Originally posted at American Thinker.
A bill put forward by the state of Nebraska, hoping to impose further limits on a woman’s right to choose, has the Cornhusker state once again embroiled in debate, this time over abortion. The proposed Abortion Pain Prevention Act seeks to address the issue of late-term abortion by making the procedure “illegal after the 20th week of pregnancy…because of some medical evidence that a fetus can feel pain at that stage of gestation.”
The controversial legislation garnered national attention from pro-choice groups who view the potential ruling a direct challenge to the 1973 case that made feticide lawful. Truth is the First Church of Molech considers any action that even remotely admonishes extreme abortion practice on equal par with pillaging Vatican City.
Since Roe v. Wade’s inception individual states have intermittently proposed laws that have successfully placed restrictions on abortion. As a result, activists on both sides of the issue wonder whether a bill, which seeks to institute a time specific ban on the procedure, could potentially work its way through the legal system all the way to the Supreme Court and become the subject of abortion’s next litigious battle.
National Right to Life spokeswoman Mary Spaulding Balch said, “This bill is about recognizing that the state has an interest in an unborn child who is capable of feeling pain.” If the law passes, Nebraska will be the first state to ban late-term abortion, “based on the controversial notion that a fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks.”
Dr. Jean Wright, an anesthesiologist specializing in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, offered an illuminating metaphor in congressional testimony. ”[A]n unborn fetus after 20-weeks of gestation, has all the prerequisite anatomy, physiology, hormones, neurotransmitters, and electrical current to close the loop and create the conditions needed to perceive pain. In a fashion similar to explaining the electrical wiring to a new house, we would explain that the circuit is complete from skin to brain and back.”
Despite the obvious, if acknowledging fetal pain means curtailing late-term abortion, legal groups like the Center for Reproductive Rights who tout “reproductive freedom as a fundamental human right” remain determined to ignore the “human right” a living fetus possesses to be spared excruciating pain.
While some medical experts testified at the Nebraska hearings that a fetus is able to feel pain at 20-weeks, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released a statement saying it knows of “no legitimate scientific information that supports the statement that a fetus experiences pain.
One wonders, does the Hippocratic Oath grant dispensation to doctors to ignore the fact that at 20-weeks, unborn babies breathe and swallow? Do some obstetricians and gynecologists feel morally justified, in light of “no legitimate scientific information,” to execute children with four full layers of epidermis, including ridges for fingertips and layers that form palms, feet and future fingerprints?
If there is even one scintilla of likelihood that fetuses experience any pain during abortion, shouldn’t those whose vocation is to bring children into the world err on the side of sparing human suffering?
Although no one disputes that at 17 – 19 weeks of gestation a baby can hear its mother’s voice and move around — pro-choice America still question the extent of the ordeal a 20-week fetus experiences when being suctioned or burned during instillation saline abortion. Harvard Medical School anesthesiologist Roland Brusseau told the “Omaha World-Herald that the topic was ‘complicated and controversial’ [because] when a fetus undergoes a medical procedure in the womb…doctors usually use an anesthetic.”
What an innovative idea! If the infliction of undue torment is a concern for women committing murder, maybe forced miscarriage advocates can circumvent the effect of the Abortion Pain Prevention Act by proposing anesthetizing unwanted infants, in utero, before forging ahead with dismemberment. What’s more, an anesthetization proposal could serve to alleviate maternal guilt by ensuring doomed offspring expire by way of pain-free execution.
Administering anesthesia would be a tidy solution to the debate–sort of like the humane method of death by lethal injection.
It’s either that or denial similar to the type Democrat Nebraska State Senator Danielle Conrad exhibits when refuting, “the issue of fetal pain [as] a misnomer,” contending, “medical evidence is inconclusive.” Is the esteemed state senator so committed to “choice” she refuses to admit pain is involved when babies are flayed alive by high concentrations of salt laced amniotic fluid? Possibly Senator Conrad is not privy to the knowledge that fetuses thrash around for an hour or more before expiring.
At 80 years of age would Ms. Conrad welcome “inconclusive medical evidence” determining octogenarian pain thresholds?
As support for abortion in American society continues to wane, it’s obvious a devoted segment remain undeterred in the quest to dispose of as many children as possible. Pro-choice activists reveal shocking levels of barbarism when accusing “this particular Nebraska bill [of not being] subtle at all,” based on language explicit in its intent to shield viable human beings from agonizing death.
It is highly unlikely the “pain” debate will result in placing further nationwide limitations on an unjust law. However, in the interim one thing has been accomplished, the discussion surrounding Nebraska’s Abortion Pain Prevention Act has confirmed, without question, that those void of feeling and humanity are not abortion’s victims, but its advocates.
