This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2006, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A bill that would require physicians to tell a woman who is having a late-term abortion that the procedure might be painful to the fetus and to therefore administer anesthetic would unwisely interject the state into private medical decisions best left to a woman and her doctor.
The most recent study on fetal pain, published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, states that a fetus cannot sense pain until 29 or 30 weeks, if at all. Further, physicians have testified that administering pain-relief medication to a fetus may not even be feasible.
HB222 would needlessly inflict emotional pain on a woman, who very likely has considered all alternatives and made the difficult decision, for medical or other reasons, to end her pregnancy.
The bill would require the Utah State Department of Health to prepare a "truthful, nonmisleading" brochure explaining fetal pain and the disagreement about whether it exists. That would put the agency in the tenuous position of determining what, among all the research that's been done on the subject, is the "truth" when even the scientific community cannot agree.
The bill sponsored by Rep. Paul Ray, R-Clearfield, would exempt women having emergency abortions from receiving the brochure and having the fetal-pain discussion with their doctors. But many late-term abortions are carried out because of severe defects in the fetus. In such cases, the brochure would serve only to make the nightmare more horrific.
Ray says a government pamphlet is necessary because doctors might be reluctant to describe the scientific disagreement about fetal pain, as his bill would require. We wonder if Ray has considered that their reluctance may be justifiable for medical reasons that are beyond his comprehension.
These medical questions ignored by the bill, and the fact that it would affect so few pregnancies - 18 in 2003, the most recent year for which statistics are available - are compelling reasons to kill it. But Ray and the House members who backed his bill know full well that abortion is always a handy hot-button issue in an election year. We don't know to what extent that reality is in play here, but we have seen political grandstanding at the expense of women in Utah before, and it is unconscionable.
The House acted irresponsibly in passing this bill. We urge the Senate to take a closer look at HB222 and its ramifications and reject it.