Where's the evidence?
Where's the evidence?
In
Tuesday's show, Brian Rohrbough claims [at about 6:50], "This [Fetal Pain] law will not reduce abortion, it will INCREASE abortion."
This strikes me as mere opinion. Is there any evidence for this?
At about 7:07, Bob Enyart adds,
Even more people will now come on board and say "I was against late-term abortion, but now they give anesthesia (pain-killer) to the baby, so the baby doesn't even know," and that makes the whole public less opposed to late-term abortion.
This doesn't seem logical to me. A woman who enters an abortion clinic has already passed the pain threshold, and is even willing to KILL the baby. I'm unaware of any evidence (though I'm willing to be educated) that women are unwilling to permanently KILL their baby because they are deeply concerned that the killing will cause
short-term pain, but if the short-term pain could be anesthetized, she would be willing to KILL her baby. This seems like a reversal of the way people would think.
Are there any polls on the subject?
On
this blog, "Jivin J" tells Ed Hanks,
You again fail to provide any well-thought out reasoning for why this bill would lead to more abortions. The information is only provided to women who have already decided to have an abortion. The only thing it could do is make them change their mind in a positive direction since they've already in for an abortion.
Second, it's not as if an abortionist couldn't offer the woman pain medication for her child any way. So if a woman comes in and has concern about the pain of her child, I'm guessing most abortionists will either assert the child won't feel pain or offer pain medication.
According to Ms. Magazine,
The National Organization for Women (NOW) points out in its December 6 release that the bill would have not only dissuaded women from choosing abortion, but it also would have reduced access to abortion: "How many doctors have the resources, training, and insurance coverage to administer anesthesia to a fetus in their office or clinic? This could more than double the cost of the procedure and make it even more difficult for women with limited economic means to afford the additional cost of fetal anesthesia and/or travel to an equipped provider."
On that blog, Ed Hanks seems to say that if anesthesia had not been mentioned in the fetal pain bill, he would have supported it. But I gather that Enyart and Rohrbough would still oppose any bill which says, "Abortion providers are required to tell the mother that the baby will scream in pain during the abortion, and then they can kill the baby."
Sometimes I think Bob Enyart and friends just like to be contentious, kind of as a sign of purity.
