From NOW:

Latest Attack on Abortion Rights Based on Scare Tactics and Questionable Science

December 4, 2006
Take Action: Call Your Representative

The House of Representatives is expected to vote on Wednesday on a cynical, opportunistic bill based on scare tactics and questionable science. This is nothing new for the 109th Congress—an alliance of legislators we can't say goodbye to soon enough.

Poking their noses into people's private lives and trying to control women's bodies has been a popular pastime of our government leaders, particularly since George W. Bush set foot in the White House. Now, the House will take up what's known as the "Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act" (HR 6099). As usual, the deceit starts with the title itself, which uses the word "unborn child" when it should say "fetus."

Introduced by arch abortion rights foe Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), the legislation would force physicians to provide misleading and manipulative information to women seeking abortions at 20 weeks or more after fertilization. The bill calls for doctors to give patients a brochure with language scripted by anti-abortion legislators, not physicians. Despite the inability to support such a claim medically, the text of this brochure tells each woman that her "unborn child" will experience pain while "being killed in an abortion." The doctor would then be required to offer the woman anesthesia or another "pain reducing drug" to be administered directly to the fetus.

"This legislation is designed to intimidate women, and add the cost of expensive anesthesia, so that abortion will be too high-priced for many women to afford," said NOW President Kim Gandy, who noted that each woman must sign a consent form affirming that she has read a statement which includes inflammatory phrases and calculating language, like "the process of being killed in an abortion" and "the pain-capable unborn child."

Read the rest at NOW's site.

But I clipped this long post to bring you an update. Guess who isn't working against this bill? NARAL. Shocked? Me too.

While the measure has provoked strong opposition from Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation, NARAL Pro-Choice America, perhaps the nation's leading abortion rights group, has stayed neutral.

"Pro-choice Americans have always believed that women deserve access to all the information relevant to their reproductive health decisions. For some women, that includes information related to fetal anesthesia options," Nancy Keenan, NARAL's president, has said in a statement on the bill.

Democratic leaders cited NARAL's position when they decided against trying to influence the vote. Democratic leadership aides said yesterday that they are leery of Republicans charging that they are already out of touch with mainstream values, even before they assume power.

This is a great chance for the Dems and all pro-choice groups to get together and talk science. There is a difference between the pain we feel as born human beings and any pain that we may experience in utero. Many scientists have said that we continue to develop our pain senses once we get OUT of the womb. I just heard someone on NPR and don't have time to dig it up. I'm all for full information, if that information has good science behind it. And so far, I haven't seen any good science to back up a reason for a fetal pain bill.

Labels: abortion, feminism