PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Foetuses: Pain (30 October 2020)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the implications for its policies of the research entitled Reconsidering fetal pain, published in the Journal for Medical Ethics in January 2020.

Asked by:
Sir John Hayes (Conservative)

The Department does not set clinical practice. To support clinical practice, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has considered the issue of fetal pain and awareness in its guideline on Fetal Awareness: Review of Research and Recommendations for Practice, published in March 2010.

The Department has brought the article to the attention of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. It is for the Royal College to consider whether to revise the guidelines, having looked at the available evidence.

Answered by:
Helen Whately (Conservative)
1 December 2020