Pro and con on 20-week abortion ban
Two writers discuss the bill passed May 13 by the U.S. House that would ban most abortions after 20 weeks.
On May 13, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a ban on most abortions after 20 weeks. Today, two writers discuss the impact such a ban could have.
By Marybeth Hagan
Let's put the U.S. House of Representatives' recent passage of a ban on most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy into perspective. We should begin by noting the exceptions to the ban if it ever becomes law.
Under the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, those permitted to have abortions midway through their pregnancies and beyond include: women with life-threatening conditions, rape survivors who receive medical care or counseling at least 48 hours before seeking an abortion, and minors who report rape or incest to law enforcement or child-protection agencies.
Next, let's look for a bit of historical context.
There was little mention of fetuses or fetal pain in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As they pushed for nationwide legalization, abortion-rights advocates claimed that abortions simply removed "blobs of tissue." Their scientifically vacuous semantics proved to be effective.
The U.S. Supreme Court made first-trimester abortions legal across the land with its Roe v. Wade ruling on Jan. 22, 1973. Little is said about the court's companion ruling of the same day in Doe v. Bolton. While Roe allowed abortion before a baby is viable and can survive outside the womb, Doe legalized abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy as long as a doctor determines that a mother's "health" was in jeopardy.
Justice Harry Blackmun, who wrote the majority opinions in Doe and Roe, gave doctors considerable leeway in defining health, far beyond saving the life of a mother whose pregnancy puts her in danger of death. A doctor's decision concerning late-term abortion "may be exercised in the light of all factors — physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age — relevant to the well-being of the patient," Blackmun wrote. As for the other half of a pregnancy's equation, "we need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins," opined Blackmun, since "the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense."
That line of reasoning, like the "blobs of tissue" claim, became harder to defend after sonograms came along in the 1980s and offered incredible views into a pregnant woman's womb. Since then, ultrasound technology has reached near perfection. We can now see that a 20-week-old fetus looks like a tiny baby. He or she hiccups, rolls around, and kicks. This wee one might even yawn or suck his or her thumb. Such images expose abortion advocates' assertion and Blackmun's lawyerly pearls of wisdom for what they were — nonsense.
Medical science has made even more strides on behalf of the helpless unborn since Roe and Doe. Now doctors know better ways to treat babies born prematurely, improving their survival rates. In fact, a study of thousands of premature births published in the New England Journal of Medicine this month found that some babies born as early as 22 weeks can survive with proper treatment. Other specialists address the health issues of fetuses by operating on them while they are still in the womb.
Most of us enthusiastically support neonatal medicine's noble efforts to save and nurture babies who are born prematurely. Likewise, we cheer the wonderful work of fetal surgeons and staffers who perform maternal-fetal surgery on unborn boys and girls diagnosed with life-challenging conditions such as spina bifida, congenital heart disease, and more.
Medications, along with behavioral and physical methods of pain relief, are used to help premature infants cope with pain if doctors determine the benefits outweigh the risks. Both anesthesia and painkillers are used for maternal and fetal pain prevention during in utero surgery — though there is still considerable debate in the medical community on when fetuses begin to feel pain.
Which brings us back to that Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act.
Considering our provision of care and comfort for preemies and tiny unborn candidates for in utero surgery, how can we abort other 20-week-old fetuses with absolute disregard for the possibility that they might suffer pain while being ripped apart during abortions?
Clearly, some fetuses matter more than others.
We who live in the Philadelphia area realize this sad truth in our own backyard. Medical experts from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment do everything in their power to make life better for babies, unborn and born. Just miles away, Dr. Kermit Gosnell was committing abortion atrocities on babies and mothers. He was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder for killing babies born alive after botched abortions.
The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act next moves to the Senate, whose members will no doubt take President Obama's threatened veto of the bill into consideration as they deliberate. But beyond the politics and vote-counting, they might also consider this reasonable question:
"How can we be so sensitive toward some unborn lives and not others?"
Marybeth Hagan is a writer in Narberth. mbthagan@gmail.com
By Dayle Steinberg
The passage of a 20-week abortion ban by the U.S. House of Representatives on May 13 sets the stage to dangerously restrict access to safe, legal abortion. This bill would prevent doctors from providing women with the best medical care possible, and ironically, the House voted for it during National Women's Health Week.
This misguided bill does not have the interests of women and their families at its core. Nearly 99 percent of abortions in the United States occur before 21 weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While women should not have to justify their personal medical decisions, the reality is that abortion later in pregnancy is very rare and often happens under complex circumstances, during which a woman and her physician need every medical option available.
Abortions later in pregnancy may involve severe fetal abnormalities and serious risks to the woman's health. Consider the case of Jenni Lane in South Carolina, who wrote about her experiences for Planned Parenthood's Elections & Politics blog.
An ultrasound performed near the 20-week mark showed that Jenni's baby had a rare malformation of the brain. Jenni underwent further testing, and she and her family spent the next week in consultation with physicians. The baby was missing a section of his brain, and was highly unlikely to survive to full-term. These circumstances led Jenni, her family, and her health-care providers to make the best decision they could — to end the pregnancy.
A 20-week abortion ban would have added additional trauma to the difficult situation Jenni and her family faced. At Planned Parenthood, we won't stand for that.
Our top priority is ensuring that every woman is able to make her own personal, private health-care decisions without interference from politicians. Women have faced unimaginable situations in states where politicians have inserted their will into deeply personal medical decisions by passing laws like this. In response, a number of groups representing medical professionals, including the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Nurses Association, and Physicians for Reproductive Health, wrote Congress in opposition to the House bill.
Sometimes during a pregnancy, later-term testing is necessary to determine the status of the fetus. This was the case for Mary O'Donnell of Virginia, who in her 12th week learned her baby had organs growing outside of her body. She was told that further testing could only be done at 20 weeks to determine the severity of the situation. Wanting to give the pregnancy a chance, Mary and her husband waited — only to receive the devastating news that their baby's heart wasn't strong enough to undergo necessary surgery. "Our goal as parents was to avoid suffering on behalf of our child," Mary told thinkprogress.org. Imagine if, in addition to all of this, Mary had been forced to carry this pregnancy to term against her will — adding to the agony she was already experiencing.
Bills like the one that passed by the House are well-planned and insidious components of a larger agenda to end all abortions, and are deeply unpopular with the majority of Americans. When Americans voters understand the real-world impact of 20-week bans, a solid 60 percent oppose them, according to a 2013 Hart Research Associate poll commissioned by Planned Parenthood. The poll showed that a strong majority of voters — Republicans (62 percent), Democrats (78 percent), and Independents (71 percent) — say that Congress and state legislators should not be spending time on these issues.
While the bill provides an exception in cases where the mother might face death, there aren't clear parameters for the health of the mother or for a fetal anomaly. The bill subjects those who have survived the atrocities of rape and incest to coercion and delay, interfering with the doctor/patient relationship and adding needlessly to situations that are already extremely traumatic. In many cases, people seeking later-term abortions for pregnancies resulting from rape and incest have hidden or denied their pregnancies — often with good reason, including concern for their own physical safety.
The 20-week abortion ban is cruel and inhumane, and ignores the realities women seeking these procedures face. It's time for greater public dialogue on this issue. These dangerous attacks seek to interfere with the physician/patient relationship and exert unsolicited opinions and undue control, and Planned Parenthood will continue to fight against them.
Dayle Steinberg is president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania. externalaffairs@ppsp.org