Fifteen states are considering banning abortions after the twentieth week of pregnancy. Two states—Kansas and Nebraska—have already passed such a measure, while the one in Iowa is currently working its way through the state legislature:
The Iowa Senate will consider a bill that bans abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy, following approval of the measure by the state House Thursday night, lawmakers said Friday.
State Rep. Mary Ann Hanusa, a Republican, said the bill is a priority because a Nebraska doctor has said he plans to open a clinic in Council Bluffs, Iowa where he would perform so-called “late term” abortions.
“There is a substantial and growing body of medical and scientific evidence that unborn babies at 20 weeks can feel intense pain when they are aborted,” Hanusa said during debate Thursday. “At 20 weeks, unborn children have pain receptors throughout their body and nerves link these to the brain.”
(Via: Gene Veith)
April 7th, 2011 | 9:26 am
I can think of two rationales for the “fetal pain” argument against abortion. The first is that when a developing fetus reaches the point where it can feel pain, it has crossed some kind of threshold that requires it to be treated as a person. The second is that whatever the status of the fetus, if it can feel pain, it is wrong to cause it to suffer. The first seems to be a tacit admission that before a fetus can feel pain, it is acceptable NOT to treat it as a person. The second seems, to me, to raise a number of questions. If the goal is to protect living things from feeling pain, why is it only fetuses that are protected? And why not simply require anesthesia for a fetus (or any living thing) that is about to suffer something painful?
Of course, I may be misunderstanding the issue, and if so, I would like to hear the rational for the “fetal pain” argument against abortion. But from my current understanding, it sounds like somewhat of a ruse. If you believe that life (personhood) begins at conception, then to make any argument short of that is to try to convince others of something you don’t believe yourself. I know that some believe any argument at all you can come up with to limit abortion is a good argument, but that seems dishonest to me, especially when that argument is used to pass legislation.
April 7th, 2011 | 10:17 am
[...] Joe Carter: “Fifteen states are considering banning abortions after the twentieth week of pregnancy. Two states—Kansas and Nebraska—have already passed such a measure, while the one in Iowa is currently working its way through the state legislature.” [...]
April 7th, 2011 | 10:40 am
Pro-life supporters really need to start stressing that even with restrictions like this, US abortion law would still be far, far less restrictive than France, to name just one example. I really don’t think that average person (that 60-70% of the population that’s in the abortion-should-be-legal-sometimes-but-not-really-encouraged range of opinion) has any clue about this, and thinks that there in most countries there are absolutely no restrictions on abortion.
April 7th, 2011 | 11:17 am
Mr. Nickol,
An incremental legislative strategy has a long historical pedigree when it comes to human- and civil-rights work. The slave trade was outlawed before slavery was. School segegration in the U.S. was eliminated before comprehensive civil rights legislation was enacted. In none of these cases was the first step a “ruse.” But since politics is the “art of the possible” one finds the arguments that are most convincing and takes the legal steps that are politically possible. The argument from fetal pain is not an argument that sensitivity to pain necessarily earns one legal protection. Rather, it is an attempt to wake a slumbering population to the unassailable fact that a real conscious human being is the victim of an act of abortion.
There is good reason to believe that the U.S. is becoming increasingly pro-life. In time and God willing, we may yet see full legal protection extended to the unborn. But for now, we do what we can.
April 7th, 2011 | 11:23 am
David Nickol –
For those who don’t believe that personhood begins at conception – that awareness is the key differentiator – then 20 weeks is the earliest one could sensibly argue that the fetus has any awareness at all, even of something as basic as pain. (I’m such a one.)
Of course, even then, you can’t morally require someone to risk their life for someone else. Indeed, generally speaking, you can’t require someone to significantly risk their health for another. (We don’t force kidney donations, for example.) It’s surely a good and noble thing for someone to do so, but the law doesn’t generally recognize a duty to do so.
Given an exception for significant risk of harm to the mother, I’d be happy supporting this bill. (Unfortunately, I don’t think it’d have a major effect – relatively few abortions happen after five months, and the ones that do usually (nearly always?) have a medical justification.)
April 7th, 2011 | 11:49 am
Ray,
You state “relatively few abortions happen after five months, and the ones that do usually (nearly always?) have a medical justification.”
1) According to Planned Parenthood itself (which has been known to play hard-and-fast with statistics and the law), 18.6% of abortions are performed after 20 weeks. When we’re talking about 1.4-2.3 million abortions a year, that is hardly “relatively few”. Is 260,400 to 427,800 in one year “relatively few”?! Five thousand casualties among our soldiers over several years in Iraq evokes the outrage of many Americans on the Left.
Why is it between a quarter of a million and half a million in a year is considered acceptable?
2) As far as the “medical justification” goes, how many times has a doctor offered to write you a prescription or note off of work for a condition which didn’t warrant it? Has happened to me twice in the past year. “Medical justification” is a farce and a lie among many of our “professionals”.
April 7th, 2011 | 11:54 am
TimC,
Thanks for your response. I am still not clear on what arguments are being made in legislatures in favor of passage of laws that ban abortion at a certain stage based on the ability to feel pain. For example, I found this statement:
———-
“This is a significant advancement in the public discourse that the child in the mother’s womb is a living human being,” said Rep. Steve Brunk, R-Bel Aire. “Before, viability was defined by our ability to keep a child alive outside the womb based on the existing technology, not the development of the human being. This provides a more appropriate benchmark for late-term abortions.
———-
This seems to imply not that abortion should be prohibited altogether, but that an appropriate “benchmark” must be found after which abortion is impermissible. Also, I believe the bills passed so far make exceptions to allow for abortion in the case of fetuses with genetic abnormalities and the like. Doesn’t this in effect give permission to kill people (or at least fetuses) because they have disabilities? Why should a Down Syndrome fetus not have the same protection under a fetal pain bill as any other unborn child?
April 7th, 2011 | 11:55 am
Also, ectopic pregnancy (the condition which kills both mother and child if an abortion is not performed) happens, and must be dealt with within the first trimester. Another reason not to buy the argument that 20 week+ abortions are “justified”.
Even if ectopic pregnancies were the cause for late term abortions, that condition is rare (1-3% of all pregnancies). Where are the other 15.6-17.6% of those abortions coming from?!
That “nearly always?” (nice that you have the question mark) should read “nearly never have a medical justification”. Ray, try to be more precise when you are making factual claims.
April 7th, 2011 | 12:09 pm
Artaban –
If you don’t like the phrasing, then substitute “less than one fifth” for “relatively few”. It still doesn’t impact the problem that a lot more abortions happen than ever should. (Me, I think people should be far more careful about pregnancy in the first place, but either way, it’s not a good ‘fallback birth control’. What bugs me the most are people who have multiple abortions.)
April 7th, 2011 | 12:16 pm
Ray,
I agree that for those who believe there is a point in pregnancy before which a fetus need not be regarded as a person with rights, and a point after which a fetus should be regarded as a person with rights, the ability to feel pain would be a factor in deciding where the line should be drawn. I have a feeling a majority of American could be convinced that there is such a line. But I think in general it is the argument of the pro-life movement that the line should be at the moment of conception. So I am wondering how those people make the argument to limit abortion based on fetal pain. I realize, of course, that for those who do believe life (personhood) begins at conception, anything they can do to restrict abortions is desirable. But I still wonder how they make the argument based on fetal pain.
Whether a fetus can feel pain at around 20 weeks is not, of course, a settled question.
April 7th, 2011 | 12:25 pm
Artaban –
Emphasis added. Please look up e.g., eclampsia. Severe illness on the part of the mother can also make pregnancy risky as well.
April 7th, 2011 | 12:33 pm
Artaban,
You say: “According to Planned Parenthood itself (which has been known to play hard-and-fast with statistics and the law), 18.6% of abortions are performed after 20 weeks.”
I am looking at document from the Guttmacher Institute that breaks down abortions by week of gestation, and the caption says, “Eighty-eight percent of abortions occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.” If I am reading the graph correctly, the figures are as follows:
less than 9 weeks 61.8%
9-10 17.1%
11-12 9.1%
13-15 6.6%
16-20 3.8%
21 or more 1.5%
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html
April 7th, 2011 | 12:38 pm
Mr. Nickol,
I’ll admit that I haven’t looked closely at the legislation in the various states, so I may not represent the arguments actually being used. Nevertheless, the invocation of “viability” in the quote you found suggests to me that the concern rests with the defensibility of the legislation in court. The precedent set by Roe v. Wade establishes much greater freedom for legal restrictions on abortion after viability. As legal scholars have noted, the state of medical knowledge about fetal development has advanced significantly since 1973. By basing “viability” on the ability of the human being to feel pain, it appears that the legislators are seeking to strengthen the law against the inevitable court challenges.
As to your observation about the exception for genetic abnormalities, etc, I agree with your objection entirely. It grieves me deeply that a law should explicitly remove a class of human beings from legal protection simply because of disability. You’ll note that in Iowa, at least, several legislators voted against the bill because it’s protections were not strong enough. Again, as politics is the art of the possible, this exception may have been necessary to pass the legislation. Would that it were not so! Unfortunately, we have a long history of treating the handicapped as bearing less than full human dignity.
April 7th, 2011 | 1:17 pm
Ray,
I am in agreement with several points you make, and I did not intend for the comment “Why is it between a quarter of a million and half a million in a year is considered acceptable?” to be directed at you. Imprecision in my language certainly makes it seem it is so directed. I apologize and clarify that I’m not accusing you of thinking that.
David, I appreciate your input. On my screen, the colors of the category for “9-10 weeks” and “16-20 weeks” are almost identical. Upon closer examination it would appear I mistakenly swapped the number for 9-10 weeks with 16-20.
That would make the number a “mere” 5.3% (74,200 to 121,900 annually). More than gun deaths and drunk-driving deaths combined.
There are still problems with the Guttmacher statistics. Notice that they are determining the date of abortion from “weeks from the last menstrual period”. That gives them an extra 1-4 weeks to skew the data downward. It wouldn’t be very difficult to get more accurate data, just by looking at the level of development of the child.
Why wouldn’t they want to do that?
Because they’d have to ignore a host of evidence that we’re dealing with a human being. From the National Right to Life’s website:
“Surgical abortions are usually not performed before seven weeks… [4] By that time, the baby has identifiable arms and legs (day 45)[5] and displays measurable brain waves (about 40 days).[6] During the seventh through the tenth weeks, when the majority of abortions are performed,[7] fingers and genitals appear and the child’s face is recognizably human. [8]
Interesting that NRLC says the majority of abortions are performed week 7-10, but Planned Parenthood wants to say most are “before 9 weeks”.
It can make a world of difference to mothers. I know more than one woman who became pro-life after seeing her aborted child, with its tiny, 9 week old limbs and head.
April 7th, 2011 | 2:11 pm
David Nickol — I don’t think that it’s necessary to concede that a fetus is not a person worthy of protection before point X, in order to ask someone to agree that it is a person after point X. Rather than saying, “You’re right, a fetus is not a person if it cannot feel pain, so let’s restrict abortion once it can,” one can merely say, “Why not restrict abortion once a fetus can feel pain, since you agree that it deserves protection from that point, although we disagree about whether it deserves protection prior to that?”
April 7th, 2011 | 2:15 pm
Artaban,
You say:
In the United States, the gestational age of a baby is measured from the last menstrual period instead of the date of conception. This is just the way it is done in clinical obstetrics. One of the reasons for this is that the last menstrual period is much more easily known than the date of conception. Knowing the actual date of conception is almost impossible.
I don’t know why you object to Guttmacher using gestational age. It actually means if you want to translate the statistics using fetal age as a measure, you have to subtract two weeks from their figures. So it would be
less than 7 weeks 61.8%
7-8 17.1%
9-10 9.1%
12-13 6.6%
14-18 3.8%
19 or more 1.5%
The graph is indeed very difficult to read!
April 7th, 2011 | 2:23 pm
pentamom,
I agree with you. However, I am interested to know what arguments are actually being made in the legislatures.
April 7th, 2011 | 3:24 pm
Quite true. And why? Because someone’s right to not be chopped open for someone else’s well-being trumps someone else’s right to have things actually done for their well-being.
For the mother, rather than the child, to be analogous to the kidney donor, the case would have to be that she has already donated the kidney and it’s already been implanted, and she demands the right to have it back — and the right that it be removed from the child in the way most likely to kill the child.
April 7th, 2011 | 10:54 pm
Artaban – I try very hard to recognize and admit when I make mistakes – even just an accidentally unclear statement. And – no sarcasm here, honest – I genuinely admire anyone who does so. I prize civility on the net, it’s so rare, and I hope I’m as gracious the inevitable next time it’s my turn. :)
Mary –
It’s more like stopping an ongoing transfusion when it threatens the donor’s life. Again, the principle is that you can’t force someone to risk their life for someone else.
April 8th, 2011 | 5:46 am
the principle is that you can’t force someone to risk their life for someone else.
If that were true, we would not be able to force a baby to
risklose his life for someone else?If it’s genuinely a medical emergency, make a good-faith effort to find a surrogate mother, and make a good-faith effort to successfully transplant that baby. Even if the kid dies, at least the doctor didn’t cross the line into murder.
April 8th, 2011 | 10:16 am
“Again, the principle is that you can’t force someone to risk their life for someone else.”
So why doesn’t that include the child?
April 8th, 2011 | 11:24 am
Blake, pentamom – Principle of double effect. The goal isn’t to kill the baby, it’s to save the mother. Admittedly I parse the situation a bit differently than, say, the Church has… but that’s hardly my largest disagreement with them.
And yes, in such situations I’m wholly in favor of transplanting a baby into another support system, natural or artificial or whatever works. Developing such a system sounds like a great idea to me. (Another area where I’d disagree with the Church, come to think of it.)
April 8th, 2011 | 11:32 am
Okay, gotcha Ray. I got confused and thought you were saying something different.
April 8th, 2011 | 2:40 pm
Blake, pentamom – Principle of double effect. The goal isn’t to kill the baby, it’s to save the mother.
If we were talking about a case where a choice must be made, and the doctors prioritize the mother’s life, and the baby dies, this would be true.
But then it is not abortion, because no deliberate effort would have been made to kill the baby.
Abortion involves actually crossing the line into deliberately ending the child’s life.
April 8th, 2011 | 3:36 pm
Blake –
Reread the conversation carefully. That’s exactly what I am talking about.
We don’t have uterine replicators outside of science fiction yet, though, so there’s unfortunately no way to save the baby at 20 weeks – yet.
April 8th, 2011 | 5:41 pm
Reread the conversation carefully. That’s exactly what I am talking about.
There are two problems with the current situation that need to be resolved. Both involve honesty.
The first is the idea that a woman’s life is in danger if a single abortion-friendly doctor says it is.
The second is that puncturing a baby’s head, or suctioning it til it is ripped apart, or sticking a scissors into its neck, or throwing it in a garbage heap while it is still alive, is not giving it a fair chance to live.
So I repeat: to the extent that it is possible, a good-faith effort should be made – a real effort should be made – to locate a surrogate mother, and an equally sincere good-faith effort should be made to transplant the child into that surrogate’s womb.
Giving it every chance to live – even though you fear it will not – is substantively different than what abortion is.
April 8th, 2011 | 6:44 pm
Anyone who chopped someone into bloody chunks and claimed it was to stop an ongoing transfusion would be convicted of murder. Stopping an ongoing transfusion does not require active assault on the receptient’s body, so no, it’s more like an already transplant kidney.
April 8th, 2011 | 6:50 pm
Blake –
Just so I’m clear, you’re saying, essentially, ‘Some doctors may not be honest – or just not agree with my considered medical opinion – therefore we should disregard any diagnosis of medical risk to the mother?’
Some doctors are quite willing to hand out prescriptions that enable people addicted to, say, painkillers. Do you think that all painkillers should be banned for that reason?
If ‘honesty’ is a problem on the part of doctors, what exactly do you suggest to deal with it?
Now you’re arguing about means and implementation, not the principle itself. If ending the pregnancy is medically necessary, and there is currently no way to keep the baby alive… then some would argue that ending the life of the baby as quickly as possible is a mercy.
You don’t have to agree with that, and you can argue against it, but you can’t claim it’s an unthinkable or necessarily unreasonable position.
And when the baby dies because we can’t currently knit the placenta into another womb, you now have dead flesh inside someone, with all the attendant health risks. Early on, the placenta has time – and the chemical signals – to gradually form. By 20 weeks, it’s just not possible. Medically, you might as well be stuffing a raw steak into a woman’s uterus.
No, we may embark on a research program that could allow the transfer of a fetus later in pregnancy, eventually. But it’s simply not possible now.
April 8th, 2011 | 7:35 pm
Let me get this straight. The IA Senate majority leader, who apparently has dictatorial powers over what is considered in that body, is willing to let this bill be debated but not to let the marriage amendment be debated? Very odd, although I’m glad this is being debated (and would like to see a marriage amendment debated too).
April 9th, 2011 | 6:47 am
Just so I’m clear, you’re saying, essentially, ‘Some doctors may not be honest – or just not agree with my considered medical opinion – therefore we should disregard any diagnosis of medical risk to the mother?
There are doctors who put politics before professional reputation – and now all doctors have reduced credibility.
Because doctors who think unions ought to have the right to collective bargaining show up at protests to hand out sick notes.
And doctors who think marijuana ought to be legal dispense marijuana prescriptions for stubbed toes.
And doctors who think women ought to have an unrestricted right to abortion do the same thing.
It’s a real problem. You can’t just simply use “medical emergency” as a filter, now that doctors as a group have destroyed their ability to be reliable as filters.
But either way it remains the same: either do a better job proving that a viable baby “isn’t human”, or make a good-faith effort to save that baby’s life.
Because the argument that a baby is “just a lump of cells” clearly does not apply to a viable baby, and I do not accept that whether you are a human being or merely a “thing” that can be killed (in ways that would be illegal if you did it to a rat, under animal cruelty laws), is whether or not you are reliant on life support – especially since there are babies that have been known to survive birth, that is, are viable without life support.
If “choice” means “I get to choose whether or not I want you to be classed as human or trash”, then I think I am going to wear the label “anti-choice” with pride. I don’t believe that cherry-picking is appropriate in classification systems.
April 9th, 2011 | 6:51 am
And when the baby dies because we can’t currently knit the placenta into another womb, you now have dead flesh inside someone
I bet a lot of women would take that risk.
I think it’d be worth it. Imagine – ending the abortion debate, by providing an alternative that blows away all the excuses of the baby-killer crowd?
Heck ya.
Just make sure they give informed consent.
April 9th, 2011 | 10:43 am
Blake –
Well, if you feel that strongly about it, why not volunteer yourself?
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Male_pregnancy#In_humans
Robert Winston, a pioneer of in-vitro fertilization, told London’s Sunday Times that “male pregnancy would certainly be possible” by having an embryo implanted in a man’s abdomen – with the placenta attached to an internal organ such as the bowel – and later delivered by Caesarean section.[5][6][7] Ectopic implantation of the embryo along the abdominal wall, and resulting placenta growth would, however, be very dangerous and potentially fatal for the host, and is therefore unlikely to be studied in humans.[5][8] Gillian Lockwood, medical director of Midland Fertility Services, a British fertility clinic, noted that the abdomen is not designed to separate from the placenta during delivery, hence the danger of an ectopic pregnancy. “The question is not ‘Can a man do it?’” stated bioethicist Glenn McGee. “It’s ’If a man does have a successful pregnancy, can he survive it?’”
April 9th, 2011 | 10:51 am
Blake –
Hmmm. Interesting argument. Some doctors do things you don’t like, and therefore “doctors as a group have destroyed their ability to be reliable as filters”?
Can you explain why the minority of anti-abortion activists who encourage or engage in violence don’t mean that “anti-abortion activists as a group” are now guilty by association?
I linked to my arguments about personhood in my first comment here, and we’ve hashed it over before. It’s not germane to this case, when we both agree that (at least a good case can be made that) a 20-week-old fetus qualifies as human.
And we’ve already talked about why your ideas for a ‘good-faith’ effort are simply unworkable. If you can come up with a better idea, quite frankly the Nobel prize for medicine awaits you.
April 9th, 2011 | 12:10 pm
Hmmm. Interesting argument. Some doctors do things you don’t like, and therefore “doctors as a group have destroyed their ability to be reliable as filters”?
Hey, don’t blame me – I didn’t make the rules.
See: The Evolution of Cooperation (Axelrod).
Once you stop cooperating with me, I no longer have much incentive to cooperate with you. That’s how it works.
Doctors as a group can either be reliable, trusted professionals – or they can do nothing while some of them mis-use their authority (and spend the whole group’s reputation) to push a political agenda.
You can’t have it both ways.
This is why “integrity” matters. Because some things in life are either-or.
April 9th, 2011 | 12:20 pm
And we’ve already talked about why your ideas for a ‘good-faith’ effort are simply unworkable. If you can come up with a better idea, quite frankly the Nobel prize for medicine awaits you.
But the arguments you presented weren’t logical.
For instance, the argument that if the baby dies, the woman will have dead flesh in her body, is irrelevant, because there is reason to suppose that there are women who are willing to take that risk.
It is ethical to prioritize one life over the other in situations where only one life can be saved.
It is not ethical to simply dismiss the second life when a possible solution exists, and you just prefer not to pursue that solution.
Of course it is easy to see the real problem, which is that we have no incentive to perfect this technology as long as abortion is justified and legal – and when we do perfect this technology, not only will we save babies, but we will also be opening up the possibility that women could be held to the same standards of responsibility (like being expected to pay child support) for the babies they didn’t intend.
April 10th, 2011 | 10:42 am
Blake –
I’m sorry, Blake, but as of right now transferring a 20-week-old fetus into another woman’s womb is cargo-cult medicine. It is precisely as unworkable as transferring the baby to a man.
Placentas are elaborate, complex organs. The vascular systems of the mother and child intertwine, come that close, close enough for oxygen and nutrients and wastes to exchange… but do not actually splice together. They form – and require – sophisticated interfaces with both mother and child. Someday we may be able to mimic or recreate those interfaces. Not today, and not for many years.
If you can find actual obstetricians who will tell me differently, please do so. Until then, it honestly strikes me as you willfully blinding yourself to medical reality. I’m sorry, but that’s how it looks to me.
April 10th, 2011 | 4:02 pm
Developing the technology to transfer an embryo from one woman to another and particularly to grow embryos in “artificial wombs” would, it seem to me, create many more ethical dilemmas than it would solve, and the number of horrors it would make possible are probably endless. Already it is possible to take the sperm of a man, the egg of a woman, create an embryo, and implant it in a second woman. Who is the mother? The woman who provided the egg, or the woman who had the pregnancy?
Remember Brave New World, in which children were all hatched from artificial wombs, and the thought of pregnancy was revolting?
Pregnancy involves a very complex interaction between the mother and the embryo. It is not equivalent of a seed planted in the ground that can be transplanted to another plot of soil. Soil is passive. A pregnant woman is not.
Abortion could much more easily be drastically reduced by developing inexpensive and foolproof contraceptive technologies so that unwanted babies are never conceived in the first place. The idea of developing a technology for transferring embryos, or creating artificial wombs, and implementing it on a massive enough scale to make a dent in the million-plus abortion per year in the United States is a fantasy.
April 11th, 2011 | 7:26 am
Developing the technology to transfer an embryo from one woman to another and particularly to grow embryos in “artificial wombs” would, it seem to me, create many more ethical dilemmas than it would solve, and the number of horrors it would make possible are probably endless.
Nonetheless, killing babies is not an acceptable option.
If a way to save that baby’s life exists, and you choose not to pursue it, then you lose the right to say you “had” to kill the child.
April 11th, 2011 | 8:47 am
David Nickol –
Note that Mr. Huxley, while a very talented and imaginative writer, is not generally regarded as divinely inspired. Saying, “If this goes on…”, taking some trait and exaggerating it to the extreme, makes for good fiction. It can even be instructive in some ways… but prophecy it’s not.
Dystopian fiction necessarily ignores balancing and stabilizing counterpressures.
Please note that the idea under discussion was moving late-term pregnancies that pose a medical risk to the mother. A thankfully much smaller percentage.
April 12th, 2011 | 2:16 pm
[...] I mentioned pending anti-abortion legislation that is based on medical and scientific evidence that unborn babies at 20 weeks can feel intense pain when they are aborted. Anyone interested in learning more about the subject should check out Family Research [...]
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