From the BBC:

There is no new evidence to show foetuses feel pain in the womb before 24 weeks, and so no reason to challenge the abortion limit, doctors say.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ review said foetuses are “undeveloped and sedated”.

Brain connections are not fully formed, and the environment of the womb creates a state of induced sleep, like unconsciousness, they add.

Anti-abortion campaigners are likely to challenge the reports.

The issue of whether a foetus of 24 weeks or below can feel pain had been raised in the debate over whether the current time limit for abortion should be reduced.

In the absence of an objective moral arbiter, pain seems to have become the contemporary yardstick for determining what is good and what is evil: pain is evil, but nothing much else. This allows for not only the disposal of inconvenient unborn babies, but just about anyone else too – providing it doesn’t hurt.

The aged are eased comfortably into meeting their maker prematurely; Richard Dawkins nods cheerfully as utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer advocates infanticide for babies whose future may not be entirely pain free; Singer, following his logic to its conclusion,  speculates that non-existence for everyone might be preferable to existence because not to exist is not to feel pain.

The comedy in all this is that atheists such as Hitchens and Dawkins appear to think that atheism is capable of producing a coherent moral framework: the sum total of what it actually has come up with is the clodhopping “pain is bad” – a concept whose sophistication could be surpassed by a fraternity of socialised chimpanzees.