some interesting stats:
courtesy of The Alan Guttmacher Institute and Planned Parenthood's Family Planning Perspectives.
*Women with family incomes less than $15,000 obtain 28.7% of all abortions; Women with family incomes between $15,000 and $29,999 obtain 19.5%;
Women with family incomes between $30,000 and $59,999 obtain 38.0%; Women with family incomes over $60,000 obtain 13.8%.
*1% of all abortions occur because of rape or incest; 6% of abortions occur because of potential health problems regarding either the mother or child, and
93% of all abortions occur for social reasons (i.e. the child is unwanted or inconvenient).
I find it interesting that those that are lower middle class have the highest percentage of abortions performed. these aren't poor, raped, starving women who can't take care of a baby. These are women who simply don't want the inconvenience.
now some facts on the gestation of a fetus:
by the fifth week, a heart beat is present
by the 8th week pain is felt.
Half of all abortions are done after 8 wks.
Quote:Pain can be detected when nociceptors (pain receptors) discharge electrical impulses to the spinal cord and brain. These fire impulses outward, telling the muscles and body to react. These can be measured. Mountcastle, Medical Physiology, St. Louis: C.V. Mosby, pp. 391-427 "Lip tactile response may be evoked by the end of the 7th week. At 11 weeks, the face and all parts of the upper and lower extremities are sensitive to touch. By 13 1/2 to 14 weeks, the entire body surface, except for the back and the top of the head, are sensitive to pain." S. Reinis & J. Goldman, The Development of the Brain C. Thomas Pub., 1980
Reagan himself said" When the lives of the unborn are snuffed out, they often feel pain, pain that is long and agonizing."
This provoked a public reaction from pro-abortion circles and a response from an auspicious group of professors, including pain specialists and two past presidents of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
They strongly backed Mr. Reagan and produced substantial documentation. Excerpts of their letter (2/13/84) to him included:
"Real time ultrasonography, fetoscopy, study of the fetal EKG (electrocardiogram) and fetal EEG (electroencephalogram) have demonstrated the remarkable responsiveness of the human fetus to pain, touch, and sound. That the fetus responds to changes in light intensity within the womb, to heat, to cold, and to taste (by altering the chemical nature of the fluid swallowed by the fetus) has been exquisitely documented in the pioneering work of the late Sir William Lily ?- the father of fetology."
We state categorically that no finding of modern fetology invalidates the remarkable conclusion drawn after a lifetime of research by the late Professor Arnold Gesell of Yale University. In The Embryology of Behavior: The Beginnings of the Human Mind (1945, Harper Bros.), Dr. Gesell wrote, "and so by the close of the first trimester the fetus is a sentient, moving being. We need not speculate as to the nature of his psychic attributes, but we may assert that the organization of his psychosomatic self is well under way."
Mr. President, in drawing attention to the capability of the human fetus to feel pain, you stand on firmly established ground. Willke, J & B, Abortion: Questions & Answers, Hayes, 1991, Chpt. 10
