Debate over the issue of foetal pain continues, as research by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists was disputed this week. A statement from a US lobby group, the Family Research Council statement contends that the RCOG used a “faulty definition of pain” by saying that foetuses under 24 weeks cannot experience it.  

A summary of the RCOG statement says that the foetus is unable to experience pain before 24 weeks because connections between the cortex (which plays an important role in consciousness) and the periphery (outer tissue of the brain) are not intact before this point in the pregnancy. The statement goes further, saying that these connections are “necessary for pain experience but not sufficient”, and that there is “increasing evidence that the fetus never experiences a state of true wakefulness in utero and is kept, by the presence of its chemical environment, in a continuous sleep-like unconsciousness or sedation.

An FRC blog entry described this as “politically timed and motivated”, and that the study could be used by pro-abortion activists in the US to argue against a new Nebraska law stating that an unborn baby feels pain at 20 weeks, outlawing abortion from that point on. The FRC report
states: “At 20-30 weeks, the human being has the highest number of pain receptors per square inch, more than any other time in development. Fibers which help to moderate pain do not begin to develop until 32-34 weeks, thus making the argument that babies feel pain more severely between 20-32 weeks.”

As BioEdge last week reported last weeks, the politicisation of science in the US remains a hot-button issue. The foetal pain debate is the latest chapter. ~ Family Research Council, Jun 24, Jul 12; Royal Council of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Jun 25