GOSNELL TRIAL’S DETAILS LEAD TO HEARINGS ON BILL TO PROTECT FETUS FROM PAIN

By Zoey Di Mauro
Catholic News Service 

WASHINGTON (CNS) — The fetal nervous system and brain structures that communicate pain are already in place by the 18th week of gestation, a neurobiologist from Utah told a congressional hearing May 23.

“There is universal agreement that pain is detected by the fetus in the first trimester,” although if it is not known if that pain is experienced in quite the same way as it is in adults, said Maureen Condic, an associate professor of neurobiology and adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City.

She also said that unborn babies are anesthetized when undergoing fetal surgery because, she explained, doctors have observed that fetuses do experience pain.

Condic was one of several witnesses testifying at the hearing sponsored by U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., as chair of the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice.

Franks, with several co-sponsors has introduced the Pain Capable Unborn Protection Act to prohibit abortion nationwide after 20 weeks of gestation, approximately the stage at which scientists say unborn babies are capable of feeling pain.

Franks recently reintroduced a measure that would outlaw abortions in the District of Columbia after 20 weeks, and he and a number of other members of Congress want to amend it to make it nationwide. Congress has legislative jurisdiction over the district.

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