New Abortion study shows that the unborn feel pain long before 20 weeks

A recent study by two pro-abortion researchers published in the Journal of Medical Ethics shows that the unborn feel pain as early as 13 weeks.  Previously the threshold was thought to be 20 weeks.

But both of these results are tainted somewhat in that they talk about pain in the context of something perceived by a specific part of the brain. But of course animals who aren't conscious don't feel pain at all in that sense but pro-aborts don't think we should let people torture animals.

However the new study shows that our understanding of the brain isn't sufficient to know for sure that the unborn don't feel pain at a much earlier point in their  development.

Previous studies have said that despite the fact that an unborn child reacts to negative stimuli, which is what most of us would call pain, they didn't feel pain because science said that certain brain structure, thalamocortical projections, is necessary to feel pain.

The new study shows that the thalamic projections into the subplot are functional at 12 weeks and are equivalent to the thalamocortical projections.

The first thing to note is that when people say that this or that part of the brain does this or that they're  way overstating modern scientific knowledge.  There are many examples of people lacking certain brain structures, due to birth defects, surgeries, or injuries, that have the functionality that scientists say they shouldn't have.

Hence it's not really scientific to say that the lack of a certain part of the brain means that the unborn can't feel pain.

Further the fact that this new study shows that a structure that hadn't previously been associated with pain is in fact associated with pain means there could be other structures that develop even earlier in a child's development that allow the unborn child to feel pain.

But even if we ignore all that this new study makes it clear that aborting a baby after 12 weeks is a barbarous act since the baby feels the pain of being burned to death by chemicals or the pain of being hacked to pieces with a scalpel.

Yet despite that Democrats are pushing to make abortion legal up through and including when the mother is in labor; some 40 weeks after the child first existed.

The good news is that unlike pro-abortion activists scientists are being swayed by real data.  While both of the authors of this paper are pro-abortion they both agree that there is huge ethical issue of butchering unborn babies who can feel pain.

In their paper they say:

"We also agree that if fetal pain is likely then that has ethical and clinical significance independent of any views on the morality of abortion per se. That said, it is also clear to us that the issue of fetal pain has ethical significance because of abortion practices and not because of other surgical or therapeutic fetal procedures.”

Remember the oath doctors take is that they are to do no harm.  Clearly hacking a human being apart who can feel pain doesn't conform to what doctors swore to uphold.