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We people of Citi-Data are having a pretend vote on the following bill now, just because I'm curious what people's opinions will be. It passed in the House of Representatives and has gone to the Senate. Trump loves it already. The bill would result in a national ban on abortion after 20 weeks, with exceptions involving rape or incest, or if the life of the mother is threatened.Some people are saying it might be seen as unconstitutional though, so even if it passes it might be torn down. Here's CNN's summary:
Would you vote yes, no or abstain from voting? Why?
I'd vote no.
Here's the actual bill:
Shown Here:
Introduced in House (01/03/2017)
Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act
This bill amends the federal criminal code to make it a crime for any person to perform or attempt to perform an abortion if the probable post-fertilization age of the fetus is 20 weeks or more.
A violator is subject to criminal penalties—a fine, up to five years in prison, or both.
The bill provides exceptions for an abortion: (1) that is necessary to save the life of the pregnant woman, or (2) when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. A physician who performs or attempts to perform an abortion under an exception must comply with specified requirements.
So, there's nothing in there that I can see that would give mothers the option of not birthing children with the following conditions, (or other fetal disorders that don't threaten the life of the mother) if they're discovered after 20 weeks:
Anencephaly - rare (only about 3 pregnancies in 10,000 happen in the U.S.), but there is no known treatment for it, and almost all infants with it die shortly after birth. Getting enough folic acid before pregnancy and during early pregnancy seems to reduce the likelihood of it happening. Those three pregnancies per 10,000 people still mean about 1,206 babies born with it per year. According to the CDC it's not known exactly why it happens. There are prenatal tests that can detect it, but nevertheless sometimes the condition isn't detected until birth. https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefe...rocephaly.html
Now, here are some of the nine most common birth defects, according to this website:
Spina Bifida - affects about 1 in 2000 births Symptoms: Spina bifida ranges in severity from practically harmless to causing leg paralysis and bladder- and bowel-control problems. https://www.parents.com/baby/health/...nd-treatments/
Sickle Cell Disease- Sickle-Cell Disease
Prevalence: Sickle-cell disease occurs in around 1 in 625 births, mostly affecting African-Americans and Hispanics of Caribbean ancestry.
Detection: Because of its prevalence, 30 states require that newborns be given the blood test that detects the disorder.
Symptoms: The disease can cause debilitating bouts of pain and damage to vital organs and can sometimes be fatal. Sickle-cell disease affects the hemoglobin (a protein inside the red blood cells) in such a way that the cells become distorted: Instead of their normal, round shape, they look like bananas or sickles (hence the name). https://www.parents.com/baby/health/...nd-treatments/
Down Syndrome - Down Syndrome
Prevalence: Though Down syndrome occurs in 1 in 800 births overall, the incidence is much higher in older mothers.
Symptoms: A child with Down syndrome generally has characteristic physical features, including slanted eyes; small ears that fold over at the top; a small mouth, which makes the tongue appear larger; a small nose with a flattened nasal bridge; a short neck; and small hands with short fingers.
More than 50 percent of children with this defect have visual or hearing impairments. Ear infections, heart defects, and intestinal malformations are also common among children with this defect.
Though children with Down syndrome have some degree of mental retardation, most can be expected to do many of the same things that any young child can do -- including walking, talking, and being toilet trained -- although generally they learn how to do so later than unaffected children. https://www.parents.com/baby/health/...nd-treatments/
So, that pretty much makes the bill unacceptable to me, particularly because disorders may not be detected until later into the pregnancy than 20 weeks. Here's what I found out about the process of searching for and detecting various disorders:
Second trimester prenatal screening may include several blood tests, called multiple markers. These markers give information about a woman's risk of having a baby with certain genetic conditions or birth defects. Screening is usually done by taking a sample of the mother's blood between the 15th and 20th weeks of pregnancy (16th to 18th is ideal). The multiple markers include:
Alpha-fetoprotein screening (AFP). This blood test measures the level of alpha-fetoprotein in the mothers' blood during pregnancy. AFP is a protein normally produced by the fetal liver and is present in the fluid surrounding the fetus (amniotic fluid), and crosses the placenta into the mother's blood. The AFP blood test is also called MSAFP (maternal serum AFP).
Abnormal levels of AFP may signal:
Open neural tube defects (ONTD), such as spina bifida
(note that apparently they test for Down syndrome and spina bifida, sometimes, very close to the twenty week mark, when our government is considering nationally banning that kind of abortion). I mentioned both of those earlier.
note this important section too:
Abnormal test results of AFP and other markers may mean more testing is needed. Usually an ultrasound is done to confirm the dates of the pregnancy and to look at the fetal spine and other body parts for defects. An amniocentesis may be needed for accurate diagnosis. https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyc...ntentid=p01241
so that of course means...by that 16-20 week mark when those sorts of second trimester testings are done, if anything is found, doctors will often take even more time to do more tests to very their results. Our government is certainly putting the pressure on people to move quickly...probably unrealistically quickly in many cases.
Now, can fetuses really feel pain by twenty weeks pregnant? I'll be honest and say I'm overwhelmed by how much disagreement there seems to be about this topic, oftentimes by very intelligent people. I don't know who to trust. I don't have enough expertise in this area to know which of the seemingly smart people are pulling ideas out of their rear end, and which of them actually are being honest and unbiased.
However, below is a testimony of testimony of Maureen L. Condic, Ph.D., before congress. Before I get to that, I'll list her personal information:
Maureen L. Condic, PhD is an Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Utah, School of Medicine, with an adjunct appointment in the Department of Pediatrics. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago, her doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, and postdoctoral training at the University of Minnesota. Since her appointment at the University of Utah in 1997, Dr. Condic's primary research focus has been the development and regeneration of the nervous system. In 1999, she was awarded the Basil O'Connor Young Investigator Award for her studies of peripheral nervous system development. In 2002, she was named a McKnight Neuroscience of Brain Disorders Investigator, in recognition of her research in the field of spinal cord repair and regeneration. Her current research involves the control of human stem cell potency and differentiation. In addition to her scientific research, Dr. Condic teaches both graduate and medical students. Her teaching focuses primarily on embryonic development, and she is Director for Human embryology in the University of Utah, School of Medicine’s curriculum. https://cbhd.org/content/maureen-condic-phd
So, I'm fairly impressed by that, and here's a link to her testimony before Congress in 2013. This is just the last section:
From the perspective of neuroscience, it is unclear precisely what "psychological" aspects
of a mature pain experience are in place at precisely what point in either human prenatal
or postnatal development. It is impossible for me to know with certainty whether another
adult, a teenager or a fetus experiences pain in precisely the same manner I do. Yet it is
entirely uncontested that a fetus experiences pain in some capacity, from as early as 8
weeks of development. Moreover, most modern neuroscientists have concluded that the
thalamic circuitry developed by 18 weeks post sperm-egg fusion is primarily responsible
for human experience of pain at all stages of life. https://judiciary.house.gov/_files/h...2005232013.pdf
and yet, I find other seemingly impressively informed people claiming that to probably be bunk, such as the following, from the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the same year Maureen made her above testimony, in 2013:
A human fetus does not have the capacity to experience pain until after viability. Rigorous scientific
studies have found that the connections necessary to transmit signals from peripheral sensory nerves to
the brain, as well as the brain structures necessary to process those signals, do not develop until at least
24 weeks of gestation.i Because it lacks these connections and structures, the fetus does not even have
the physiological capacity to perceive pain until at least 24 weeks of gestation. https://www.acog.org/-/media/Departm...216T0057313363
So, what do we do when the experts are claiming the other experts to be morons? I for one conclude that it's just difficult to know what's going on inside the head of a fetus...but going back to my decision to not support the bill, if my son would be born with sickle cell disease, which can cause extreme pain, not getting an abortion is not going to save my son pain, even if my son can feel pain while in the womb...and it's definitely not going to do my son any favors if he has anencephaly and dies almost as soon as he's born.
Really though, if we're going to be consistent about our values, we're really not necessarily very concerned about pain as a society, at least when it comes to beings we don't really understand. Take chickens for example:
But what about animals? With them, we can only really know what we’ve observed — but it sure does seem like some animals have a conscious awareness of pain. In the wild, hurt animals nurse their wounds, make noises to show distress, and even become reclusive. In the lab, researchers found that animals, like chickens and rats, self-administer pain relievers (from special machines set up for tests) when they’re hurting. And in general, animals tend to avoid situations in which they’ve been hurt before — indicating a memory and awareness of previous pain and threats. https://www.vox.com/science-and-heal...pain-biologist
but one way I would say we are consistent, is that we do care about things such as trust, and things that would lead to the breakdown of society. A fetus has no friends to lose in death. Most of what I've found points to fetuses being asleep most of the time. A fetus doesn't have as much of a life as an adult. A fetus can't comprehend its own mortality, even if it can feel pain. I think it could be argued that the death of a fetus is closer to the death of a nonhuman than the death of the people we usually classify as human.
Also, note that apparently using anesthesia when performing abortions is already, at least at times, standard procedure:
“In terms of fetal surgery that’s just what we do,” said Elaina Lin, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, who sounded a little puzzled when asked how Montana’s law might change the behavior of surgeons. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...=.b52822cce8e1
I would abstain because the bill still allows abortions. We need a bill that makes abortion first degree murder because each abortion is a planned event.
I would abstain because the bill still allows abortions. We need a bill that makes abortion first degree murder because each abortion is a planned event.
I would abstain because the bill still allows abortions. We need a bill that makes abortion first degree murder because each abortion is a planned event.
Well...that's because you're you. That's just your silly, loveable way of looking at the world. Some people see the world through rose colored glasses. Some people see it more realistically. I assume your vision looks like you're peering through goggles covered partly in tar and bacon grease so that everything you see looks, and smells, terrible, and perhaps that's why you have such an optimistic and cheerful demeanor
.
This is preposterous. If I have a baby with a serious health condition that prevents him/her from living a normal life and places a huge burden on me and my family, will I be forced to have this baby?
If I am, then the gov't better pay for all my kid's medical bills once I have him/her!
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