WHAT'S A LITTLE FETAL PAIN AMONG FRIENDS? - Cut them up anyway!

Now you'd think people trained in the sciences and classical research methodologies would realize thy're not going to be able to pull this off in this day and age.

A report which says a twenty-weeek-old fetus doesn't feel pain, when a twenty-week-old premie does, just isn't going to fly with the medical personnel who witness them wince as IV's are inserted.

A team from the University of California-San Francisco reported in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association that a review of already existing studies suggests the ability of unborn babies to perceive pain “probably does not exist before 29 or 30 weeks.”

Pro-life advocates have responded to a new report contending unborn children do not feel pain until the third trimester of pregnancy with at least three critiques:

• It is compromised.
• It is questionable.
• It is beside the point.

How is it compromised?

After the study was published, it was reported two of the five authors have, or have had, connections to abortion rights organizations. Eleanor Drey, a UCSF obstetrician-gynecologist, is medical director at San Francisco General Hospital’s Women’s Options Center, which performs 2,000 abortions a year, about 600 between the 20th and 23rd weeks of pregnancy, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Susan Lee, a lawyer and a UCSF medical student, formerly worked for NARAL Pro-choice America, one of the country’s leading abortion lobbies, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

How is it questionable?

Catherine D. DeAngelis, JAMA’s editor in chief, told the Inquirer she did not know of the authors’ connection to abortion advocacy. “We ask them to reveal any conflict of interest,” DeAngelis said, adding the information would have been published had she known of it.

How is it beside the point? One bioethicist says those connections to abortion are only part of the problem with the report.

A respectable professional journal like JAMA should know better than to publish research from persons with such obvious conflicts of interest. ... argument against aborting a fetus is not, first and foremost, about whether the fetus feels pain, anymore than the argument against euthanasia is about whether or not the death is accomplished painlessly. The real question is: What are our moral obligations to our unborn offspring?

The Boston Globe reports there are some specialists who dispute the authors’ conclusions.

Kanwaljeet Anand, a pediatrics professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, told the Associated Press, “They have literally stuck their hands into a hornet’s nest. This is going to inflame a lot of scientists who are very, very concerned and are far more knowledgeable in this area than the authors appear to be. This is not the last word -– definitely not.”

Then there are the witnesses ...

Jean Wright, executive director of the Backus Children's Hospital in Savannah, Ga., and a member of the Focus on the Family Physician's Resource Council, said of the study, “Anyone who has walked through a neonatal intensive care unit and seen a 25-, 26-, 28-weeker knows that's not true. There’s our perfect place for studying in-utero pain to the fetus, because we have those babies every single day in our hospitals, essentially on the outside, where we can look at their grimace, see their reaction to pain and measure their stress hormones.

“When I look at the 20-week fetus, there are pain receptors that cover the entire body -- starting at week six,” she told CitizenLink, an information service of Focus on the Family. “The nerves have progressed from the head down to the feet; they've connected with the spinal cord; there are little packets of protein that go from one nerve ending to another. When we measure the response to a painful stimulus -- either by hormones or other tests we use -- all those things are there.”

Oh, sweet Jesus, forgive us and this great nation for the baby holocaust we have besieged You with. Turn Your wrath upon those who run to kill the innocent and find justification for it!