New article on fetal pain is 'stunning lack of scholarship'

A new study by a group of British doctors claims that the unborn child cannot feel pain before the age of 24 weeks. National Right to Life (NRLC) has responded with a news release, which quotes NRLC Director of State Legislation Mary Spaulding Balch, J.D.:

An objective expert in neurobiology would be appalled by the stunning lack of scholarship in the RCOG article. Its authors (predominantly abortion advocates and at least one abortionist) based their claim that unborn children do not experience pain before 24 weeks on the absence of complete nerve connection to the cortex before then.

They ignore the seminal 2007 publication of "Consciousness without a cerebral cortex," in the medical journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences and dismiss its evidence that children born missing virtually all of the cerebral cortex nonetheless experience pain.

Ironically, the article concedes the evidence that by 20 weeks pain receptors are present throughout the unborn child's skin, that these are linked by nerves to the thalamus and the subcortal plate, and that these children have coordinated aversive reactions to painful stimuli, and experience increased stress hormones from it.

This article is an effort by acknowledged abortion promoters to mislead the public at-large – and most tragically women considering abortion – about the increasing evidence demonstrating the unborn child's sensitivity to pain.

A refutation of the new study from LifeNews.com is here.