One last culture-war battle before they go

November 30, 2006

In the waning days of the GOP majority, House Republican leaders have to make some tough choices about what to spend their time on. Iraq? National security? Health care? No, they’ve decided to go back to an abortion measure that won’t become law anyway.

While they still can, House Republicans are looking at scheduling a vote next week on a fetal pain abortion bill in a parting shot at incoming majority Democrats and a last bid for loyalty from the GOP’s base of social conservatives. […]

The bill, by Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., defines a 20-week-old fetus as a “pain-capable unborn child” — a highly controversial threshold among scientists. It also directs the Health and Human Service Department to develop a brochure stating “that there is substantial evidence that the process of being killed in an abortion will cause the unborn child pain.”

Abortion providers would be required to inform the mothers that evidence exists that the procedure would cause pain to the child and offer the mothers anesthesia for the baby. The mothers would accept or reject the anesthesia by signing a form. The bill allows for an exception for certified medical emergencies.

Now, this is not at all my area of expertise, but as near as I can tell, the only medical evidence supporting the notion of a 20-week-old fetus being a “pain-capable unborn child” is coming directly from anti-abortion activists. That doesn’t necessarily make it false, but a) they’re not exactly objective observers here; and b) there’s ample medical evidence that they’re wrong.

The reality, of course, is that opponents of reproductive rights are obviously hoping to pressure women before they terminate their pregnancies. These activists want to intervene in the medical process and force doctors to tell pregnant women something that probably isn’t true, in the hopes that these women will change their minds.

In the context of the lame-duck Congress, it’s a bad joke.

House lawmakers have very little time to do anything, and GOP leaders have decided that this anti-abortion measure is worth debating — even though the Senate won’t even consider the measure, so it couldn’t become law anyway. As the AP explained:

It has no chance of passing the Senate during the waning days of Republican control. But, with Democrats ascending to agenda-setting roles, passage isn’t the point, said one conservative leader.

“Next year, the leadership of the House will be hardcore pro-abortion loyalists,” said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee. “They will block votes on even modest pro-life measures like this one.” […]

The vote would be the first on the measure, which was introduced in September and referred to a health subcommittee, where no action on it was taken. Johnson said his group wants a House vote to test support for the measure.

In other words, conservatives and Republican lawmakers have decided to do a little experiment, seeing who’ll vote for this legislation, even though it probably won’t see the light of day until the next time there’s a GOP majority in Congress — which could be a while.

But the part that offends me most isn’t the measure itself, but the fact that lawmakers are wasting time instead of doing real work that needs to be done.

Republicans vacating the Capitol are dumping a big spring cleaning job on Democrats moving in. GOP leaders have opted to leave behind almost a half-trillion-dollar clutter of unfinished spending bills. […]

The bulging workload that a Republican-led Congress was supposed to complete this year but is instead punting to 2007 promises to consume time and energy that Democrats had hoped to devote to their own agenda upon taking control of Congress in January for the first time in a dozen years.

In other words, Republicans have time to fool around with a culture-war bill they know won’t pass, but don’t have time to do their actual jobs.

hey, there’s a reason they’re called “wingnuts.” Actually many reasons, and this is one.

  • Ah, yes, the issue of fetal pain. Like the anti-abortion protesters with the ugly 5 foot signs I pass on my way to work nearly every day, context is everything, especially when it is missing. What they don’t show is that the 5 foot picture of the bloody fetus is blown up, that the “baby” is just a few inches in long.

    A “baby” smaller than the size of your fist is what they’re talking about feeling “pain.”

  • These people are certainly not patriots are they? They have completely messed up the country and now they will “cut and run”? No they won’t cut anything because they have never met an earmark they didn’t like, but they will run. Once they are gone, maybe we can get rid of the “Bridge to Nowhere”, and some other pet pork projects floating around.

  • There could be a good reason to see who votes for this crap. The incoming Dems have this year’s budget to pass, as well as the next 2. As we all know, this year’s proposal is chock full o’pork. I’d say that ANYONE who votes for this gets no pork. Simple, clean, you waste our time, you get no goodies.
    The remainder of the pork is up for debate (Sam Gibbons got us a great bridge years ago that was labeled pork, but it was really needed).
    Show them that actions do have consequences

  • The only thing the government needs to do in regard to abortion is to butt out. Make sure it’s legal and everything else is a medical and personal decision.

  • Well, I’m with Gracious. This is an opportunity to cut a lot of earmarks the Republican’ts have left behind. Let’s by all means do it.

    Will anyone but THE BASE notice the house vote? I doubt it.

  • There are just so many scarey parts of this bill, I’m not sure I know where to even begin.

    First, there is the idea of spending time discussing a bill meant to get people riled up, but has no real chance of actually getting passed. This is so the outgoing republicans can look to the far right and say See? We tried to pass anti-abortion legislation.

    This bill is blatantly trying to scare women into not having the abortion. Forcing physicians to offer anesthesia for the fetus infers to the woman that the developing fetus can indeed feel pain. The logical thought process will be that if a doctor is telling me that my fetus (or my ‘unborn child’, as the wording on the forms will go) can feel pain, then it’s probably true. And if the lump of cells/fetus/unborn child can feel pain, then it can have other higher functions (thought? A soul?). This is nothing more than a scare tactic based on bogus science.

    Then there is the actual wording of the bill itself. It defines a woman as “a female human being who is capable of becoming pregnant, whether or not she has reached the age of majority”. Now I know this is legal speak to include women under the age of 18, but the wording rubs me the wrong way and makes it sound like a woman is defined soley by her uterus. What about post-menopausal women or women who are infertile for whatever reason? Would it have been better wording to leave out the ‘capable of becoming pregnant’ part and define a woman simply as ‘a female human being, whether or not she has reached the age of majority”?

    Aside from the shakey science this bill is based upon, I feel that the bill itself is asking physicians to make questionable clinical decisions. Let’s pretend for a minute that a fetus can feel pain. Has any marketed anesthesia or analgesics been approved by the FDA for use in a fetus? Is there any recommended dosage available? Most pain medications are dosed based on patient weight. Is this even a feasible measurement in a fetus? How is the medication even delivered to the fetus? The bottom line question becomes is this bill asking physicians to give powerful pain medications off label?

    Yet another scaery part of the bill applies to women seeking abortions 20 weeks after fertilization, not 20 weeks after the last missed period. The wording of the bill is attempting to define human life as beginning at conception.

    And I haven’t even read the bill thouroghly yet. These just jumped out at me.

  • Imagine the possibilities here, if Pelosi decides to pull a Teddy Rooseveli on the Republican Pork supply. Instead of “Speak softly, and carry a big stick,” she’ll “Speak Loudly—and wield a Chainsaw.” It would make for a novel conversation piece—and a pretty good gavel, as well.

    Hmmm…Chainsaw Nancy. It just seems to have that “ring” to it…eh?

  • If this bill made any sense at all, wouldn’t the higher priority be mandating that painkillers be injected into the womb during labor? I gotta imagine being pushed and squeezed through the birth canal hurts.

  • “Most pain medications are dosed based on patient weight. Is this even a feasible measurement in a fetus?” – VT Idealist

    After a few abortions where this has been forced on doctors and women let’s try an autopsy and discover that the painkiller “proscribed” by the Republican’t Congress actually killed the fetus. Then let’s call them baby-murderers.

  • Excellent points all VT Idealist. Especially the point regarding anesthesia. This could be a backdoor attempt to prevent abortions after 20 weeks, given that there are likely zero FDA approved anesthesia drugs for fetuses. I could be wrong, but it does seem highly unlikely that there are, at the very least I wouldn’t be surprised to find that they are quite expensive.

  • One of the reasons the Religious Right refuses to endorse any measures to slow down global warming is that they think population control will inevitably be part of the mix.

  • “What they don’t show is that the 5 foot picture of the bloody fetus is blown up, that the “baby” is just a few inches in long.”

    Let’s just be clear here, a 20 week fetus is iver 10 inches long.

  • VT idealist did a great job of breaking down this piece of crap, but I took a closer look at the section on anesthetic and came to the conclusion that this is a pathetic attempt to ban all abortions, period:

    ADMINISTRATION OF ANESTHESIA- If the abortion provider is not qualified or willing to administer the anesthesia or other pain-reducing drug to an unborn child in response to a request from a pregnant women, the provider shall–

    No, I didn’t cut anything out. This bill doesn’t mention administering anesthetic at all. One guess is they don’t want to talk about sticking needles in a fetus (owch) but that’s not it. The bill goes straight to what should happen if the provider can’t or is unwilling to administer anesthetic. VT has already covered the fact that of course the doctor is going to be unwilling to administer anesthetic to a fetus. How will he know when it stops feeling pain if accepted medicine says it can’t feel pain to begin with?

    `(I) arrange for a qualified specialist to administer such anesthesia or drug; or

    Which will add a few thousand dollars on to the procedure and it still runs into the problem of finding an anesthesist who won’t laugh and walk away because this bill is way out in witch doctor territory.

    `(II) advise the pregnant woman–
    `(aa) where she may obtain such anesthesia or other pain reducing drugs for the unborn child in the course of an abortion; or

    OK, this is fucking stupid even for a group of stupid people. Are they thinking asprin? We are talking serious amounts of drugs (if taken orally) to reduce pain in the fetus (even though no one knows if the fetus can feel pain). We are probably talking overdose levels for the mother. Serve her right I guess.

    `(bb) that the abortion provider is unable to perform the abortion if the woman requires that she receive anesthesia or other pain-reducing drug for her unborn child.

    Which is the whole point. No doctor will jab a needle into a woman in order to reduce pain in a fetus that most scientist agree can’t even feel pain. I guess doctors could just stick a needle of saline in her in and say OK, baby is asleep, but still leaves the issue of forcing doctors to give their patients bad medical advice. I hope every ob/gyn in the country has printed up a list of the co-sponsors so they know who not to make a donation to.

  • I’ve lurked for ages. This is my first comment, so please be kind. 🙂

    This is one topic that really gets me. I am so tired of the narrowness of these anti-abortionists. In my first pregnancy, week 16, the doctor was disturbed by the ultrasound and had me come back a week later. Week 17, another ultrasound, with husband there. Doctor can’t see head. Further tests done and doctor diagnosed the baby with anencephaly (no head developed, brain fluid in the uterus). He recommended termination. This was our first pregnancy and very emotionally devastating for us. I don’t know what all the ramifications would have been to carry to term, but I couldn’t do it emotionally. We ended the pregnancy. It was a difficult decision but our decision to make. And I’m grateful we were in Japan where no one felt compelled to take that decision away from us (and where I stayed in hospital and was treated with great respect and gentleness by the nurses).

    I’m not an anomoly. A couple of years later in London I met an American woman. During her second pregnancy (and she was farther along than I was) they discovered the little girl she carried had a hole in her heart, spina bifida and other birth defects. They were contemplating the decision we made and it was heartwrenching for them as well.

    I don’t advocate abortion as a form of birth control (and it wouldn’t have to be if we had rational policies in place) but throwing a blanket net like they want to do catches up people like myself or that London woman who may not be at risk for our lives but who certainly don’t deserve to have that right stripped from us by self-serving, sanctimonious people who’ve never walked in our shoes. End rant. 😉

  • “Next year, the leadership of the House will be hardcore pro-abortion loyalists…” — Douglas Johnson

    Minor point with major implications: I’VE NEVER MET ANYONE WHO WAS PRO-ABORTION. Unlike the deceptive term, “pro-life,” pro-choice means exactly what it says. You, Mr. Johnson, are not pro-life, but anti-choice. It’s not that hard to understand.

    Good to hear from you, tokyo ex-pat.

  • “They will block votes on even modest pro-life measures like this one.” […]

    Well, when the Democratic Party means “pro-life”, it means caring for children from every walk of life AFTER they are born.

    As Barney Frank once said, “conservatives believe that from the standpoint of the federal government, life begins at conception and ends at birth.”

  • If every fetus is “an unborn child”, then how come, when I had a miscarriage (at 13 weeks), I was told to just “pinch a bit and bring it for tissue test, in a well-washed glass jar. Flush the rest down the commode”? All of a sudden, it wasn’t an “unborn child”, it was “tissue”. Pfui for their hypocrisy.

    Tokyo ex-pat (@15); how terrible for you to have had to make that decision. And how wonderful that you were able to, without some sanctimonious ass piling up guilt on you.

  • Thank you beep52. Libra, thank you for your kind words too. I’m sorry for what you experienced as well. I hope you had better experiences to soften that one. Fortunately, I went on to have three boys who run me ragged.

    Here in Japan, though, it’s such a non-issue. A Japanese friend of mine miscarried and needed a DNC. As she was in line paying at the small clinic where she went (doctors here often open their own small clinic/hospital) the couple before her were paying for an abortion. She commented on the irony of it. Here they were going in to end a pregnancy where she’d wanted this third child but it wasn’t mean to be. I don’t think it would ever occur to her to vilify them for their choice or try to take it away.

    Okay, sorry I’m going on (who’d of thought), but my parents were foster parents for many years. It’s a broken system and the kids that are being turned out are just perpetuating the poverty/neglect cycle. When will these extremists use their intelligence and consider the ramifications of what they say? Maybe since their so religious we should ask them for a tithe to pay for/support all these mandated births.

    And CB, thank you for this community. This my first stop every morning and I hope will continue to be for a very long time.

  • They have time waste on this “abortion pain” bill, but they cannot pass much needed spending bills, one of which is necessary to maintain school breakfast and lunch programs.

    I guess someone forgot to tell them that children need to be fed after birth.

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