[T]he canny abortion advocate … knows that another powerful force is shaping the contours of the abortion debate: science. Science and medical technology cut both ways, of course, but as they make the public more and more aware of the humanity of the formerly invisible passenger, it represents a triumph of incalculable importance.

When that emerging science also provides mounds of evidence that the unborn child does experience pain, it is, in my view, difficult to exaggerate how pivotal that truth can be in reorienting public opinion. It’s one thing to “terminate” a “blob of tissue.” It’s quite another to cold bloodedly rip limb from limb a child whose sensory equipment makes her capable of experiencing organic pain.

We’ve written a lot about fetal pain over the years. There is a debate about the exact point at which the unborn child first feels pain. Some make the case that the point is around 16-18 weeks. Others are more cautious, arguing that it’s more like 24 weeks. Neurologist Dr. Paul Ranalli has suggested in his analyses for NRL News that the evidence points to 20-21 weeks.

Two points. First, except for the hard-core pro-abortionist, the issue is not if the unborn child experiences pain but how early in his/her development. Second, every time a prestigious independent source comments on the question, the date gets pushed back to earlier in pregnancy.

In March, another very important development. The first paragraph from a British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, captured it well:

“Fetuses may develop consciousness long before the legal age limit for abortions, one of Britain’s leading brain scientists has said.”

This is big stuff when the likes of Baroness Greenfield, a professor of neurology at Oxford University and the director of the Royal Institution, argues that the conscious mind could develop before the upper age where terminations are permitted in England-24 weeks. …

Two years ago a Royal Research Council expert group concluded that unborn babies “might feel pain as early as 20 weeks and almost certainly by 24,” according to Daily Telegraph Science Correspondent David Derbyshire. The impact was immediate. Derbyshire reminded his readers that a poll conducted by the paper last year “found many neurologists were concerned that fetuses could feel pain in the womb before 24 weeks after conception.”

But even though Lady Greenfield is apparently not willing to propose changes in the law, she told the British Fertility Society last week that she had serious concerns about fetal consciousness. And she made her point in a very powerful way:

“The Home Office has legislation that applies to a mammal and they have now extended it to the octopus, a mollusk, because it can learn.... If a mollusk can be attributed with being sentient, and now has Home Office protection, then my own view is that we should be very cautious after making assumptions [about human fetuses].”

Obviously, the next question is, what do we do with this knowledge? … The real question is not (God forbid) whether we ought anesthetize a child who can experience pain before we tear her apart, but whether in even considering such a stone-hearted response we haven’t anesthetized our very humanity. ...

I honestly believe that as this knowledge permeates our culture, our response will be loftier, more noble, more in tune with American ideals. Such knowledge will help us bring to an end the downward spiral that has cost the lives of over 43 million little Americans.

It’s not as if we lack the vocabulary to move us from brutality to humanity. We have the words: kindness, gentleness, justice, and mercy. We just need to breathe life into the language of love and compassion.

Published in VSHL Lifesaver, August 2003