A bill proposing the creation of a scientific committee to analyze the experience of pain by unborn babies has progressed within the House of Lords.
Lord Moylan’s Foetal Sentience Committee Bill received its second reading within the Lords on Friday and can now progress to Committee Stage.
At the beginning of the controversy, Lord Moylan said there have been “inconsistencies” with attitudes towards sentient animals, noting the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill 2022, which required the federal government to establish and maintain a committee to advise on policy in relation to animal sentience.
He said, “That Act, noble Lords may recall, declares mammals and certain categories of shellfish to be sentient. I can be surprised if my noble friend the Minister desired to say that a human foetus must be denied the identical esteem as a lobster, but in indisputable fact that is the present position.
“We have legal protections for lobsters and decapod crustaceans—I remember the discussions throughout the passage of that Bill about those animals—in addition to all mammals, but now we have no view, let alone protection, for the human foetus.
“There can be an inconsistency with the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, which defines protected animals and protects their foetuses from some extent two-thirds through the gestation period. We have legal protection for canine foetuses from seven weeks onwards, but we don’t even have informal policy advice for the human foetus and its own sentience.
“This bill would open a path to correcting that, by allowing scientists to come back together and reach an agreed view and a developing view, in the sunshine of recent discoveries.”
He also pointed to disagreements amongst various medical bodies concerning the point at which unborn babies can experience pain.
Lord Alton pointed to a different contradiction raised several times throughout the debate, that the NHS recommends using analgesics during surgery on unborn babies with spina bifida after 20 weeks “but pain relief is just not mandatory for foeticide abortions”.
“Why should we care? First, this can be a human rights issue. The preamble to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which the UK is a signatory, states that the kid ‘needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before’ — please note that word — ‘in addition to after birth’,” he said.
“We have obligations that should be honoured, and the way will we try this without expert research or guidance policy?”
Lord Alton added that being pro-life and believing in the precise to life as a human right “doesn’t make people misogynist bigots, and so they mustn’t be caricatured as such”.
Baroness Smith of Newnham argued that there was a necessity for greater consensus and clarity.
“Surely, if a foetus of 24, 25 or 26 weeks’ gestation is sentient—whether the proposal is for a medical intervention or for abortion—nobody would want the foetus to suffer, including the lady carrying the foetus, whether or not they intend to hold it to term or they don’t wish it to live,” she said.
“Surely no one desires to inflict pain. If we understand at what point foetal sentience really comes into play, appropriate decisions and suggestions could be made.
“At the moment, arrangements for medical interventions are in place just for spina bifida, but there are other cases of in utero interventions that must be explored.”
Lord Robathan linked the query of foetal sentience to the present debate about decriminalising late-term abortions.
“The reason why I’m putting down a marker today is that there’s talk of decriminalising late abortions, after one or two very high-profile cases of a mother being prosecuted. In the actual case I’m considering of, a mother aborted at home, through drugs, a 36-week-old foetus,” he said.
“Of course, that child could have lived perfectly happily, so now we have to ask ourselves not about women’s rights, but about where murder begins and murder ends. A toddler that might have been born perfectly happily—that’s being born within the ward round the corner—being aborted when it could have lived, seems to me to be a really, very serious matter.
“I put this down as a marker because I hope that no one will pursue the concept we decriminalise late abortions, which can happen at home. This is just not about women’s rights, but about an honest, humane society.”
