If you've been paying any attention, you know that the premise of a new Nebraska anti-abortion law that fetuses feel pain at 20 weeks is totally bogus. Now, the real danger is that this standard will hold anyway, replacing the current standard that only allows states to prohibit abortions after the fetuses are viable.
If you want an excellent primer to break the arguments against the legislation down point-by-point, New Scientist has one for you. Most scientists believe that the neural pathways that allow fetuses to feel pain develop sometime between 26 and 29 weeks. Only one scientist seems firmly behind the Nebraska law. A few others argue it's possible that we might test more to see if fetuses maybe feel pain earlier, but argue that it is, of course, beside the point anyway since we have the ability to mitigate pain in medical procedures.
Indeed, Maria Fitzgerald of University College London, co-author of a report on fetal pain in 1997 by the British Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, calls the Nebraska law "completely irrational". She points out that even if fetuses could feel pain at 20 weeks, "it is irrelevant because if you wanted you could make sure there was adequate analgesia for an abortion".
Alas, it would be nice if we could bring actual science into the abortion debate.
-- Monica Potts
