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)
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