One doctor says the following about fetal development:
“By the eleventh week, the fetus develops sensitivity to touch on the hands, feet and genital areas…it may be more comfortable for us to attribute a vegetative state to the fetus in the first trimester, but in fact this is the most active period of our lives.”
Denis Cavanaugh, M.D., Testimony before Florida Legislature on Fetal Pain Bill, May 10, 1983
Doctor Ken Craig, a researcher on pain in premature babies at the University of British Columbia, told the Vancouver Province (August 30, 1995):
“By every measure, the fetus from 16-19 weeks reacts to a painful stimulus in a manner consistent with the perception of pain. At 24-25 weeks post conception, a fetus displays all of the physiological and behavioural reactions you observe in children and adults.”
“ABORTION A Briefing Book For Canadian Legislators” Campaign Life Coalition NATIONAL PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICE July 2002
This is from an old article, but media bias is still a problem for the pro-life movement.
Ethan Bronner, then a reporter for the Boston Globe, said:
“I think that when abortion opponents complain about a bias in the newsroom against their cause, they’re absolutely right.”
Bronner cited a story of his own on late-term abortions in which he had to fight a copy editor to retain such language as “destroying” the unborn by “crushing forming skulls and bones.”
Bronner said the editor told him, “As far as I’m concerned, until that thing is born, it is really no different from a kidney, it is part of the woman’s body.”
Dave Andrusko “An Insightful Look At Media Bias” NRL News July 12, 1990
Author James Tunstead Burtchaell received the following letter from a disabled woman and her husband:
“Amniocentesis and its search and destroy philosophy… We cannot emphasize too strongly the evil of destroying an unborn child who may be deformed.
I can give personal witness to the fact that such unborn sick children do want to live.
I am a Marfan’s syndrome and spina bifida person, happy that my parents loved me enough 56 years ago to give me my right to live and be a Catholic.
Though both diseases cause me only mild problems, I would still want to live if I had been a more severe case.
When I did volunteer work in a local nursing home, I was struck by the cheerfulness and will to live of the patients there, all poor, many black, who many would say should never have been born – how unchristian and hard of heart we as a nation are.”
James Tunstead Burtchaell Abortion Parley (New York: Andrews and McMeel Inc., 1980) xii
A woman was on her way into an abortion clinic when a pro-lifer from Save the Storks reached out to her and asked if she wanted to see an ultrasound of her baby.
The woman recounts what happened next:
I entered the bus with mixed emotions. I knew what I wanted, but I also knew what I had to do. I wanted to be a mom, but knew that I had to wait.
The nurse asked me several questions about my health history and I ended up telling her all about my previous abortion and the terrible effects it had had on me. I told her that deep down I felt that this pregnancy was my “second chance”—my second chance to make the right decision and my second chance to be a mom.
She asked if I wanted to have an ultrasound done so that I could see my baby. I eagerly said “yes” and sat down on the leather table. I leaned back and the nurse moved the ultrasound probe around my stomach. The nurse showed me my baby’s heartbeat—I couldn’t believe it! That was all I needed to decide that I was going to keep my baby.
The nurse and counselor prayed with me and assured me that I would not be alone on my journey through motherhood. They told me about local pregnancy centers where I could receive resources that would help me find housing, food, and supplies for my child while my boyfriend and I continued to look for jobs.
Here is some information on fetal brain development from Psychology Today:
The roots of human behavior, researchers now know, begin to develop early – just weeks after conception, in fact. Well before a woman typically knows she is pregnant, her embryo’s brain has already begun to bulge. By five weeks, the organ that looks like a lumpy inchworm has already embarked on the most spectacular feat of human development: the creation of the deeply creased and convoluted cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that will eventually allow the growing person to move, think, speak, plan, and create in a human way.
At nine weeks, the embryo’s ballooning brain allows it to bend its body, hiccup, and react to loud sounds. At week ten, it moves its arms, “breathes” amniotic fluid in and out, opens its jaw, and stretches. Before the first trimester is over, it yawns, sucks, and swallows, as well as feels and smells. By the end of the second trimester, it can hear; toward the end of pregnancy, it can see.
Professor Peter Huntingford, pro-abortion gynecologist
“No woman knows whether she wants an abortion until she has had one.”
Peter Huntingford Birth Right: The Parents’ Choice (BBC Publications, 1985) Quoted in Mary Kenny Abortion: The Whole Story (London: Quartet Books, 1986) 10
One wonders how this gynecologist counsels women who come to him for abortions.
Dr. Collins is Professor of Anesthesiology and Northwestern University and the University of Illinois and the author of Principles of Anesthesiology, at the time one of the leading medical texts on the control of pain. He says:
“D&E abortions are performed after the twelfth week of pregnancy and are performed up to and including the period of viability, when fetal bones are too large and brittle and the size of the fetus is too great for standard first trimester abortion techniques. D&E involves the progressive dismemberment of the fetus prior to extraction in order to facilitate removal of the fetal parts from the uterus. The slicing and crushing involved in dismemberment of the fetus in D&E abortions would obviously excite pain receptors and stimulate neural pathways, thereby invoking an aversive response in the fetus whose central nervous system is functioning. It must be concluded, therefore, that the fetus suffers pain as a result of the D&E abortion.”
Vincent J Collins, M.D., Steven R Zielinski, M.D., and Thomas J Marzen, Esq. Fetal Pain and Abortion: The Medical Evidence, Chicago: Americans United for life, Inc. Studies in Law and Medicine, no. 18, 8
Quoted in Stephen Schwarz The Moral Question of Abortion (Chicago, Illinois: Loyola University Press, 1990)
