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Patrick B. Craine (LifeSiteNews.com) reports that a newlyreleased report from the London-based Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) purporting to show that unborn children do not feel pain before 24 weeks made international headlines. But according to pro-life leaders, the study ignores key evidence and is little more than an attempt by abortion advocates to deceive the public.

The issue of fetal pain received significant exposure earlier this year in the U.S. after a landmark law was enacted in April by the Nebraska legislature restricting abortion after twenty weeks. The “Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” was a response to the growing consensus that the unborn feel pain by that age, if not earlier.

In the U.K. abortion for social reasons is restricted past the 24th week of gestation (eugenic abortions are permitted up until birth), although there have been discussions in the last few years about dropping that limit by 2-4 weeks. Such a move has been endorsed by Prime Minister David Cameron, who said in April: "I think the way medical science and technology have developed in the past few decades does mean an upper limit of 20 or 22 weeks would be sensible." However, the new report by RCOG is being latched onto by anti-life forces as evidence that there is no “scientific” reason to reduce the abortion limit.

But Mary Spaulding Balch, J.D., director of state legislation for the US National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), says that, “An objective expert in neurobiology would be appalled by the stunning lack of scholarship in the RCOG article.” She noted that one of the authors is actually an abortionist, while the rest are largely abortion advocates. The authors of the report dismiss the notion of fetal pain prior to 24 weeks based on the fact that the unborn lack a complete nerve connection to the cerebral cortex before 24 weeks.

But Dr. Balch said this ignores the seminal 2007 study from the medical journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences entitled “Consciousness without a cerebral cortex.”
According to that study even “children born missing virtually all of the cerebral cortex nonetheless experience pain,” she said. “Ironically, the article concedes the evidence that by 20 weeks pain receptors are present throughout the unborn child’s skin, and that these are linked by nerves to the thalamus and the subcortal plate, and that these children have coordinated aversive reactions to painful stimuli, and experience increased stress hormones from it.”

Paul Tully, general secretary for the London-based Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), observed that the 24-week limit on social abortion is a “red herring” in any case. “The RCOG’s claim about babies not feeling pain before 24 weeks begs the question: Why do abortion doctors keep making this point when they support the abortion of babies up till birth?” Tully says the suggestion that doctors performing abortions are not causing the child pain by killing him or her is simply “a way of denying that what they are doing is evil and they know it. “The RCOG is trying to find a comfort zone for its members. It is not concerned about the rights and the lives of the babies killed." "The RCOG knows better than most people how marvellous, sensitive, complex and beautiful these babies are at every stage of development from conception onwards,” he said. “Life does not start halfway through a pregnancy, it starts at conception.”

G8 Countries Launch Global Initiative on Maternal Health without Reference to Abortion
The Group of Eight (G8) leading industrial countries held their annual forum in Toronto in late June and, following the lead of the Canadian government, launched a new global initiative on maternal and child health. The Muskoka Initiative pledges “to accelerate progress” towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) dealing with maternal and child health. While the host government was successful in keeping references to abortion out of the final document, the initiative calls for G8 countries to “commit to promote integration of HIV and sexual and reproductive health, rights and services within the broader context of strengthening health systems.”

Since announcing his plan for an initiative to improve maternal health in January, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper had insisted that it would contain no funding of abortion, but would include clean water, sanitation, better nutrition, and treatment and prevention of diseases. Beverley Oda, Canada’s International Cooperation Minister, has said that the government would consider the use of family planning methods such as contraception, but reinforced its opposition to abortion funding.

The initiative has as one of its global targets “universal access to reproductive health by 2015”—a direct allusion to MDG 5b, a controversial target, which was never accepted by Member States in the negotiations of the MDGs, but only included in the annex of a report by the United Nations Secretary General.

Predictably Hillary Clinton reacted to the exclusion of abortion by claiming “You cannot have maternal health without....access to safe, legal abortion”, but we congratulate Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, and the prolife groups who lobbied him: REAL Women of Canada, and Campaign Life, for keeping abortion out of the document.