John Whitehead's Commentary
Does an Unborn Child Feel Pain?
In one of the most amazing photographs ever taken, a tiny hand reaches out from his mother's womb and squeezes the surgeon's finger. The photograph, which can be viewed by clicking here, was taken during a 1999 operation on tiny Samuel Armas, who was suffering from spina bifida.
The entire procedure took place within his mother's uterus, and no part of the child was scheduled to breach the surgical opening. However, as photographer Michael Clancy explains: "As a doctor asked me what speed of film I was using, out of the corner of my eye I saw the uterus shake, but no one's hands were near it. It was shaking from within. Suddenly, an entire arm thrust out of the opening, then pulled back until just a little hand was showing. The doctor reached over and lifted the hand, which reacted and squeezed the doctor's finger. As if testing for strength, the doctor shook the tiny fist. Samuel held firm. I took the picture! Wow! It happened so fast that the nurse standing next to me asked, 'What happened?' 'The child reached out,' I said. 'Oh. They do that all the time,' she replied."
At this point in his young life, Samuel had been in the womb 21 weeks and could still be legally aborted. Fortunately, the surgery was a success and, four months later, Samuel was born healthy and alert at a Nashville hospital.
Samuel Armas' story is one more piece in the mounting evidence that unborn children at an early age experience many sensations, including pain. In fact, the evidence is so overwhelming that it is astounding that proponents of abortion continue to ignore it. However, as science pushes viability back earlier and earlier, it becomes evident that unborn children are much more than just "protoplasmic rubbish" or "gobbets of meat protruding from human wombs," as we have been told by the pro-choice lobby. And in light of some recent trials over the constitutionality of the federal law banning partial birth abortion that was signed into law by President Bush in November 2003, it now seems possible that some of the evidence of the unborn child's humaneness will come to light in courts of law. This act prohibits physicians from performing partial birth abortions except in cases where the mother's life is endangered by a physical condition caused by the pregnancy.
Simultaneous trials challenging this law are underway in New York, San Francisco and Lincoln, Nebraska. A medical expert who argues that a fetus can experience pain during an abortion will testify in the New York trial. In the Nebraska case, Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand, a pediatrician at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, testified that the partial birth abortion technique causes "severe and excruciating" pain to the fetus. If other judges follow suit, then what abortionists claim is mere speculation may become legal fact.
Partial birth abortion is a grisly and inhumane technique that makes it possible for the medical community to "harvest" tissue and organs from babies who are not technically "born"--but also are not dead. This horrific procedure is a late-term abortion technique in which ultrasound is used to identify how the unborn child is oriented in the womb. The doctor pulls the child's legs and torso out of the uterus, hooks his index and ring fingers over the baby's shoulders and uses his middle finger to hold the woman's cervix away from the baby's neck. He then takes a pair of blunt-tipped surgical scissors and, after locating the base of the baby's skull, removes the brain from the still-breathing child. Even when anesthesia is used, many medical experts now say that the pain experienced by the unborn child during this barbaric ritual is not eliminated.
Unfortunately, abortion proponents and many in the medical profession have realized for years that they have been killing human beings who are not yet born and who obviously experience excruciating pain in these primitive killings. For example, in January 1996, the British Commission of Inquiry into Fetal Sentience, after a year of collecting and evaluating evidence, found that "[a]lmost everyone now agrees that unborn babies have the ability to feel pain by 24 weeks after conception, and there is a considerable and growing body of evidence that the fetus may be able to experience suffering from around 11 weeks of development. Some commentators point out that the earliest movement in the baby has been observed at 5.5 weeks after conception, and that it may be able to suffer from this stage."
The humaneness of any society hinges on how it takes care of the disabled, the infirm and the helpless. And there is nothing more helpless than an unborn child faced with the prospect of having its brains sucked out by a physician. A little humanity, anyone?
The entire procedure took place within his mother's uterus, and no part of the child was scheduled to breach the surgical opening. However, as photographer Michael Clancy explains: "As a doctor asked me what speed of film I was using, out of the corner of my eye I saw the uterus shake, but no one's hands were near it. It was shaking from within. Suddenly, an entire arm thrust out of the opening, then pulled back until just a little hand was showing. The doctor reached over and lifted the hand, which reacted and squeezed the doctor's finger. As if testing for strength, the doctor shook the tiny fist. Samuel held firm. I took the picture! Wow! It happened so fast that the nurse standing next to me asked, 'What happened?' 'The child reached out,' I said. 'Oh. They do that all the time,' she replied."
At this point in his young life, Samuel had been in the womb 21 weeks and could still be legally aborted. Fortunately, the surgery was a success and, four months later, Samuel was born healthy and alert at a Nashville hospital.
Samuel Armas' story is one more piece in the mounting evidence that unborn children at an early age experience many sensations, including pain. In fact, the evidence is so overwhelming that it is astounding that proponents of abortion continue to ignore it. However, as science pushes viability back earlier and earlier, it becomes evident that unborn children are much more than just "protoplasmic rubbish" or "gobbets of meat protruding from human wombs," as we have been told by the pro-choice lobby. And in light of some recent trials over the constitutionality of the federal law banning partial birth abortion that was signed into law by President Bush in November 2003, it now seems possible that some of the evidence of the unborn child's humaneness will come to light in courts of law. This act prohibits physicians from performing partial birth abortions except in cases where the mother's life is endangered by a physical condition caused by the pregnancy.
Simultaneous trials challenging this law are underway in New York, San Francisco and Lincoln, Nebraska. A medical expert who argues that a fetus can experience pain during an abortion will testify in the New York trial. In the Nebraska case, Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand, a pediatrician at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, testified that the partial birth abortion technique causes "severe and excruciating" pain to the fetus. If other judges follow suit, then what abortionists claim is mere speculation may become legal fact.
Partial birth abortion is a grisly and inhumane technique that makes it possible for the medical community to "harvest" tissue and organs from babies who are not technically "born"--but also are not dead. This horrific procedure is a late-term abortion technique in which ultrasound is used to identify how the unborn child is oriented in the womb. The doctor pulls the child's legs and torso out of the uterus, hooks his index and ring fingers over the baby's shoulders and uses his middle finger to hold the woman's cervix away from the baby's neck. He then takes a pair of blunt-tipped surgical scissors and, after locating the base of the baby's skull, removes the brain from the still-breathing child. Even when anesthesia is used, many medical experts now say that the pain experienced by the unborn child during this barbaric ritual is not eliminated.
Unfortunately, abortion proponents and many in the medical profession have realized for years that they have been killing human beings who are not yet born and who obviously experience excruciating pain in these primitive killings. For example, in January 1996, the British Commission of Inquiry into Fetal Sentience, after a year of collecting and evaluating evidence, found that "[a]lmost everyone now agrees that unborn babies have the ability to feel pain by 24 weeks after conception, and there is a considerable and growing body of evidence that the fetus may be able to experience suffering from around 11 weeks of development. Some commentators point out that the earliest movement in the baby has been observed at 5.5 weeks after conception, and that it may be able to suffer from this stage."
The humaneness of any society hinges on how it takes care of the disabled, the infirm and the helpless. And there is nothing more helpless than an unborn child faced with the prospect of having its brains sucked out by a physician. A little humanity, anyone?
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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