Do No Harm

HB 222 - the Unborn Child Pain Prevention Act is probably the more "controversial" bill of the two pro-life bills in the Utah Legislature. I say that because there is just so much conflicting information on the subject. There has been an awful lot of study into the subject - going back 20-30 years. One of the leaders in the research has been Dr. K.J.S Anand of the University of Arkansas. While his is not the only research done on this side of the pond, his has been the most extensive. However, the results of these studies have been so mixed that the definitive US medical source, The Journal of the American Medical Association, has taken the position that the jury is still out. Their British counterpart (British Medical Association) came to a slightly different conclusion. Congress has even held hearings on the debate on whether a fetus feels pain.

All of that said, the bill basically states that if a doctor is going to provide an abortion (an invasive surgical procedure by the way) on a woman who is more than 20 weeks pregnant, then the doctor must provide the woman with information on BOTH SIDES of the fetal pain argument. Now to me, I would think that the "pro-choice" people would be all about a woman making a choice based on all of the data necessary - but as with HB0090 that is not the case! They only want women to make one choice and only based on limited data.

Those are the facts of the Unborn Child Pain Prevention Act. What is the history of the UCPPA? Utah's UCPPA is similar to the one that was passed by the Minnesota Legislature in 2005. The MN UCPPA was a bi-partisan bill introduced by Rep. Mary Ellen Otremba (D-Long Prairie) and Rep. Michelle Fischbach (R-Paynesville). The bill received on committee hearing before being included in an omnibus Health Policy bill. The bill passed the Minnesota Legislature with bi-partisan support and was the first state to pass such legislation.

One of the arguments against the fetal pain bill is the argument that the fetus does not feel pain because they weren't "human". That argument holds about as much weight as the argument that slaves didn't feel pain because they were not human!

It seems to me a reasonable thing that a little information will not hurt. It also seems reasonable (and the British Medical Journal agrees) that if we are going to err on any side, we should err on the side of a little extra precaution and if that means a little fetal anesthesia...After all, wasn't it Hippocrates (the founder of modern medicine) who wrote "As to diseases, make a habit of two things - to help, or at least to do no harm"?