Fetal Pain Is A Lie: How Phony Science Took Over The Abortion Debate

Fetal Pain Is A Lie: How Phony Science Took Over The Abortion Debate

By Katie McDonough| Salon.Com | Wed. Aug. 7, 2013 07:45 AM EDT

“New laws banning abortion after 20 weeks are based on pseudoscience - and real research proves it conclusively

Since Nebraska first jump-started the trend back in 2010, close to a dozen state legislatures across the country have passed laws banning abortion at 20 weeks. Most of these restrictions are given grave-sounding titles like the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” or some near-identical riff on the words “fetal,” “pain” and “protection.”

All of them, no matter what they’re called, rest on the stated premise that a fetus can experience pain at 20 weeks, and that this is a sufficient justification to ban all abortions after this gestational stage.

But “fetal pain” in the popular discourse is a nebulous concept, one that lawmakers like Jodie Laubenberg, Trent Franks and others haven’t much bothered to define or help ground in available medical evidence.

Probably because there really isn’t any. The limited research used to support such claims has been refuted as pseudoscience by both the Journal of the American Medical Association and the British Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. (Not to mention smaller studies from researchers at Harvard University, University College London and elsewhere.)

“We know a lot about embryology in the field. The way that a fetus grows and develops hasn’t changed and never will,” Dr. Anne Davis, a second-trimester abortion provider, associate professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University Medical Center, and consulting medical director at Physicians for Reproductive Health, told Salon.

“And what we know in terms of the brain and the nervous system in a fetus is that the part of the brain that perceives pain is not connected to the part of the body that receives pain signals until about 26 weeks from the last menstrual period, which is about 24 weeks from conception.”

Because the neural structures necessary to feel pain have not yet developed, any observable responses to stimuli at this gestational stage are reflexive, not experiential.

Which is to say, the fetus at 20 weeks can’t actually feel anything at all. Which is to say, the fundamental justification for these laws is a really big, really popular lie.

“That’s just where the science is. You can have an opinion about that, but it doesn’t change the information,” Davis says. “Science is not going to get the brain to connect faster.” (Neither, it should be noted, will the hoping, wishing or foot-stomping of politicians like Marco Rubio and his anti-choice contemporaries.)

“Patients are now asking me about fetal pain. This was not happening 15 years ago,” Davis says. “When you’re sitting in your office with a woman who is 22 weeks into a pregnancy with a severe fetal anomaly - she’s depressed, she’s stressed and now she’s worried, ‘Is my baby going to feel pain?’

It’s just another thing these women have to struggle with. And why? These are created concerns. They are not based in science, they are based in politics.”

And it’s the life experiences and medical needs of these women, unfortunately, that are all too often left out of the debate. Most people don’t know - and don’t want to know - why women have abortions at or after 20 weeks, which account for approximately 1.5 percent of all abortions.

The reasons why vary, though they are never simple, as Davis knows quite well.

“A patient of mine - already a mother to a young child, really happy about the pregnancy, husband is really happy about the pregnancy - went in for her first ultrasound and was told everything was fine.”

But when the patient came back at 18 weeks for a follow-up, Davis says, her doctors told her to brace for difficult news. The fetus’ heart was not developing normally, and would require multiple operations to fix.

Still, after meeting with a pediatric cardiologist to discuss what it would mean to raise a baby with chronic health condition, the couple decided to continue with the pregnancy.

Then came their 20-week checkup.

continued:

 

conclusion:

The heart condition had gotten worse, and the latest scans picked up new information: a systemic problem had emerged, affecting other organs in the body. The outcome was dire.

After a week of painful discussions within their family, the couple decided to terminate the pregnancy - at 21 weeks.

Fetal conditions like this, though rare, Davis says, are not diagnosable earlier in the pregnancy. “You cannot see this stuff in the first trimester. A woman could be in there every day up until 18 weeks getting ultrasounds and a doctor still wouldn’t be able to catch these issues any earlier.”

Which is exactly why medical discretion is so important, and why it’s so crucial that lawmakers allow doctors to be doctors - medical experts who know how to serve the best interests of their patients. But laws like Texas’ 20-week ban eliminate a physician’s ability to be adaptive to the unique circumstances of their patients’ health. Instead, nominal exceptions for the health and life of the mother in these laws can make otherwise safe abortions dangerous by forcing doctors to wait until their patient’s condition deteriorates before they can legally act to terminate a pregnancy and save their lives.

“You have a lady who ruptures her membranes - there’s no way she’s going to get to 24 weeks,” Davis says. “But just looking at her now? She has normal vitals. So what do you tell her [in a state with a 20-week ban]? ‘You have to sit in the hospital and wait until you get very sick. Then we can end the pregnancy.’

“If you did that under any other circumstance it would be wild negligence. If you had a patient that you knew was going to get an infection and did nothing, what kind of doctor would you be?”

But that is precisely what these laws do - force doctors to choose between saving a patient’s life or breaking the law. It’s a lose-lose situation that is becoming frighteningly more common.

But the reproductive rights movement’s greatest weapon against such legislation - and anti-choice activists trying to control the narrative on abortion care in the United States - is the truth, Davis says.

“Real situations in real life are very different than what we’re hearing from politicians. The whole debate - the way the whole thing is framed - is very shaming to patients. Let’s bring respect back into it. Treat people with respect. Have compassion for patients. Do what’s right for them.”

But mostly, she says, it’s about letting doctors be doctors, and keeping politics out of it.
‘Let us do our jobs. Let us take care of our patients.’ ”

http://www.salon.com/2013/08/07/fetal_pain_is_a_lie_how_phony_science_took_over_the_abortion_debate/
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IMO: This article takes on a whole new concept of abortion and the repercussions it has on the woman when something goes wrong and her doctor tells her the results of the latest tests showing the vast abnormalities of the child she is carrying and her subsequent decision to have an abortion amidst the current horrific laws being passed by legislators that should not be in the business of dealing with such important decision-making events in a woman’s life.

Only a doctor and his patient should be privy to this most private decision a woman will have to make in her life, never a legislator that does not have the training, knowledge, objectivity, nor the constitutional freedom to make that decision for any woman.

We see from the utterances of republican legislators their vast ignorance of the female body, the fetus, and have felt free to instill false information on the subject that is another source of her overall stress in making her decision whether to have an abortion or carry a severely defective fetus to delivery.

The point of a doctor being able to tell the health of the child is way past....6...12...weeks set up by legislators on what is purely a political basis, not thinking of the mother who must endure the birth, and then a lifetime of caring for this severely abnormal child ...a plan set out for her by a group of Congressmen that are only into the politics of childbirth and control of the mother’s body to ensure that birth no matter what it may do to the mother or to the child.

 

Given their talking point has been proven FALSE....the "pro-lifers", honest folks that they are...


will "forget" they ever mentioned it or even KEEP making the false claim about "fetal pain" and ignore the fact that they are spreading lies.

Such is their agenda.

 

Don't forget masturbating fetus'.

 

It was the LEFT you got the government involved in this in the first place. They badgered Norma McCorvey to lie to get the legislation they wanted...now you don't want legislators to be involved. You can't have it both ways.

 

Well, let's look at Salon's source:

I wouldn't call that a refutation of pain being felt.

 

What "legislation" was Norma McCorvey involved in???

 

"Limited"..."Unlikely"...."has been inferred"...and of course...the big one. "No human studies have directly examined the development of thalamocortical circuits associated with pain perception".

I thought I stumbled into a Global Warming thread.

- - - Updated - - -

LOL...what a Champion of "Womens Health" you are.....

 

I think its ridiculous to say a fetus feels no pain while it is being ripped apart. But even if it doesn't, it doesn't make it moral to kill someone if you make it painless.

 

I am a bit curious,

what percentage of abortions happen after 20 weeks, and why dont the people get them done earlier?

 

This has actually been addressed at great length. In a nutshell, about 1% of abortions are performed after 20 weeks. Most of those are performed when sonagrams and other techniques reveal serious, probably fatal birth defects.

However, my general reading is that more and more are performed after 20 weeks because abortions are increasingly inaccessible. Abortion clinics are being closed down in red states on a long list of pretexts. The current fad is to prohibit physicians from performing them unless they have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital - and THEN legislating that any hospital allowing such privileges will lose all taxpayer subsidies . Which hospitals can't survive without.

But really, this is only a problem for poor people. Middle class and wealthier women have no difficulty, and never did. I think the right-wingnuts wish to see as many poor people as possible bear children they do not want and can't afford. This is even more people to deny public assistance to, which makes them feel good. And since often such children grow up to be criminals, it means the right-wingnuts can hire more cops. They LOVE cops, so long as the cops are jailing the poor.

 

hmmm.. if its 1 or 2 percent I really dont see the problem... some times its needed........ not really an alarming amount or rate either. Dont see why it should be banned if sound medical reasoning exist.

 

Which is probably why the source was Salon, and not the JAMA.

 

I love catching Salon riding dirty.

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[video=youtube;jkm1i2o6Ri8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkm1i2o6Ri8[/video]

No, Salon used that JAMA article as a source including a hyperlink. I actually read the JAMA article and found that Salon was pulling a fast one again.

 

If you're looking for a rational policy, there's no need to search real hard. We already have one in practice, since EVEN WHEN there are no restrictions on abortion right up to birth, only 1% are performed in the second half of pregnancy, most of which have good medical reasons.

But you're not really dealing with rational here, you're dealing with scorched-earth fanatical absolutists, who would murder their own mother to prevent an abortion. There is no rationality there.

If the goal were to reduce abortion at any stage, studies show that aggressive birth control (that is, publicly funded and distributed) works wonders. According to these studies, total abortions could be reduced by at least 70%, and perhaps more. And STILL only 1% would happen after 20 weeks.

But the fanatics are not interested in preventing unwanted pregnancies. They are interested in requiring (and then forgetting about) unwanted children. Although back alley butchers are OK with the fanantics as well, so long as we're talking poor people of any color.

Clear away the noise, and the debate turns out not to be between better and worse approaches to conception, pregnancy, abortion and childbirth. Instead, it's between sane and insane. And that means there really is no debate.

 

abortion should be illegal at the point where the fetus can be kept alive and develop outside of the womb.

 

....mcguffin, a canard, a distraction.

ABORTION IS MURDER

 

It's real simple. If you're OK with baby murder then the pain issue is irrelevant.

I'm pretty sure most baby advocates don't have any less attachment to babies and their lives no matter the pain issue. It's about the right to your life.

 

And right there is why no rational national policy has evolved. Sheer blind fanaticism, facts be damned.

 

LOL What a ridiculous opinion.

 

Yeah I have to agree with alot of what you say.... I would like to see a much heavier emphasis placed on aggressive birth control. I also agree that many anti abortion people have non -rational logic they apply. Many anti abortion people are also anti welfare ... which would create more kids in nasty situations likely increasing crime rate and other nasty tid bits.

 

Guess you do not read my posts. i have stated 1% and given reasons why.

 

Another user already cleared this up in the thread and the discussion was continued, do you read others post?

 

It is not ridiculous. It is supported by science. A person gets their own unique DNA pretty early on. We cannot survive in or outside of the womb without care. We punish women who take drugs while they are pregnant. We punish people who kill pregnant women with multiple counts of murder. It seems reasonable to not hurt people... especially such little innocent ones.

We are talking about a human. No less an individual than each of conjoined twins. I am pretty sure if you had a two headed chick, and one head wasn't well developed... non-verbal... you would not be in favor of beheading the gimpy one would you? Just curious.

 

So you are in favor that the 1% have a right to an abortion but you want to restrict her right to decide whether it is worth carrying to term.