Although Barack Obama signed an executive order prohibiting health insurance companies from using federal funds to pay for abortions (except in cases of incest, rape, or if the life of the mother is in danger), his sweeping new health care reform law has fired up state legislators.
Added to the mix are Live Action's undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood workers lying about fetal development and covering up statutory rape.
Earlier this month, Nebraska lawmakers passed a bill that bans most abortions 20 weeks after conception (with the usual exception for life or health of the mother), and it's based on the notion that unborn babies can feel pain at that stage. With Governor Dave Heineman's signature, the bill became law.
Heineman signed a related bill that requires abortion providers to screen women seeking abortions for mental and other risk factors and evaluate whether they were pressured into the decision.
Although a 2005 Journal of the American Medical Association article suggests the earliest an unborn baby can feel pain is 28 weeks, National Right to Life Director of State Legislation Mary Spaulding Balch disagrees.
"By 20 weeks after fertilization, unborn children have pain receptors throughout their body, and nerves link these to the brain," she said. "These unborn children recoil from painful stimulation, which also dramatically increases their release of stress hormones. Doctors performing fetal surgery at and after 20 weeks now routinely use fetal anesthesia."
If that's true, babies torn apart during a second-trimester dilation and extraction may feel their dismemberment, and babies killed during partial birth abortions can feel the scissors at the base of their skulls.
Gruesome, I know. I expand on the topic at my blog.
This week, lawmakers in Oklahoma overrode Governor Brad Henry's veto of two bills that require women to undergo an ultrasound before they kill the baby and to listen to detailed descriptions of the unborn child. Planned Parenthood can't lie about fetal development anymore, at least not in Oklahoma. A pro-abortion group is suing, naturally. An abortion should be as quick, clean, and impersonal as possible.
In Kansas, doctors are required to give a medical diagnosis to justify killing late-term babies. Finally, if you're pregnant in Utah and ask your boyfriend to beat you up to kill the baby, you've committed a homicide. In other words, the unborn child is a person for purposes of the law only if his mother induced his death, not an abortion "doctor."
Contact: La Shawn Barber
Source: michellemalkin.com
Publish Date: April 30, 2010
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