The National Right to Life responds:
Its authors (predominantly abortion advocates and at least one abortionist) based their claim that unborn children do not experience pain before 24 weeks on the absence of complete nerve connection to the cortex before then.
They ignore the seminal 2007 publication of "Consciousness without a cerebral cortex," in the medical journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences and dismiss its evidence that children born missing virtually all of the cerebral cortex nonetheless experience pain.
Ironically, the article concedes the evidence that by 20 weeks pain receptors are present throughout the unborn child's skin, that these are linked by nerves to the thalamus and the subcortal plate, and that these children have coordinated aversive reactions to painful stimuli, and experience increased stress hormones from it.
I guess it all depends on how you define "pain", huh? Aversive reaction to painful stimuli doesn't count.
