Catholic Culture Dedication
Catholic Culture Dedication

feeling no pain

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Aug 24, 2005

When doctors operate on a child still inside the mother's womb-- a technique that's advancing quite rapidly-- they administer anesthesia. But any anesthesia involves some medical risks.

Rosen said those risks are medically acceptable when the goal is to save the fetus but there's not enough evidence to show any benefit from fetus-directed anesthesia during an abortion.
Yes, there's a certain hard-headed logic to that statement, isn't there? If you're going to kill the child anyway, why worry that it's going to feel pain?

But the question being asked, in a new study for the AMA Journal, is whether an unborn child does feel pain.

A review of medical evidence has found that fetuses likely don't feel pain until the final months of pregnancy, a powerful challenge to abortion opponents who hope that discussions about fetal pain will make women think twice about ending pregnancies.

Two questions:

  1. If it's likely that you won't feel pain, does your dentist give you novocain? Or does he make sure?
  2. Can a "blob of tissue" feel pain? Or are we staring at yet another clear piece of medical evidence showing that the thing inside the womb is a fellow human being?
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