Report: Fetuses unable to feel pain until 7 months or more (FOX NEWS!)

[Modem Butterfly]

This is an AP story, but it's up on the Fox website (don't ask how I came across it). Amazing they put it up at all.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166555,00.html

The review by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco comes as advocates are pushing for fetal pain laws (search) aimed at curtailing abortion. Proposed federal legislation would require doctors to provide fetal pain information to women seeking abortions when fetuses are at least 20 weeks old, and to offer women fetal anesthesia (search) at that stage of the pregnancy. A handful of states have enacted similar measures

SNIP

The researchers reviewed dozens of studies and medical reports and said the data indicate that fetuses likely are incapable of feeling pain until around the seventh month of pregnancy, when they are about 28 weeks old.

While brain structures involved in feeling pain begin forming much earlier, research indicates they likely do not function until the pregnancy's final stages, said the report's senior author, UCSF obstetric anesthesiologist Dr. Mark Rosen.

Based on the evidence, discussions of fetal pain for abortions performed before the end of the second trimester should not be mandatory, the researchers said.

SNIP

Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, JAMA's editor-in-chief, said the decision to publish the review was not politically motivated.

"Oh, please," DeAngelis said. "If I had a political agenda, I wouldn't pick fetal pain."

JAMA does not publish "politically motivated science. We publish data-based, evidence-based science," DeAngelis said.

Good on you, Dr. DeAngelis. It's insane that you even had to say this.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Maybe now those states will remove requiring women to read before

they have an abortion how the fetus feels pain from 8 weeks inception.

That, and the abortion causes breast cancer myth.

[Modem Butterfly]

2. What kills me is that women get painkillers before they have an abortion

They tell pregnant women not to smoke or drink or have coffee because the tobacco, alcohol and caffeine go straight to the fetus. Yet we're supposed to somehow believe that the anestesia and painkillers women get before abortions don't?

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. Different chemistry

Somethings do go from your system to the fetus and other things do not. An extreme example is heroin and cocaine. Mothers who use heroin will give birth to a heroin addicted babies. However, it has been found that cocaine does not transend. Babies born to women who used crack do not show any signs of it that can't be attributed to other factors in their environment such as poor nutrition and lack of prenatal care.

[MercutioATC]

4. I believe the prohibitions are for the effect on the MOTHER, not the child

Alcohol inhibits clotting, coffee is a diuretic and both coffee and tobacco raise heart rate.

An abortion is surgery. Alcohol, coffee and tobacco are to be avoided before ALL surgeries.

[Modem Butterfly]

5. Alcohol, coffee, tobacco, tuna, raw cheeses, undercooked meat...

...and a whole host of other substances are to be avoided throughout pregnancy, not just prior to an abortion. AFAIK, the only restriction on diet before an abortion is the old "nothing to eat after midnight" standby.

[MercutioATC]

6. You're correct, I misread the intent of the post.

:blush:

[Moderator]

7. Modem Butterfly

Per DU copyright rules
please post only four
paragraphs from the
copyrighted news source.


Thank you.


DU Moderator

[Modem Butterfly]

8. Whoops!

Past the editing period. My bad.