“When doctors first began invading the sanctuary of the womb, they did not know that the unborn baby would react to pain” just as “violently as a baby lying in a crib” by “flaying out his tiny arms, wiggling his entire body, and crying.”
HMI Liley with Beth Day Modern Motherhood: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn Baby (New York: Random House, 1969) 50
Many people who deny that aborted babies feel pain nevertheless believe animals feel pain. The brain of an preborn baby, even two months after conception, is as developed or more developed than those of many animals. Professor of Perinatal Medicine Sir Albert William Liley testified on fetal pain:
“One of the problems about pain is that it is a peculiarly subjective and personal phenomenon. There is no biochemical or physiological test you can do to tell if anyone is in pain…But by the same token we have no proof that animals feel pain; we only infer that they do. But it seems charitable to infer that, otherwise there would be no point in having societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals…And in that regard I am prepared to charitably assume that the baby before birth feels pain because I would be reluctant to extend consideration to animals that I would withhold from a human.”
Quoted from Borowski v. The Attorney General of Canada, Transcript of Evidence and proceedings at Trial, page 194, Regina, Saskatchewan, May, 1983.
“ABORTION A Briefing Book For Canadian Legislators” Campaign Life Coalition NATIONAL PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICE July 2002
This preborn baby is capable of reacting to touch and moving independently. If someone assumes that fish and frogs feel pain, but a baby this developed (still in the first trimester) does not, are they being consistent?
From a textbook on the development of the human brain:
“Lip tactile response may be evoked by the end of the seventh week. By 10.5 weeks, the palms of the hands are responsive to light stroking with a hair, and at 11 weeks, the face and all parts of the upper and lower extremities are sensitive to touch. By 13.5 to 14 weeks, the entire body surface, except for the back and top of the head, are sensitive to pain.
Reinis, S., and Goldman, J.M., The Development of the Brain, (Charles C. Thomas, Springfield, Illinois, 1980)
“ABORTION A Briefing Book For Canadian Legislators” Campaign Life Coalition NATIONAL PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICE July 2002
A past president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists explains that unborn babies react to pain in the womb:
“It can be clearly demonstrated that fetuses seek to evade certain stimuli in a manner which in an infant or an adult would be interpreted as a reaction to pain.”
Richard T.F. Schmidt, M.D., Past President of American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Statement, February 13, 1984.
“ABORTION A Briefing Book For Canadian Legislators” Campaign Life Coalition NATIONAL PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICE July 2002
In America Medical News, February 24, 1984, Dr. Vincent Collins, Diplomat and Fellow of the American Board of Anesthesiologists, stated:
As early as eight to ten weeks’ gestation, and definitely by thirteen-and-a-half weeks, the human fetus experiences organic pain. Dr. Collins listed the following factors as evidence that the fetus is capable of pain:
• The cortex is developed between four and five weeks of age.
• Reflex actions can be observed between four and seven weeks.
9-10 weeks
• Brain waves are detectable between six and seven weeks.
• Nerves connecting the spinal cord to peripheral structures have developed between six to eight weeks.
• Adverse reactions to stimuli are observed between eight and ten weeks
“ABORTION A Briefing Book For Canadian Legislators” Campaign Life Coalition NATIONAL PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICE July 2002
Dr. Colleen A Malloy, Assistant professor, division of neonatology at Northwestern University testified before the House Judiciary Committee in June 2012, and said:
“[T]hus, the difference between fetal and neonatal pain is simply the locale in which the pain occurs. I could never imagine subjecting my tiny patients to horrific procedures such as those that involve limb detachment or cardiac injection.”
David Andrusko “Neonatologist tells Congress the ‘fetus and neonate born prior to term may have an even heightened sensation of pain compared to an infant more advanced in gestation” Part 3 of 4, National Right to Life News Today 5/22/2012
Curtis Cook, M.D., Maternal-Fetal Medicine Butterworth Hospital, Michigan State College of Human Medicine:
“In the course of my practice, we must occasionally perform life-saving procedures on babies while still in the uterus. I have often observed babies of 5 to 6 months gestation withdraw from needles and instruments, much like a pain response.”
Jeanne G Miller Lives Interrupted: The Unwanted Pregnancy Dilemma (Tyler, Texas, 2014) 40
Foot of a 5 month baby torn off. did this child fee the pain? Share on Facebook
Doctor Paul Ranalli, a neurologist at the University of Toronto, says:
24 weeks
“[C]areful anatomical studies reveal, in fact, that the ascending pain fibers reach the cortex by 20 weeks. They then ‘sit’ briefly, for a few days to a few weeks, before making their final push upward to establish their ultimate connections (synapses) with the surface grey matter neurons that register a conscious awareness of pain. Allowing some room for individual variability, the brain of an unborn child will begin to register pain impulses just after 20 weeks with ever-increasing amounts of pain reception reaching millions of surface cortical neurons between 20 and 24 weeks.”
“The emerging reality of fetal pain in late abortions” National Right to Life News September, 2000, p. 14
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
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)
