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CWA Applauds Sen. Brownback’s Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act 5/20/2004 Washington – Concerned Women for America (CWA) thanks Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) for introducing the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act today. CWA wholeheartedly supports this bill which recognizes the scientific evidence that unborn babies experience severe pain during an abortion procedure.
“This legislation is necessary for two reasons,” said Wendy Wright, CWA’s Senior Policy Director. “It addresses these questions with the most up-to-date scientific information, and requires abortionists to provide accurate information that they simply refuse to give to women.”
Recent testimony from trials challenging the Partial Birth Abortion Ban proves the need for the Unborn Child Awareness Act. The medical community’s consensus is that unborn babies are “very likely” to be “extremely sensitive to pain during the gestation of 20 to 30 weeks,” according to testimony of Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand in Nebraska for Carhart v. Ashcroft. Anand said, “This is based on multiple lines of evidence. Not just the lack of descending inhibitory fibers, but also the number of receptors in the skin, the level of expression of various chemicals, neurotransmitters, receptors, and things like that.”
While this is common knowledge in the medical community, many women who have abortions are not aware of the information. The bill will require doctors to inform women considering an abortion 20 weeks into their pregnancy about the pain the unborn baby will experience during the procedure. If the woman decides to have the abortion after hearing this information, the bill requires the doctor to offer anesthesia for her unborn baby to ease the severity of the pain.
“Just because a baby is slated to be aborted does not mean it has to be done in the most horrifyingly painful ways possible. Every unborn baby deserves to be treated with respect, but until abortion is outlawed we should at the least ensure the death is not excruciating,” Wright said.
At today’s press conference, Sen. Brownback referred to a recent Zogby poll revealing that 77 percent of respondents agreed that a woman should know the scientific facts about fetal pain before undergoing an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
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