Research reported in January suggested that an unborn baby can feel pain from well before the time it was previously thought, maybe from as young as 12 weeks.
Published in the BMJ Journal of Medical Ethics, it was carried out by two researchers, one pro-life and the other pro-abortion, making it unique in this respect.
Pain pre-birth is contentious, as it is often cited to restrict abortion access. The researchers said: ‘Most reports on the possibility of foetal pain have focused on developmental neuroscience.
Reports often suggest that the cortex and intact thalamocortical tracts are necessary for pain experience. Given that the cortex only becomes functional and the tracts only develop after 24 weeks, many reports rule out foetal pain until the final trimester. More recent evidence calls into question the necessity of the cortex for pain and demonstrates functional thalamic connectivity into the subplate, which is used to argue that the neuroscience cannot definitively rule out foetal pain before 24 weeks.
In short, they consider the possibility that the mere experience of pain, without the capacity for self-reflection, is morally significant.
‘We believe that foetal pain does not have to be equivalent to a mature adult human experience to matter morally, and so foetal pain might be considered as part of a humane approach to abortion.’
Dr Stuart Derbyshire, one of the researchers, had worked for the US abortion giant Planned Parenthood and the Pro-Choice Forum. In 2006 he wrote that ‘foetuses cannot experience pain’. Yet he and fellow researcher John Bockmann wrote that it would ‘flirt with moral recklessness’ to ignore it.
Clare Murphy of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) said the findings would not ‘lead to a change in practice’.
Ann Furedi, the CEO of BPAS said in response to a Twitter question, that although it was ‘interesting’, the foetus wasn’t being shown to feel pain as ‘we do’. She said she was ‘more concerned about the pain that women feel’. BPAS charge £1,510 for surgical abortions between 19 and 24 weeks.
