A bill under consideration in the United Kingdom’s House of Lords is attempting to establish a committee on ‘foetal sentience’.
The bill (HL Bill 15) would require the UK Secretary of State to establish a Foetal Sentience Committee. The committee’s purpose would be to provide evidence-based, scientific expertise on the sentience – a measure of how much the brain is active and “working”, especially in terms of registering pain – of the human foetus in light of developments in scientific and medical knowledge, notes the UK House of Lords website.
The committee, if established, would advise the government on the formulation of relevant policy and legislation. The bill would require the Secretary of State to respond to the committee’s advice on formulating relevant policy or legislation.
“I’m not trying to say how many people should be on it, or who they should be,” says Lord Daniel Moylan, the Conservative politician proposing the private members bill in the upper house of the UK’s Parliament. “Its purpose is to be a source of evidence based scientific expertise on the sentience of the human foetus in the light of developments in scientific and medical knowledge, which of course will change over time.”
The primary aim of the bill is to provoke conversation and greater understanding, highlights Lord Moyran, who as a Catholic is aware of how polarised the abortion issue is, and the often contentious nature of bills such as his, hence he emphasises that the bill is not exclusively about matters to do with abortion, rather simply the welfare of the foetus in general.
Foetal sentience is highly relevant, for example, during occasions where it’s necessary to operate on a pregnant woman, such as after a car crash. Any new information on foetal sentience can feed in to government policy and best medical practice.
It would also take the pressure off the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) who are the current go-to organisation for policy on this. This bill would open the door for others such as members of the Royal College of Paediatricians to also be involved in the discussion and provision of evidence, expanding the pool of expertise.
A review was published by the RCOG in December 2022 which reported that evidence indicates that the possibility of pain perception before 28 weeks of gestation is unlikely; but there are others, such as within the Royal College of Paediatricians, that take a different line.
The purpose of Moylan’s bill is not to take a view on who is “right or wrong”, but to widen the conversation and research that is drawn upon.
Any such committee would advise the government on the formulation of relevant policy and legislation, and the committee may also publish scientific reports requiring the government to respond within a set period, notes Lord Moylan’s office.
In addition to any reports they publish on scientific matters, they would be obliged to publish an annual report, which, as in most organisations, would simply summarise what they do and give an account of any expenditure or income.
The minimum requirement is that the committee has to produce an annual report – any other reports they publish is a matter for them. The government doesn’t have to respond to the annual report, only to the reports of a scientific character.
This Friday, 22 March, sees the second reading of the bill – which can be viewed online from 10 a.m. on the day – calling for the establishment of a Foetal Sentience Committee.
“The Foetal Sentience Committee Bill will create a committee that operates on an ongoing basis as a source of evidence-based, scientific expertise on the sentience of the unborn child, that will advise the government on the formulation of relevant policy and legislation,” Catherine Robinson, spokesperson for Right To Life UK, told the Catholic Herald.
“There have been rapid developments in scientific knowledge relating to the development of the unborn child since the Abortion Act was passed in 1967 and the abortion time limit was last changed over 30 years ago in 1990.
“Experts are increasingly providing evidence that suggests that unborn babies may feel pain from as early as 12 weeks gestation, well before our current 24-week abortion limit. Such evidence should be taken into account in our abortion law and when the Government is developing policy”.
So far the only opposition to the bill has come from Humanists UK – who reportedly hadn’t seen the bill at the time they opposed it – based on concerns that the bill might interfere with reproductive rights. Those behind the bill emphasise that it does not – and by its very parameters could not – interfere, and is simply about establishing a committee tasked with expanding knowledge.
Two years ago, the UK Parliament passed an animal welfare sentience bill which declared that mammals were sentient and so were certain forms of shellfish.
Like the animal welfare sentience bill, Lord Moylan’s bill doesn’t ask the government to set legal or clinical standards, rather it would simply establish a committee to further investigate issues around sentience and the human foetus.
“This bill is simply about knowledge,” says Lord Moylan.
(Photo composite: image on left is a screenshot of a human foetus taken from www.righttolife.org.uk; image on right is a shrimp, a ‘decapod crustacean’ that is covered by the animal welfare sentience bill, on the seabed; credit: Sakis Lazarides.)
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