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There are a number of elements that must be in place before the feeling of pain is possible. Most people already know what the spinal cord is and that nerve fibres pass along it on their way to somewhere else (or the synapse - connect- within the spinal cord). The thalamus is the brain's distribution center, connecting the cortex - the thinking, aware part of the brain - and the spinal cord, for both incoming and outgoing connections. In the case of pain sensation, the signal from the pain sensors in the skin is passed along peripheral nerves, to the spinal cord, up to the thalamus and from there to the cortex, which interprets the incoming message as "there's heat here; or that tickles; or there's hurt here" So to be able to experience a sensation as painful, you need a lot of different things in place and functioning to at least a certain degree the skin receptors, the nerves connecting these with the spinal cord,-- the spino-thalamic connections, ---the thalamo-cortical connections, and the cortex itself. Now just like the wires in your house or computer if they arem't properly insulated the message will 'short' or leak off long before it gets to the place where it can be used. In nerves the process of covering the nerves is called myelination and doesn't happen sufficiently until approximately 30 weeks. In the British Working Party study I referred to earlier took this into consideration when they guessed that at 26 weeks there was possibly enough myelination to at least conduct some pain information and there were sufficient cortico thalamic connections in place for the message to get where it should to interpret the sensation as pain. One of the major counter arguments to that "Working Party" study is one conducted by a British abortion opposition group who tried to jump the lead and influence the outcome of the study by releasing the findings of theur own study first. Known as the Christian Action on Resrarch and Education (CARE) Report on Fetal Sentience the conclusions more than anything else tell what they did and essentially it is the same device used continually by abortion opponents. An unborn baby may be able to have a form of pain sensation or suffering as soon as the parts of the brain beneath the cortex are functioning. Once the cortex is linked to the rest of the brain the unborn baby will be able to feel pain in a similar way to premature babies after birth.So at best what is being said here is that prior to the full linking of the cortex they don't know whether pain is possible. I draw your attention particularly to paragraph 5.3 in this report and state that the rest of the report, rather than overturn this evidence of their own expert, Professor Fitzgerald simply supplied a series of "might" and "may" and "perhaps" statements - much as the first sentence in the precedeing paragraph. In other words a panel specifically designed to provide the ammuntion needed to oppose abortion because it caused fetal pain failed in this task and was compelled to the conclusion that the only certainty was that pain could be experienced after ~30 weeks. In order to apply pain to an earlier phase of fetal development they essentially had to rewrite the definition of pain. It is this rewritten definition that many abortion opponents,(Ranalli being one of them and Willke another,) are now trying to also use and I consider it less than honest, although I believe the dishonesty is not specific to one abortion opponent but is systemic in that part of the abortion opposition movement that produces 'information' for it's opposition. Eileen |