News

LONDON, Mar 23 (LSN)  England’s Sunday Times reported yesterday that new research by Stephen Evans, a psychologist from Keele University, demonstrates that children in the womb can hear and remember sounds as early as 20 weeks after conception. Evans was able to show that three weeks after birth babies could recognize an obscure song played at the 20th week of development by examining kicking patterns.  Previously it had been believed that fetal learning started at 24 weeks – the legal limit on abortion in Britain. Nearly 170,000 terminations take place in the country each year. In 1996,  2,192 of these were performed at 20 weeks or later.