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Monday, January 29, 2018

Some thoughts in anticipation of next week’s Senate action on the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act


By Dave Andrusko
National Right to Life

It was the last NRL News Today post for Wednesday and went out late. But the announcement by pro-life Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that the Senate will bring up the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act next week was news too important to hold until this morning.
“Now Congress has an opportunity to take a step forward. …I’m pleased to have filed cloture on this bill to protect unborn children who are capable of feeling pain. …And I look forward to voting for it early next week,” McConnell said, according to The Hill’s Jordain Carney.
You’ll recall that the House passed a similar bill last October by a vote of 237-189. The bill extends federal protections to unborn children who have reached 20 weeks fetal age, a juncture by which medical science has demonstrated they can experience pain.

However if 45 years post-Roe teaches us anything, it is that pro-abortionists in the Senate will admit none of this, especially the foundational truth: an unborn baby at this stage of development will experience horrific pain as she is aborted.

Thus they will slide around, skip over, and do everything they can to evade what NRLC President Carol Tobias said at a press conference in October when the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act was formally introduced.

It is common to read in articles about this legislation that unborn children do not have the capacity to experience pain at 20 weeks fetal age. Those kinds of claims ignore the facts.

There is a large body of evidence that includes testimony from such experts on fetal pain as Professors Kanwaljeet “Sunny” Anand and Colleen Malloy.

In a 10-page report submitted to a federal court and accepted as expert testimony, Prof. Anand wrote, 
“It is my opinion that the human fetus possesses the ability to experience pain from 20 weeks of gestation, if not earlier, and the pain perceived by a fetus is possibly more intense than that perceived by term newborns or older children.”
Dr. Anand does not wish to be drawn into the abortion debate but his testimony stands. Dr. Malloy, of Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, has testified before committees in both the House and Senate. 
She stated, “There is ample biologic, physiologic, hormonal, and behavioral evidence for fetal and neonatal pain. … Many authors have substantiated that pain receptors are present and linked by no later than 20 weeks post fertilization.”
The bill has widespread public support and is already the law in sixteen states. This is important for a number of reasons.

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