The House of Representatives will vote today on a bill that would ban abortion after the fifth month of pregnancy, when science indicates that infants can feel pain and survive long-term if born prematurely.
The New York Times claims that the bill’s 20-week limit on abortion is actually established two weeks prior to viability: “Prohibiting most abortions 20 weeks after fertilization would run counter to the Supreme Court’s standard of fetal viability, which is generally put at 22 to 24 weeks after fertilization.”
But according to studies and medical experts, viability–the point at which some babies can survive long-term if born–occurs at 20 weeks after fertilization. “I’m here because it’s easy for me to imagine these babies at 20 to 24 weeks post-fertilization age because they are my patients in the [neo-natal intensive care unit],” said Dr. Colleen Malloy, a neonatologist Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, in congressional testimony delivered in 2012. “You can see the movements–the 4D ultrasound images that we have now are real time images of babies kicking, moving, sucking their thumb–doing all the things babies do.” She pointed out that the Journal of the American Medical Association reported on a Swedish study in 2009 that found 10 percent of babies born at 20 weeks after conception survived long-term.
Malloy also noted that, for the sake of accuracy, “it’s very important to differentiate” between two different methods of measuring gestational age. One method, postfertilization age, dates the age of a child from the time of conception. The LMP method, on the other hand, starts measuring gestational age about two weeks prior to conception, at the time of a woman’s last menstrual period. Both methods of measuring gestational age are valid, but the important thing is to be consistent.
And inconsistency is how the New York Times stumbled into making an error today. The paper has referred to the same bill as banning abortion “after 22 weeks of pregnancy” and banning abortion “after 20 weeks of pregnancy,” even though that provision hasn’t changed.
Just last week, the Times reported on a New England Journal of Medicine study that found one out of four babies born at “22 weeks” survived long-term if given “active treatment.” As the Times reported, the study was measuring gestational age “based on women’s recollection of their last menstrual period.” In other words, the study was referring to infants born 20 weeks after conception, the very point in pregnancy after which the bill before Congress would ban abortions.
This may seem like quibbling over a technical point. The ability to live outside the womb–which is largely a function of lung development–cannot be what endows human beings with a right to live. But one of the Democrats’ primary arguments against the legislation is that it implements an abortion ban prior to viability.
It is true, after all, that it’s possible to terminate a pregnancy after viability without necessarily terminating the child’s life (by delivering the child). So the debate over post-viability abortions does divide pro-choice advocates who believe in a mere right to end a pregnancy from those who believe in a right to a dead baby.
Hopefully the New York Times will correct the record.
