Oh, Intersting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/23/health/23cnd-fetus.html?hp&ex=1124856000&en=34b02a0950c494c5&ei=5094&partner=homepage
So how is an unconscious, un-feeling lump of cells any different to a potato, or any other vegetable for that matter? Why do anti-abortionists feel it needs special protection? If it's so wrong to kill an unconscious, un-feeling lump of cells, then what are you going to eat? What about killing animals to eat?
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/23/health/23cnd-fetus.html?hp&ex=1124856000&en=34b02a0950c494c5&ei=5094&partner=homepage
(Cut - See link for full article)Report Finds Fetuses Feel Pain Later Than Thought
Taking on one of the most highly charged questions in the abortion debate, a team of doctors has concluded that fetuses probably cannot feel pain in the first six months of gestation and therefore do not need anesthesia during abortions.
Their report, being published Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, is based on a review of several hundred scientific papers, and it says that nerve connections in the brain are unlikely to have developed enough for the fetus to feel pain before 29 weeks.
The finding poses a direct challenge to proposed federal and state laws that would compel doctors to tell women having abortions at 20 weeks or later that their fetuses can feel pain and to offer them anesthesia specifically for the fetus.
About 1.3 million abortions a year are performed in the United States, 1.4 percent of them at 21 weeks or later.
Bills requiring that women be warned about fetal pain have been introduced in the House and Senate and in 19 states, and recently passed in Georgia, Arkansas and Minnesota. The bills are supported by many anti-abortion groups. But advocates for abortion rights say the real purpose of the measures is to discourage women from seeking abortions.
There are medical experts on opposing sides of the issue as well, and the only thing they agree on is that it is virtually impossible to tell for sure what a fetus can feel.
"This is an unknowable question," said Dr. David A. Grimes, a former head of abortion surveillance at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who now delivers babies and also performs abortions in Chapel Hill, N.C. "All we can do in medicine is to infer." Nonetheless, he said, the new article makes a compelling case for lack of pain perception in fetuses before 29 weeks.
So how is an unconscious, un-feeling lump of cells any different to a potato, or any other vegetable for that matter? Why do anti-abortionists feel it needs special protection? If it's so wrong to kill an unconscious, un-feeling lump of cells, then what are you going to eat? What about killing animals to eat?