Pain felt by aborted babies

Study shows that aborted babies do feel pain

Unborn babies in the womb can feel pain. This may seem obvious, since they have a brain and nervous system just like us. Now, there is a new medical study which strongly suggests -- it still doesn’t prove conclusively -- that fetuses do feel pain.

Researchers in Britain found that when fetuses are subject to situations that normally produce pain, they react the same way as we do. The study was conducted at the Department of Chemical Pathology and the Centre for Fetal Care, at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital and the findings published in The Lancet (1994).

In the study -- which has major implications on how people regard aborted babies -- researchers measured the level of stress hormones in fetuses when doctors took blood samples from their abdomen. They found that when the needle was inserted into the abdomen and left there for 10 minutes or more, the fetuses released the same stress hormones which we release when we feel pain.

Foetuses between 23 and 34 weeks of gestation were tested. And even the youngest fetuses show big rise in the level of stress hormones.

The researchers -- and the rest of the medical community -- are naturally cautious about interpreting the findings. They point out that pain is not fully understood and so it is not possible to conclude that the fetuses actually feels pain. “A hormonal response cannot be equated with the perception of pain”, the report said.

Phylis Bowman. Director of the UK Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, said people would now have to think “very seriously” about the status of the fetus. In other words, we need to treat them as humans and not as merely “a mass of cells”.

"Painkillers" for aborted babies?

How do we treat them as humans? The researchers recommend that doctors administer analgesia to fetuses when they perform medical procedures like blood test, surgery, etc.

This seems fair enough. Except that we don’t know the long-term effects of giving pain killers and other analgesic drugs to babies at such a young age. Researchers need to conduct more studies on this.

But this we know: all drugs produce side effects on all people of all ages. Usually, the younger the person, the greater the side effects.

The researchers further suggest that analgesics should be given to aborted babies before abortion, “especially by surgical techniques involving dismemberment.”

This amounts to telling someone. “Here, take these painkillers while I tear your body to bits.” Ouch!

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Aborted babies who wouldn’t die

A Mother’s Ordeal is a new book that provides a harrowing look at China’s population control programmed. Written by Steven W Mosher, the book is based on extensive interviews with a Chinese nurse named Chi An.

A review of the book, carried in The Catholic News, relates this story about “the little boy who wouldn’t die”.

One night in late 1980, a Chinese nurse named Chi An, in training as a population worker, was called to assist a late term abortion in a Beijing hospital. The abortion never happened. The child, a boy was born before the abortionist could do their work. Chi An tells what happened next... Dr Yin gripped its head with one hand, and with the other plunged the needle into its skull. The clear, deadly fluid (formaldehyde) emptied into the infant’s brain. But nothing happened. If anything, the little boy screamed all the more vigorously. Dr Yin hesitated by the jar of formaldehyde for a few seconds, his hands visibly shaking. Then he flung the empty hypodermic on the floor with a loud oath. ‘Cursed be you peasants, and cursed be your children! He shouted as he disappeared out of the door. I was left alone with mother and child. I tried to pray. The little boy took half a hour to die.