, a team of doctors and scientists said. Using brain scans of tiny babies born as early as 24 weeks after conception they found that during routine procedures such as obtaining a blood sample from a heel they feel pain.

Until now, information about pain in premature babies has been limited to physical expressions such as flinching or crunching the face. But Professor Maria Fitzgerald, of University College London said it has been difficult for researchers to interpret the significance of those reactions, which can also be triggered by something like a loud noise. Using near-infrared spectroscopy, which measures blood levels and oxygenation in the brain, Fitzgerald and her team recorded activity in the brains of 18 premature babies born between 23-45 weeks from conception as nurses performed routine blood tests using a heel lance. The scans showed pain information was being processed in the brain. Because it has been difficult to measure pain in very tiny babies, treatment to relieve it has been sub-optimal, according to Fitzgerald, who reported the findings in The Journal of Neuroscience. "Now that we have this scientific, objective measure of pain, we'll be able to assess pain-relieving! therapies much more precisely," she said.

USA: Experts Set the Record Straight on Abortion Pain

CMDA 2006 | ... House Constitution Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Steve Chabot (R-1st-Ohio) opened the hearing by quoting President Ronald Reagan: "Medical science doctors confirm that when the lives of the unborn are snuffed out, they often feel pain, pain that is long and agonizing." Rep. Chabot noted that the bill "would apply to the approximately 15,000 - 20,000 abortions that are performed each year in the United States on unborn children who are 20 weeks or more past fertilization."

Some pro-abortion groups such as NARAL Pro-Choice America have remained uncharacteristically quiet on the bill, presumably because their opposition would focus public attention on the baby's pain during an abortion, and because the bill aims at providing women with information to insure their fully informed consent to an abortion.

The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act would require abortionists to fully inform mothers, who are considering an abortion on an "unborn child who has reached a probable stage of development of 20 weeks after fertilization," regarding the pain her child will likely feel.

A written statement to be read by abortionists or their agents states, "The Congress of the United States has determined that at this stage of development, an unborn child has the physical structures necessary to experience pain." The statement informs the mother that she has "the option of choosing to have anesthesia or other pain-reducing drug or drugs administered directly to the pain-capable unborn child if you so desire."