The Secret History of the GOP's New Abortion Ban

[PeaceNikki]

http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2015/01/republican-abortion-ban-20-weeks?utm_source=nar.al&utm_medium=urlshortener&utm_campaign=FB

This is a really great piece and important on this anniversary.

Snip... Much more at link.

THE FIGHT OVER BANNING ABORTIONS after 20 weeks is as old as Roe v. Wade. (Older, actually—more on that below.) In Roe, the Supreme Court established the right to abortion by forbidding states from banning the procedure anytime before viability, when fetuses can be expected to survive outside the womb. Experts maintain that viability truly begins at 24 weeks after a pregnant woman's last period, or about 22 weeks after fertilization. (The most rigorous and widely accepted way to date a pregnancy is by counting the weeks since a pregnant woman's last period. The House bill and the majority of state 20-week bans, however, measure pregnancy from the fertilization of the egg; in medical terms, a 20-week ban is actually a 22-week ban.)

Yet proponents of banning abortion at 20 weeks insist that there are cases of infants born that early who survive. It's true that since Roe, medical advances have enabled a tiny, yet unknown, number of preterm infants to be born in the middle of the second trimester. But almost none survive. One study found that 85 percent of infants born 20 weeks after fertilization die within 12 hours. Another study found that 98 percent are born with major health issues such as brain hemorrhaging; 93 percent die within a year. The University of California-San Francisco Medical Center states that no infants born earlier than 21 weeks have survived.

Anti-abortion rights groups such as Americans United for Life, which authored several states' 20-week bans, deny that they are targeting Roe's viability rule. Instead, they focus on 20 weeks postfertilization because, they claim, it's the point at which fetuses experience pain. "Many of them cry and scream as they die," Franks says. But the scientific consensus roundly rejects this idea: For one, the relay path between the thalamus and the cerebral cortex—the connection that allows the brain to recognize pain—is not fully developed for another six weeks. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that the developmental milestones at 20 weeks—namely, the appearance of hair—are no more significant than those coming before or after.

...

In 1984, these bills became a formal strategy for defeating Roe. That's when a Northwestern University law professor named Victor Rosenblum proposed that abortion opponents should seek to pass laws that gnawed at its edges, and hope that judges would let those revisions stand. The so-called incrementalists notched their biggest victory in 1989, when the Supreme Court upheld parts of a controversial Missouri law that required doctors to perform costly viability tests before performing abortions for women who appeared to be at least 20 weeks pregnant. The case, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, demonstrated just how powerful a weapon a 20-week measure could be. Justice Thurgood Marshall's papers revealed that the conservative majority in Webster had come within one vote of using the 20-week provision to strike down Roe entirely. The liberal justices went as far as drafting a dissent that read, "Roe no longer survives."

We need to take this issue back and stand up for the reproductive rights of women. They're winning by eroding at access and adding limitations that have no reasonable merit. I will keep fighting until all legal restrictions on abortion are abolished.

[beam me up scottie]

1. "Many of them cry and scream as they die,"

Instead, they focus on 20 weeks postfertilization because, they claim, it's the point at which fetuses experience pain. "Many of them cry and scream as they die," Franks says. But the scientific consensus roundly rejects this idea: For one, the relay path between the thalamus and the cerebral cortex—the connection that allows the brain to recognize pain—is not fully developed for another six weeks. The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that the developmental milestones at 20 weeks—namely, the appearance of hair—are no more significant than those coming before or after.

Science: not a democracy

[PeaceNikki]

2. Science, like math and reality in general, have a liberal bias.

I love Jesse.

[beam me up scottie]

3. Me too.

Picturing him living somewhere in Canada, smoking a doobie and playing video games.