New Study Denying Fetal Pain Lacks Scientific Basis Pro-Life Groups Say

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 28, 2010
Washington, DC

(LifeNews.com) -- A new study from members of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists lacks a strong scientific basis and ignores the evidence supplies in several previous studies supplied by leading researchers in the field, say pro-life groups who are criticizing the new report.

As LifeNews.com reported last week, the new study, from a Working Party of RCOG, disputes an overwhelming body of evidence that unborn children can feel pain in utero.

The new study claims the nerve connections to the brain are not fully developed to the point at which babies before birth have the ability to feel pain. the rest

Mary Spaulding Balch, a National Right to Life attorney who has overseen the development of legislation in the Unite States informing women of the pain unborn children experience in an abortion, told LifeNews.com that most scientific research says the pain exists.

"An objective expert in neurobiology would be appalled by the stunning lack of scholarship in the RCOG article," she said.

That's because the authors of the article have a pro-abortion bias and include one abortion practitioner, she explained.

"Its authors (predominantly abortion advocates and at least one abortionist) based their claim that unborn children do not experience pain before 24 weeks on the absence of complete nerve connection to the cortex before then," Balch said.