Magnolia State Ping
Posted on 02/27/2014 4:08:34 PM PST by Morgana
A Mississippi state Senate panel has approved a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Thee measure is similar to legislation pending in Congress and in other states that points to the pain babies feel in abortions as a reason to ban them.
Diane Derzis, who owns Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, promised someone would file a legal challenge to the bill if it becomes law.
From a report:
ultrasound4d23A bill to ban abortion after 20 weeks’ gestation is advancing to the full Mississippi Senate for more debate later.
The Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee passed House Bill 1400 on Wednesday. It passed the House 89-22 on Feb. 13.
Twenty weeks is halfway through a full-term pregnancy of 40 weeks. The most recent Health Department statistics show 2,176 abortions were done in Mississippi in 2012.
A National Right to Life Committee poll found that 63 percent of Americans, and 70 percent of women, support a ban on post-fetal pain abortion. The same poll also found that American women, by an overwhelming majority of 62-27 percent, would be more likely to vote for lawmakers who support this bill.
The bill relies on the science of fetal pain to establish a Constitutional reason for Congress to ban abortions late in pregnancy. The science behind the concept of fetal pain is fully established and Dr. Steven Zielinski, an internal medicine physician from Oregon, is one of the leading researchers into it. He first published reports in the 1980s to validate research showing evidence for it.
He has testified before Congress that an unborn child could feel pain at “eight-and-a-half weeks and possibly earlier” and that a baby before birth “under the right circumstances, is capable of crying.”
He and his colleagues Dr. Vincent J. Collins and Thomas J. Marzen were the top researchers to point to fetal pain decades ago. Collins, before his death, was Professor of Anesthesiology at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois and author of Principles of Anesthesiology, one of the leading medical texts on the control of pain.
“The functioning neurological structures necessary to suffer pain are developed early in a child’s development in the womb,” they wrote.
“Functioning neurological structures necessary for pain sensation are in place as early as 8 weeks, but certainly by 13 1/2 weeks of gestation. Sensory nerves, including nociceptors, reach the skin of the fetus before the 9th week of gestation. The first detectable brain activity occurs in the thalamus between the 8th and 10th weeks. The movement of electrical impulses through the neural fibers and spinal column takes place between 8 and 9 weeks gestation. By 13 1/2 weeks, the entire sensory nervous system functions as a whole in all parts of the body,” they continued.
With Zielinski and his colleagues the first to provide the scientific basis for the concept of fetal pain, Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand of the University of Arkansas Medical Center has provided further research to substantiate their work.
“The neural pathways are present for pain to be experienced quite early by unborn babies,” explains Steven Calvin, M.D., perinatologist, chair of the Program in Human Rights Medicine, University of Minnesota, where he teaches obstetrics.
Dr. Colleen A. Malloy, Assistant Professor, Division of Neonatology at Northwestern University in her testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in May 2012 said, “[w]hen we speak of infants at 22 weeks LMP [Note: this is 20 weeks post fertilization], for example, we no longer have to rely solely on inferences or ultrasound imagery, because such premature patients are kicking, moving, reacting, and developing right before our eyes in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.”
“In today’s medical arena, we resuscitate patients at this age and are able to witness their ex-utero growth and development. Medical advancement and technology have enabled us to improve our ability to care for these infants…In fact, standard of care for neonatal intensive care units requires attention to and treatment of neonatal pain,” Dr. Malloy testified. She continued, “[t]hus, the difference between fetal and neonatal pain is simply the locale in which the pain occurs. The receiver’s experience of the pain is the same. I could never imagine subjecting my tiny patients to horrific procedures such as those that involve limb detachment or cardiac injection.”
Wake up, men.
Finally, a state government with some degree of competence.
Fairly irrelevant until a leftist takes it to court and a black-robed tyrant legislates from the bench using their oracular powers to reinterpret the US Constitution and their god-like wisdom to redefine natural law and natural rights.
http://www.babycenter.com/fetal-development-images-18-weeks
The baby is just as dead at 18 weeks as over 20 weeks. I am not celebrating this as a victory.
Emperor Palpatine will be in touch...
Praise GOD and Mississippi!
Still a step in the right direction. The difference between the Left and our side is that the Left will relentlessly attack/ignore any laws that they deem "unsatisfactory - we generally give up instead of being just as relentless. Until we are just as willing to ignore/flout laws we consider to be bad/sinful/un-constitutional, we will continue to lose ground.
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