This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

I would like to bring up some points to ponder about the Utah Fetal Pain Bill.

The argument that "legislators are not doctors and should stay out of medicine" is commonly used to oppose all pro-life legislation, but there are many instances where law and medicine necessarily mix. Intentional death is something that is highly regulated in all its forms, including the death penalty, animals slaughtered for food and pet euthanasia. The difference is that the pain of the entity being killed is addressed in all instances except abortion.

Research shows that a fetus feels pain earlier than first thought, and more intensely than an adult. This is because the part of the brain that dulls pain perception develops later than the ability to feel pain. Dr. Maureen Condic testified before Congress in 2013 about fetal pain.

She teaches, "It is universally accepted that the simplest neural circuitry required to detect and respond to pain is in place by 8-10 weeks, with more sophisticated thalamic pain circuitry developing by 18 weeks. What is not universally accepted is at what point in development the ability to detect and respond to pain becomes psychologically and emotionally meaningful — both to the fetus and to society. The debate is not whether a fetus experiences pain in some manner during the first trimester of life, but how pain is experienced; whether a fetus is capable of 'suffering.'"

This argument is ludicrous. If you can feel and perceive pain, then you suffer during live dismemberment. Yet pro-abortion organizations repeatedly use three documents to back their position. Two reviews, one by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in 2010 and the other published in Journal of the American Medical Association in 2005, and a position statement from American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in 2012. These acknowledge the science, but use the "suffering" clause to justify their position. There are also conflicts of interest. RCOG and ACOG represent abortion providers, and in the 2005 review, two of the five authors were directly involved in providing abortion services. These are not unbiased opinions, although they are touted as such.

What about the complaint from some abortionists about not knowing how they are supposed to anesthetize the baby, and that unproven procedures cause risk to the mother? This is puzzling. U.S. abortionists routinely choose whether to give a second or third trimester fetus digoxin though ultrasound guided injection in the mother's abdomen, to kill the baby before dismemberment. Some use it, some do not. But the procedure is in their standard of care. How is a narcotic given to the baby through this method riskier than deadly digoxin? Just because the abortion industry has not wanted to address fetal pain does not mean that it cannot be done through standard medical practices.

Abortion inherently has many physical and psychological risks. These include hemorrhage, infection, uterine or bowel perforation, infertility and death. A woman consents to an abortion if she believes the risks are worth the perceived benefit. The question is, do we have a societal responsibility to protect the baby? Balancing two human lives takes thought, but let's bring the baby into the conversation.

Let me be frank. Abortionists do not want to tell patients that their babies most likely feel pain. The entire abortion industry relies on the lie that a fetus is not a baby in any way. To address the pain of the supposed non-person, makes them very much a person ... and this is never good for abortion's bottom line.

We need to firmly plant our feet in truth. Who we as a society become is directly related to how we protect innocent life. The question is, Who are we?

Deanna Holland is a happily married mother of five and vice president of ProLife Utah.