The Next Step Toward A Total Ban - Maybe

As with the partial-birth ban, this is only a step along the way. But it will help to focus the facts about abortion where it belongs, on the unborn child & how this harms him or her.

ABORTION BAN BASED ON FETAL PAIN COULD BE PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION BAN FOLLOWUP

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The ban on partial-birth abortions brought home the pro-life message that abortion kills an unborn child and was responsible for shifting public opinion on abortion squarely into the pro-life category. Now, Nebraska could pave the way for the next kind of abortion ban that could pique national interest.
Ironically, Nebraska was the state whose partial-birth abortion ban first got the Supreme Court to weigh in on the issue in 2000.
Eventually, Congress approved, and President George W. Bush signed, a national partial-birth abortion ban that the high court upheld on a 5-4 vote.
Now, Nebraska lawmakers are considering LB 1103, the Abortion Pain Prevention Act, that would ban abortions done on babies who are capable of feeling pain.
Fetal pain is not a new concept and the leading national expert on the topic confirms unborn children definitely have the capacity to feel intense pain during an abortion.
Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand of the University of Arkansas Medical Center has said he and other specialists in development of unborn children have shown that babies feel pain before birth as early as 20 weeks into the pregnancy.
Nebraska Right to Life director Julie Schmit-Albin previously told LifeNews.com that the bill "will provide medical documentation that unborn babies can feel pain at 20 weeks gestation."
Why does a typical piece of state legislation have the potential to make a national impact? Namely because it has the potential -- and the desire from pro-life groups -- to go to the Supreme Court and result in another chipping away at the Roe v. Wade precedent that allowed 52 million abortions nationwide.
Mary Spaulding Balch, a state legislative attorney for National Right to Life, confirmed this in comments to the Omaha World-Herald newspaper earlier this month.
“I think National Right to Life wants to see something go to the Supreme Court that would provide more protection to the unborn child,” she said.
Balch also says the pro-life group wants the Supreme Court to redraw the line away from the viability standard about when abortions can be prohibited.
“What I would like to bring to the attention of the court is, there is another line,” Balch said. “This new knowledge is something the court has not looked at before and should look at.”
Janet Crepps, of the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, a pro-abortion law firm that frequently files lawsuits against pro-life legislation, made it appear a legal battle is brewing.
“This bill is unconstitutional as it's drafted,” she claimed. “Anybody who supports the bill should be clear that this is just a vehicle for them to go back to the Supreme Court and take rights away from women."
National Right to Life also says the genius of the Nebraska fetal pain abortion ban is that, like the partial-birth abortion ban, has the ability to bring more people under the pro-life tent supporting a ban on some abortions.
"The genius of this measure, as was the case with the ban on partial-birth abortion, is that a legislator need not be a card-carrying member of our movement or even sympathetic. All that is required, in this instance, is a willingness to acknowledge the scientifically conclusive fact that unborn children are capable of experiencing pain, certainly by 20 weeks after fertilization,' the group says.
The basis of the bill is the concept of fetal pain, which has the ability to emphasize the humanity of the unborn child as the partial-birth abortion ban did.
Anand said many medical studies conclude that unborn babies are "very likely" to be "extremely sensitive to pain during the gestation of 20 to 30 weeks."
"This is based on multiple lines of evidence," Dr. Anand said. "Not just the lack of descending inhibitory fibers, but also the number of receptors in the skin, the level of expression of various chemicals, neurotransmitters, receptors, and things like that."
Anand explained that later-term abortion procedures, such as a partial-birth abortion "would be likely to cause severe pain."
Dr. Jean Wright, an anesthesiologist specializing in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, has also confirmed the existence of fetal pain during 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," she said.
And Dr. Richard T.F. Schmidt, past President of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, confirms, “It can be clearly demonstrated that fetuses seek to evade certain stimuli in a manner which an infant or an adult would be interpreted as a reaction to pain.”
An April 2004 Zogby poll shows that 77% of Americans back "laws requiring that women who are 20 weeks or more along in their pregnancy be given information about fetal pain before having an abortion."
Only 16 percent disagreed with such a proposal, according to the poll, commissioned by the National Right to Life Committee.
Related web sites:National Right to Life Committee - http://www.NRLC.org