Health Issue: SIGNS OF LIFE: Anti-abortion activists

'Human fetus feels no pain before 24 weeks' Nerve Connections In Brain Not Formed Sufficiently To Allow Sensation, Says UK Govt-Funded Study London: British health experts say the human fetus cannot fel pain before the age of 24 weeks, and so there is no reason to challenge UK's abortion limit.]          The study says that nerve connections in the brain are not sufficiently formed to allow pain perception before 24 weeks.          The government-commisioned study is a setback for anti-abortion activists, who want Britain's current 24-week time limit for terminations reduced.          The study by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, published Friday, was recommended by lawmakers who are considering lowering the abortion limit.          The doctors say there is increasing evidence that even after 24 weeks the fetus is in a state of "continuous sleep-like unconsciousness or sedation".          The studies suggest that late abortions, permitted for serious abnormalities or risks to a woman's health, do not result in foetal suffering because of increasing evidence that the chemical environment in the uterus induces "a continuous sleep-like unconsciousness or sedation".           The finding that the fetus is naturally sedated and unconscious in the womb, leading the panel to advise that anaesthetics for the foetus are not needed when it is terminated.          Professor Allan Templeton, president of the Royal College, who chaired the review, said that research put forward by anti-abortion campaigners that the human foetus did feel pain at or before 24 weeks was based on evidence from premature babies. This did not apply to the fetus in the womb, he said.         The review would appear to remove one strut of the argument by pro-life campaigners that the current abortion limit needs to be lowered, although they are likely to challenge the findings.         Two years ago MPs voted on reducing the limit to 20 weeks, after the Conservative MP Nadine Dorries tried to change it by introducing an amendment to what was then the Human Fertlisation and Embryology Bill. The motion was defeated by a comfortable majority of 71. At the time David Cameron said he backed reducing the limt to 20 weeks.        On Thursday Dorries, a foremer nurse and mother of three, said that there was 'much more support" in the new intake of MPs for a change to the limit. Nonetheless, many liberal Democrat MPs are though to be against reducing the limit. A Downing Street spokesman said that the prime minister would "continue to be guided by the science on the matter", the Telegraph reported on Friday.