The esteemed Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., once called a type of late-term abortion “too close to infanticide” and voted to ban it, along with 13 fellow Democrats who reached a similar conclusion. On Monday, the Senate will again vote on a late-term abortion bill to ban the procedure after 5 months of pregnancy, the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (S 2311).
Cultural recognition of the humanity of the unborn at this stage is all around us, from expectant parents thrilled with an ultrasound image of their beautiful baby sucking his or her thumb, to ballads by superstar singer Ed Sheeran about the unborn, to silly TV ads about Chex mix, reflecting the fact that baby’s taste buds are functioning by 15 weeks and mom often experiences a lot of kicking after eating spicy food.
A baby can also be born at this early stage of development and survive. Ask Micah Pickering, a spunky little boy who was born prematurely at five months and has been on Capitol Hill recently with his family to urge Senators to pass what is now being referred to as “Micah’s Law.”
So how can abortion at five months not be considered infanticide, when an infant of this exact age is capable of surviving and thriving in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit, just like Micah? When the Supreme Court last considered a late-term abortion case, the perennial swing vote Justice Kennedy wrote compellingly about the heart-wrenching reality of what happens in a standard dismemberment abortion, based directly on the description from the abortion doctor himself, “The fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn from limb from limb. The fetus can be alive at the beginning of the dismemberment process and can survive for a time while its limbs are being torn off.”
Imagine the universal outcry if such a thing were done to a puppy.
Yet when the Senate takes up this bill, most pro-choice senators will vote no, lamely and incorrectly asserting that babies at 20 weeks are not really conscious of the pain until a few weeks later. They are contradicted, however, by the inconvenient science of fetal pain. The fetal nervous system, thalamus, and pain perception circuity is all operational by 5 months. Knowing this, surgeons routinely administer anesthesia to unborn babies prior to in-utero surgery. It is a fact that preemies in the NICU are extra sensitive to light, sound, touch, and other stimuli. Google the question of sensory development and you will find, “Inside the womb, touch is the first sense to form. Touch begins to develop around 8 weeks gestation. Over many weeks, the baby’s body develops the network of nerves that make up the sense of touch. Even while in the womb, a baby can feel things.”
Objectors in the abortion lobby also claim this bill is unnecessary because only 1 percent of abortions happen after 5 months, and the media repeat this dismissive statistic without extrapolating an actual number that would be more informative and even shocking. That number is at least a staggering 12,000. Twelve thousand pre-term infants lives are extinguished annually in post-20 week abortions. Most are done on healthy mothers carrying healthy babies. Some cases do involve a tragic diagnosis for the baby – but compassionate alternatives exist where both mother and baby fare better.
Why not accept the modest limit of five months, one that is widely supported by voters from both parties, especially when almost every other civilized nation in the world prohibits elective abortion past three months of pregnancy? The violence of late-term abortion is simply inhumane for both mothers and babies. The House has already passed this bill, and President Trump in a Rose Garden speech last week called on the Senate to do the same. Senators should listen to their constituents, open their hearts to compassionate alternatives to late-term abortion, and vote yes.
Maureen Ferguson is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a senior policy adviser for The Catholic Association.
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