Why the Fetal Pain Bill Just Voted Is Harm Science
A bill entitled “The Protection of Unborn Children with the Potential of Pain”, which bans almost all abortions before 22 weeks of gestation, has just passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 237-189. But even though pain is bad and babies are good (I personally love babies), this bill is a steaming heap of bullshit. Starting from its name.
Here’s where you can breathe a sigh of relief: Analysts say the bill is unlikely to be passed by the Senate. In addition, the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal when similar state law was repealed several years ago in Arizona. Okay, enough relief. Let’s see what’s really going on.
Chances are good that this law exists only to force legislators to decide whether they are in favor of their choice or not. (The strategy is to “piss off the conservative basis.”) And its main effect so far is that many people talk about “fetal pain” as if it had something to do with 22-week abortions. Is not.
Pain is not what a fetus may feel at 22 weeks
“I find it horrible that we see junk science in our political system,” saysDr. Jen Gunter , obstetrician-gynecologist and pain specialist, when I ask her about the science behind fetal pain, which in a recent STAT article described as contested. “It’s not in dispute if you believe in science, let’s put it this way.”
At the beginning of the bill, Congress “finds and announces” several things that are very similar to certain messages expressed by anti-abortion activists . For example, pain receptors or nociceptors exist for up to 20 weeks.
“It’s like saying, ‘I have a key on my keyboard, so I can write a Word document,’ explains Gunther. “You need the rest of the keyboard, you need a computer, you need to have it plugged into a power outlet … you need more than a key on your keyboard to write a document.” From a neurological point of view, these nociceptors must be connected via nerves to parts of the brain that can perceive pain, and the brain must be conscious and able to perceive it. These requirements are not met later in pregnancy .
“The best data available indicates that the fetus cannot experience pain until at least the third trimester, around 26 weeks gestation,” agrees Dr. Daniel Grossman, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UCSF . He notes that “all major medical societies” in the United States and some other countries have officially declared this. Here is the 2013 American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ statement on this topic, entitled “Facts Matters.”
Both Dr. Gunther and Dr. Grossman have pointed out that other alleged evidence in the preamble of the bill is either wrong or irrelevant to the issue of pain. For example, you can poke a fetus and see how it moves in response, but this is a type of reflex that does not affect the brain. The bill also states that fetal surgery is performed under anesthesia, but Dr. Gunther explains that the anesthesia is for the comfort of the pregnant woman and to keep the fetus from moving.
But what if our knowledge is incomplete, I asked Dr. Gunther? After all, doctors believed that newborns did not feel pain either. “We may learn a lot in the future, but we do not pass laws or practice medicine based on hypotheses,” she says.
So I asked, is there any legislation that would make sense for those who are genuinely concerned that babies are in pain? “They may need to worry about the babies who are born receive medical care,” she says. After all, lack of proper care can make your health condition even more painful.
This bill is just a 22-week abortion ban
That’s right, 22 weeks, although the text of the bill (and a lot of news) speaks of “20 weeks”. This is 20 weeks from conception, and doctors or anyone else usually doesn’t talk about pregnancy. If you are 17 weeks pregnant, that means 17 weeks have passed since your last period . The egg and sperm met on the wrong day, but two weeks later. So yes, once you get pregnant, you are already two weeks pregnant. This is a standard part of pregnancy tracking. So whoever wrote this invoice either doesn’t know how to count the weeks of pregnancy or wants people not to understand what the invoice actually does. (Imagine a woman 19 weeks pregnant who can’t come to the clinic until next week; they think it’s too late.)
After that, the bill not only bans abortion, but also adds language that will be difficult or impossible for doctors to follow. Dr. Gunther pointed out several problematic sections of the bill while talking to me on the phone, and she kept saying, “I’m a doctor and I don’t know how to interpret this.” For example, there is a demand to save the life of any living child born by accident. Does this mean that now all premature babies need to be reanimated? (Nowadays, when a baby is born so early, it has very little chance of survival, parents can give up their efforts to save).
The section on allowing abortion to save the mother’s life is also vague: when exactly is a woman’s life “at risk”? If the membranes in a pregnant woman rupture, the fetus may be alive, but she is at risk of contracting a life-threatening infection, and this infection poses an increasing risk to human life as it develops.
In Ireland, Savita Halappanavar died because hospital staff did not know exactly when she got sick enough to make an abortion a lifesaver ; they ended up waiting too long. Dr. Gunther recalled that he was in a similar situation when he was practicing in Kansas. “The hospital’s lawyers called the person who wrote the bill home. They hooked me up to a three-way conversation so that I could ask this person if I was allowed to interrupt the treatment of this sick pregnant woman. Are we all going to have to call [new billmaker, Rep. Trent] Franks now? “