Posted on 06/24/2004 7:51:43 PM PDT by wagglebee
One of the most dramatic medical advances of recent years has been the use of surgery to correct birth defects--before birth. Surgeons can operate on fetuses in the womb for a variety of conditions, from life-threatening tumors to spina bifida. When they operate, it may surprise you to learn, they provide anesthesia not only to the mother but also to the fetus.
Or maybe it doesn't surprise you. Maybe it seems obvious that fetuses can feel pain long before they emerge into the world. But some people wish you wouldn't think about that fact.
The issue arises thanks to a proposal called the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, which is being denounced as "anti-choice" by abortion-rights supporters. In truth, it would have no effect whatsoever on a woman's right to end a pregnancy. All it would do is recognize that if a fetus is going to be destroyed, there's something to be said for doing it in the most humane way possible.
The bill's chief sponsors, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), think any woman contemplating an abortion should be fully informed before making a decision. Under their bill, a patient who is 20 or more weeks into a pregnancy would be advised of the scientific evidence that the fetus experiences pain during an abortion. Her doctor would have to offer anesthetics for the fetus. The doctor would also be free to state his or her views on the subject.
The legislation has a sound basis in medical opinion. It's impossible to know exactly what fetuses feel, but they respond to stimuli in a way that suggests they experience discomfort.
"It is my opinion that the human fetus possesses the ability to experience pain from 20 weeks of gestation, if not earlier," says Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand, a pediatrician who directs the Pain Neurobiology Laboratory at Arkansas Children's Hospital Research Institute. Dr. Jean Wright, head of the division on pediatric critical care at Emory University School of Medicine, says premature babies born at 23 weeks respond to pain just as full-term infants do. Fetuses at earlier stages, she says, may be even more sensitive.
Not everyone agrees. But this is one instance where it makes perfect sense to err on the side of caution by assuming that the capacity for pain develops earlier rather than later--just as surgeons do when they operate on fetuses, something typically done as early as 20 weeks.
Why is it controversial to suggest that a woman may benefit from having sound information about her fetus? No one objects to laws against cruelty to animals. There, we figure, the least we can do is minimize the pain inflicted on a helpless creature. Even if a fetus has no rights of its own, what's the harm in confronting its capacity to suffer?
The answer is simple. Abortion-rights advocates know this measure would not impede any woman who wants an abortion. But the bill does something that they understand is terribly dangerous to their cause: It recognizes that the "choice" to have an abortion involves not only a woman and her doctor, but also the fetus--a living entity with unmistakable human characteristics. And that way lies trouble.
Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the nation's biggest abortion provider, accuses supporters of "trying to elevate the status of the fetus above that of the woman." But it doesn't elevate dogs above people to say that canines may not be destroyed in an inhumane manner.
Planned Parenthood's problem is that the bill gives the fetus any consideration at all, because it reminds people that abortion is not just another medical procedure. Abortion-rights supporters know the real reason many Americans have reservations about abortion is not that they want to force women into traditional roles, deny them choices or stamp out birth control. It's because they think killing a fetus is uncomfortably close to killing an infant. Talk about fetuses experiencing pain only encourages that sort of thinking, and there is no telling where it might lead.
The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice says the bill "second-guesses the intelligence and moral integrity of women." But in a recent poll by Zogby International that asked Americans whether they favor a law "requiring that women who are 20 weeks or more along in their pregnancy be given information about fetal pain before having an abortion," 75 percent of the men said yes--along with 78 percent of the women. Most women don't regard medical information as a personal affront.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Or maybe it doesn't surprise you. Maybe it seems obvious that fetuses can feel pain long before they emerge into the world. But some people wish you wouldn't think about that fact.
Every women contemplating an abortion should have to sign a disclaimer acknowledging the suffering her unborn baby will endure.
Progress
This article appeared in the Chicago Tribune? Amazing.
Brownback is our Kansas Senator. Kansas also has killer Tiller, whose method of choice for late trem abortions is to stick a needle into the heart of a fetus and inject a drug which causes a heart attack. painful?
once again, the left trying desperately to censor.
"NO! Don't give that woman INFORMATION!!!!"
When our older son had his amnio, he was at ~14 weeks gestation. The procedure had to be halted for a few minutes because he was so curious about the big needle intruding into his private space. He reached up to explore it with his hand while we watched on ultrasound. I'll never think of wee babies in the same way again after that experience.
For the last time..stop bothering these poor women with FACTS!!! it's not about facts.. it's about CHOICE....choice is EVERYTHING.. reality is nothing.. don't make them THINK.
Over the years, we have made capital punishment more humane. We no longer have hangings; very few states still have the gas chamber or the electric chair. We put the murderer to death by putting him to sleep.
But innocent children can be burned by saline solutions and slowly tortured to death or be dismembered a la al Qaida and Saddam and all these heartless feminazis can think about is "choice". Sad
Well gee lady, you're elevating the status of your dog or cat higher than that of the unborn child. We give a dog or cat a shot to put it out of its misery; we don't hack it up in agony because we find the pet inconvenient.
No, it's not sad! It's demented, it's sick, it's psychotic, it's sociopathic, it's murder.
Sad is the state of evil that these women have allowed themselves to become.
Thank you again, DL.
Actually, most of us are just trying to elevate the status of the fetus/baby TO THAT of the woman/man/girl/boy/LIVING HUMAN BEING. Not above, just TO that same level. :all men are CREATED equal.:
This is a step in the right direction. The sickness and depravity of the murderous culture of death is amazing isn't it? Pray that this passes. In debates we must show what a contradiction it would be for lefties that support this.
Oh come on--the feminazis would have us believe that it's just like getting a bad tooth removed.
The alive child must be dehumanized in order to serve the demands of selfishness. Gloria Feldt is acknowledging this, albeit unconscious acknowledgement, when she makes a comparative comment such as 'pro-lifers are trying to raise the status of thew unborn above that of the woman from whom that alive human being inutero is receiving life support.' To the Gloria Feldts of the world, the thing is not an alive human being, yet a woman must be granted the special priviledge of terminating the human child receiving LIFE SUPPORT!
The reason for using anesthaetic is that activating the pain sensors causes a number of automatic physiological responses in all animals, even in the complete absence of higher brain function. These autonomous responses are detrimental during surgery and therefore the anaesthetic serves to suppress the pain sensors and physiological reaction.
The first part (not having a functional brain at birth) surprises many people, but the baby would not fit out the birth canal if the brain was fully operational; the brain actually finishes basic development and isn't fully bootstrapped to its normal function and structure until the baby is almost two years old. At birth, a human has about as much brain function as most other mammals. But unlike other mammals, there is an explosive development curve after birth.
Here's some common sense for the scientifically minded. Nobody knows how another person feels... EVER. I've been in chronic back pain for most of my life and nobody would know it because I've stopped reacting to it. Pain is normal background noise to me now. So, if we admit that we can't know for sure what another person (fetus, animal, whatever) is feeling, why is it a bad thing to err on the side of caution? What could possibly be wrong with giving pain management to a creature who we are about to dismember? Heck, a 20 week old fetus has a better developed brain than a mouse. Have you ever listened to a mouse scream when it's caught in a trap with a broken leg? If a creature can "react" to pain, then we should always assume that it can feel pain.
At it's earliest stages, a human fetus' brain is far more developed than the "mammals" you dryly compare it to. Never mind science, the ideas you posit here don't jibe with common sense.
Even if you pour salt on a slug, it's clear that the creature is in agony, in whatever tortured way you choose to define agony.
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