A pro-life group is asking questions about university researchers recruiting girls as young as 14 for a study involving abortions.

Researchers at the University of Hawaii are conducting gruesome research to determine how much women bleed during a second-trimester abortion.

Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life of America says the organization held a protest rally demanding answers, including who is paying for the research.

Unborn babies, killed in the womb in the second semester, feel "excruciating pain," she says. Tweet to @Students4LifeHQ

The experiment is conducted by either providing or denying oxytocin to the patients, a drug that minimizes blood loss.

Some doctors are concerned that denying oxytocin to teenage girls undergoing an abortion puts them at greater risk.

Hawkins argues that the younger girls recruited for the research are likely victims of a crime. The age of consent is higher than 14 in Hawaii, she notes, so the girls are, at a minimum, victims of statutory rape.