By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
New legislation introduced in the predominantly pro-life Nebraska legislature which would ban all abortions after 20 weeks due to the baby’s ability to feel the pain of the procedure, could open up a whole new field of abortion law that has the potential of doing great damage to the abortion industry.
According to an article appearing on World Net Daily by pro-life activist and author, Jill Stanek, R.N., the Abortion Pain Prevention Act (APPA) was introduced on January 21 by Nebraska Speaker of the Legislature, Mike Flood.
“The Abortion Pain Prevention Act takes us into a whole new world of abortion law, banning all abortions after 20 gestational weeks on the basis of a preborn baby’s capacity to feel the pain of it all,” Ms. Stanek writes. “At this age a baby anatomically ‘has the physical structures necessary to experience pain,’ states the bill, based on scientific evidence.”
The only exception would be if a mother “has a condition which so complicates her medical condition as to necessitate the abortion of her pregnancy to avert her death or to avert serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function,” states the bill.
Ms. Stanek calls the APPA a “public relations nightmare” for the pro-abortion lobby because of how difficult it will be to oppose such a law. First, because doctors routinely anesthesize unborn babies at this age prior to en utero surgery. Second, because Nebraska law currently requires pain-free methods of slaughtering livestock and demands humane treatment of laboratory animals, which will make it difficult to argue for anything less for unborn children.
The bill has an excellent chance of passing. The Nebraska Legislature, which has only one chamber, is comprised of 49 senators of which 35 are pro-life. Because it was introduced by the Speaker of the Legislature, it has already been assigned to a committee. If it passes out of committee and onto the Senate floor during the current session which ends in April, it could be voted upon sometime within the next 11 weeks.
Once the Senate passes the bill, it would go the desk of pro-life governor David Heineman for signature.
Should pro-abortion forces contest the bill, it would be defended by the state’s attorney general, Jon Bruning, who is also pro-life.
But even if the bill does make it into law and pro-abortion forces contest it all the way to the Supreme Court, Ms. Stanek believes Justice Anthony Kennedy has hinted in recent decisions that he would swing in favor of this legislation on its merits and in spite of its very strict health exception.
“Watch this legislation,” Ms. Stanek writes. “It has the potential to be as explosive in the 2000s as the Partial Birth Abortion Ban was in the 1990s, and just as damaging to the abortion movement. Meanwhile, if passed, it would save exponentially more lives.”
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