I like the way you say “likely” performed… Does anybody have the details, or all the pro-abortionists jumping on the bandwagon?

From the NYT article:

For example, he said, tiny premature babies, as young as 23 or 24 weeks, cry when their heels are stuck for blood tests and quickly become conditioned to cry whenever anyone comes near their feet. “In the first trimester there is very likely no pain perception,” Dr. Anand said. “By the second trimester, all bets are off and I would argue that in the absence of absolute proof we should give the fetus the benefit of the doubt if we are going to call ourselves compassionate and humane physicians.”

1.4% of abortions were performed after 21 weeks (more than 10,000 by the way — three times as many babies as people who died on 9/11 – each year since 1974) , and, better yet where you got the idea that “risk of death to the mother” was ever involved in this day and age…

This is a non – starter. I will be opposed to abortions until you can show me that pregnancy doesn’t end in childbirth.

Authors of Disputed Fetal Pain Study Work for Abortion
From Lifenews.com
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 24, 2005
San Francisco, CA (LifeNews.com) — The author of a new study discounting evidence of the pain unborn children feel during abortions formerly worked at a pro-abortion organization. Also, the school where the study was conducted, the University of California at San Francisco, has been cited as a bastion of activism in favor of abortion.
The lead author of the study is Susan J. Lee, a UCSF medical student who once worked for NARAL, an abortion advocacy group that recently came under fire for falsely accusing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts of backing abortion-related violence.
Meanwhile, another author, UCSF obstetrician-gynecologist Eleanor Drey, is the medical director of the abortion center at San Francisco General Hospital.
The Journal of the American Medical Association published their study today, which claims unborn children don’t feel pain until 29 weeks into pregnancy, but JAMA did not include any information about the author’s ties to the pro-abortion group and abortion business.
One of the authors is on the staff of UCSF’s Center for Reproductive Health Research and Policy (CRHRP).
In a monograph about CRHRP, abortion activist Carol E. Joffe wrote, “What UCSF has done, more so than any other medical institution I can think of, has been to integrate abortion into mainstream medical care.”
“The message that this medical school gives the rest of medicine is that abortion is a normal part of women’s reproductive health,” Joffe wrote about the university.
Meanwhile, experts in fetal pain dispute the study’s findings.
Neurologist Dr. Paul Ranalli says the 20-30 week child in the womb may even feel more pain than an adult. He adds that the “pain impulse connections in the spinal cord link up and reach the thalamus (the brain s reception center): at 7-20 weeks.”
via GOP Bloggers

And second, this isn’t a statistical study, it’s a review of brain functions, likely performed through direct observation of PET scans and fMRIs.

Feti is the proper plural of fetus. That’s 1 point for you.

Finally, less that 1% of abortions are after 5 months, nearly always done for reasons of severe defect or risk of death to the mother.

1) This is the result of one study. Hardly “Well, that’s all she wrote.” Remember the “correlation between breast cancer and early-age abortion”? The pro=abortion people didn’t like that one — Which way did it go?

2) Well, Ok, fetuses (feti?) feel pain after 5 months. Does that mean no more abortions after 5 months? Wanna bet?

This is not an argument for abortion. It’s the discrediting of an argument against abortion.

YES!!! Despite what the repugs claim post-natal abortion is a fundamental HUMAN RIGHT, which the founding fathers cleverly enshrined in our constitution in such a way that nobody even knew it was there!!! Those who oppose it are little short of rapists.

It’s the anti-abortion crowd that use the pain argument, not the pro-choice movement. Taking a rhetorical argument out of their arsenal does not in any way imply support for the opposite argument. They now need to come up with a new argument, because this one has been discredited. Maybe there is a coherent and plausible argument for banning abortion. Pain to the fetus isn’t it.

Using your new benchmark, the mother of Tara Blocker (see link) should have the right to abort her 6 year-old daughter.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=244391&page=1

I’m really glad to see the pro-abortion crowd co-opting a variation of the “lobsters feel no pain when you boil them alive” argument to further their position.