British Fetal Pain Study Adds Fuel to Late-Term Abortion Debate

By Dave Andrusko

The deeply disturbing concept that an unborn child feels pain while she is being destroyed in an abortion refuses to go away. Not only does the idea of fetal pain make intuitive sense, more and more research clearly suggests that the unborn child may well be able to feel pain as early as 20 weeks and certainly no later than 24 weeks.

More evidence to buttress this growing medical consensus comes from Great Britain in the form of a report issued in late August by an expert group appointed by the Medical Research Council (MRC). The 11-member expert group, made up of leading experts in areas ranging from pediatrics and obstetrics to basic neuroscience, said that pain relief

measures should be considered for the 2,500 extremely premature babies born there each year who may be subjected to such painful procedures as heel pricks, blood monitoring, injections, and insertion of breathing tubes. "We ought to study this carefully," said Prof. Eve Johnstone of Edinburgh University, who chaired the MRC-appointed group.

Demonstrating how much new knowledge has been acquired, only four years ago, a working group of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) argued that the theoretical fetal pain limit was 26 weeks even as it noted that there were areas where more research should be conducted.

In 1999 the Department of Health approached the MRC with a request to review the progress made, "and in particular to look at the feasibility of the research areas recommended in the earlier report."

Those areas included "the developmental pathways for transmission of noxious stimuli in the fetus and neonate, i.e., how the ability to experience pain develops

during fetal life," and the possible effects of pain-relieving drugs on the child's developing brain. The implications for later-term abortions of the latest report is difficult to miss. Pressed to comment, Dr. Susan Dudley, deputy director of the National Abortion Federation, first said fetal pain was complex. But her next response to the London Daily Telegraph was more direct.

"The obvious and most important thing to say is most abortions take place before 20 weeks," Dudley said. Even if the Edinburgh study is accurate, she maintained, "it would have very little impact on people who are contemplating an abortion."

1997 Report

The 1997 RCOG report concluded that the evidence for fetal pain perception in the late second trimester was convincing enough that the doomed child should be sedated with its own specific anaesthesia during all abortions performed from 24 weeks onward. The RCOG panel actually concluded that pain perception was not possible before 26 weeks, but it moved back its anaesthetic recommendation to 24 weeks because of the uncertainty of estimating gestational age.

Writing for NRL News in late 1997, Dr. Paul Ranalli noted that the RCOG panel "also suggested an alternative to anaesthesia: stabbing the fetus through the heart with a needle to inject potassium chloride, a technique it stated, dryly, 'that stops the heart rapidly.' "

In fact the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence suggested that pain would be more intense for the baby in her late second trimester than for a similarly aged premature newborn. (See sidebar, this page.)

In England, for now at least, the issue is often framed as whether "it is it necessary to anesthetize" the about-to-be- aborted child. However, it is difficult to believe that the British public will not move beyond this grossly dehumanizing response as the knowledge of fetal pain becomes more widespread.