Earlier quoted context omitted.
I discovered last year that people are actually promoting this. I've been attacked by people because I do not agree with late-term (for no medical reason) and after-birth abortion: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_natur... It is almost in the same line of thinking that infants are not capable of feeling pain and why some operations on them were done without anesthesia: http://www.nytimes.com/198…
> It is almost in the same line of thinking that infants are not capable of feeling pain and why some operations on them were done without anesthesia While that sentiment is certainly a part of medical history, there's a good reason why many procedures on infants are still carried out without anesthesia today. Infants are fragile and most forms of pain relief we use on adults are simply too dangerous for infants. Any…
"Key medical objections to infant anesthesia - that it was (a) unnecessary and (b) dangerous - were resolved by the brilliant research of Kanwal Anand and colleagues at Oxford from 1985 to 1987. Making precise measurements of infant reactions to surgery, they proved that the babies experienced pain, needed and tolerated anesthesia well, and had probably been dying of metabolic and endocrine shock following unanesthetized operations."
Source: http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/second/chamberlain.html