A number of pro-life advocates are calling on the Journal of the American Medical Association to retract an article published 11 years ago. In response, JAMA has stated it will consider the request.
The 2005 JAMA article stated that an unborn child at the age of 20 weeks, five months inside a mother's womb, was incapable of feeling pain. The National Catholic Register reports the pro-life advocates object to the conclusions derived from the article. The pro-life groups state that two later studies refute the 2005 study's findings, leading to the conclusion that a fetus does indeed feel pain at 20 week's gestation.
However, their primary criticism of the article is the failure to disclose in any way the relationship between the study authors and their association with the abortion industry, a relationship from which they benefitted financially, according to James Agresti, president of Just Facts. Agressi told CBN News that reliable scientific evidence, such as what is documented on the website Doctors on Fetal Pain, that a fetus does feel pain at 20 weeks has prompted over a dozen states to ban abortions past that time.
“I think from the fact that you have pain at this standpoint also shows that you’re dealing with a human being. Science shows that, medical textbooks say that, embryology, genetics," he said, "I don’t care what the discipline is, there’s nothing that says we’re not human at that point.”
He went on to say that the liberal media chooses to focus instead on the 2005 study, furthering the narrative that a fetus feels no pain at 20 weeks, when science overwhelmingly says otherwise.
“By the time of 20 weeks, they have the same number of nerve cells," he continued, "And this cerebral cortex is the portion of our brain used for higher level thinking, abstract thinking, language, things of that nature."
Click on the above video to watch more of CBN's interview withy James Agresti, president of Just Facts.