Mississippi is angling to become the latest state to approve a bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, following several other states in doing so and coinciding with pending legislation in Congress.
The Mississippi House on Thursday voted for the 20-week abortion ban on an 89-22 vote, and the bill moves to the Senate. House Bill 1400 does not have exceptions for rape or incest as the House rejected a proposal to include them.
According to the state health department, 2,176 abortions were done in Mississippi in 2012 and two were listed at 21 weeks or later and 382 were listed as unknown gestational age.
Diane Derzis, who owns Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, promised someone would file a legal challenge to the bill if it becomes law.
More on the debate from local news reports:
“We need this bill to protect the unborn who cannot speak,” Judiciary B Chairman Andy Gipson, R-Braxton, said as he explained the bill to the House.
Rep. Toby Barker, R-Hattiesburg, who described himself as “pro-life,” offered an amendment that to make exceptions for pregnancies caused by rape or incest, saying he can’t imagine what it’s like to be a woman or a victim of sexual abuse.
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The House rejected Barker’s proposal, with 73 voting against it and 40 for it.
A National Right to Life Committee poll found that 63 percent of Americans, and 70 percent of women, support a ban on post-fetal pain abortion in Washington, D.C. The same poll also found that American women, by an overwhelming majority of 62-27 percent, would be more likely to vote for lawmakers who support this bill.
The science behind the concept of fetal pain is fully established and Dr. Steven Zielinski, an internal medicine physician from Oregon, is one of the leading researchers into it. He first published reports in the 1980s to validate research showing evidence for it.
He has testified before Congress that an unborn child could feel pain at “eight-and-a-half weeks and possibly earlier” and that a baby before birth “under the right circumstances, is capable of crying.”
He and his colleagues Dr. Vincent J. Collins and Thomas J. Marzen were the top researchers to point to fetal pain decades ago. Collins, before his death, was Professor of Anesthesiology at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois and author of Principles of Anesthesiology, one of the leading medical texts on the control of pain.
“The functioning neurological structures necessary to suffer pain are developed early in a child’s development in the womb,” they wrote.
“Functioning neurological structures necessary for pain sensation are in place as early as 8 weeks, but certainly by 13 1/2 weeks of gestation. Sensory nerves, including nociceptors, reach the skin of the fetus before the 9th week of gestation. The first detectable brain activity occurs in the thalamus between the 8th and 10th weeks. The movement of electrical impulses through the neural fibers and spinal column takes place between 8 and 9 weeks gestation. By 13 1/2 weeks, the entire sensory nervous system functions as a whole in all parts of the body,” they continued.
With Zielinski and his colleagues the first to provide the scientific basis for the concept of fetal pain, Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand of the University of Arkansas Medical Center has provided further research to substantiate their work.
“The neural pathways are present for pain to be experienced quite early by unborn babies,” explains Steven Calvin, M.D., perinatologist, chair of the Program in Human Rights Medicine, University of Minnesota, where he teaches obstetrics.
