NRL News
202.626.8824
dadandrusk@aol.com

North Dakota Governor Signs Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act into law; nine states now have the law on their books

Apr 18, 2013

By Dave Andrusko

North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple

North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple

And then there were nine…and, hopefully soon, ten.

On Tuesday North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple signed into law the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. North Dakota joins Nebraska, Kansas, Idaho, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama and Arkansas in enacting laws that say that babies cannot be aborted from the point that compelling medical evidence demonstrates they can feel pain—20 weeks post-fertilization.

More good news. Last week there was testimony on Texas Right to Life’s top priority legislation for 2013–The Preborn Pain Bill–in the House State Affairs Committee.  As Texas RTL explained, “Multiple Pro-Life medical and legal experts demonstrated the need for and defended the bill against one of the most pro-abortion members of the Texas House of Representatives.“

Mary Spaulding Balch, JD, National Right to Life’s Director of State Legislation, told NRL News Today that “it is hugely significant and shouldn’t be overlooked that almost a fifth of the states now have the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act on their books.”

Nebraska holds the distinction of being the first state to pass the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act—in 2010. Balch recalled an unintentionally revealing quote from Nancy Northrup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Northrup told the Associated Press at the time, “Courts have been chipping away at abortion rights…this would be like taking a huge hacksaw to the rights.”

“You don’t need coursework in fetal anatomy to know that babies this mature will suffer excruciating pain as they are being torn apart,” Balch said. “People who know nothing about abortion ‘get it.’”

And thanks to great strides in fetal medicine we have moved from the late 1970s—when  the concept of the unborn child as patient was born, followed by the beginning of the sub-specialty known as fetal medicine—to fetal surgery on unborn children, which  is now a frequent occurrence at several hospitals around the country—to an appreciation that unborn children experienced pain during the surgery—to the regular administration of  anaesthesia to the unborn child at around 20 weeks after fertilization.

All this new information—and more—paved the way for legislation to protect these unborn children from the horrific pain inflicted during an abortion.

The Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act could someday present the Supreme Court with the opportunity to bring its abortion jurisprudence into the 21st century. The law is grounded in a moral empathy that resonates with the American people: “You don’t kill unborn children capable of feeling pain.”

As Balch has explained

“It is critically important to understand that the interest asserted here is not just one in diminishing or eliminating the unborn children’s pain during an abortion. Rather, it is that the unborn child’s capacity to experience pain is a significant developmental milepost, making the unborn child at that point sufficiently akin to an infant or older child to trigger a compelling state interest.

“The stage of development at which the unborn child is capable of experiencing pain is at least as ‘clear’ and arguably more ‘workable’ in comparison with viability. While viability is predominately an extrinsic measurement of the capacity of medical science to sustain the life of a premature infant, the capacity to feel pain is an intrinsic, innate feature of the unborn child at a particular stage of development.”

Categories: Legislation