Minnesota Gov. Dayton Gets 20-Week Abortion, Tax-Funding Ban

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   May 20, 2011   |   4:31PM   |   St. Paul, MN

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton today received bills from the Minnesota legislature that would implement a 20-week abortion ban and would ban taxpayer funding of abortions in the state, but he is expected to veto both.

Bipartisan majorities in the Minnesota Senate and House of Representatives passed several measures this week aimed at protecting human life. Gov. Dayton has several days to decide whether he will sign the lifesaving legislation, which is strongly supported by Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, the statewide pro-life group.

“Governor Dayton said at the start of the session that he would not sign any extreme measures concerning abortion, and these mainstream bills are anything but extreme,” said MCCL Executive Director Scott Fischbach. “MCCL is hopeful that Dayton will move to protect unborn children capable of feeling excruciating pain from abortion, and to end the tyranny of forcing taxpayers to fund elective abortions.”

The Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, S.F. 649 and H.F. 936, would prohibit abortions after the point in pregnancy at which an unborn child can feel pain, which medical evidence demonstrates is conservatively at 20 weeks from conception. It is based on a landmark Nebraska law enacted last year, which has not been challenged in court. The bill would prohibit abortions from the point at which the unborn child can feel pain, which medical evidence demonstrates is (conservatively) 20 weeks from conception.

Meanwhile, a measure to ban taxpayer funding of abortion, S.F. 103 and H.F. 201, received approval as well.

Long an objective for pro-life Minnesotans because of a state Supreme Court decision, the legislation would prohibit taxpayer funding of abortion. Minnesota taxpayers paid $1.5 million to the abortion industry for 3,754 abortions in 2008, according to the Minnesota Department of Human Services’s latest figures.

The ruling overturned a law passed by the Legislature in 1978 that prohibited taxpayer funded abortions, except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother. The legislation is authored by Rep. Peggy Scott, R-Andover, and Sen. Dave Thompson, R-Lakeville.

The pain-capable bill passed the Senate on Monday on a vote of 42-24 after being approved by the House on May 6 by a vote of 82-46. The ban on taxpayer funding of abortion passed the Senate Monday on a 40-26 vote. The ban was approved by a vote of 80-44 in the House on May 6. The House passed the conference committee report for the two bills yesterday. The Senate approved the ban on taxpayer funding of abortion this morning; it is expected to approve the pain-capable legislation later today, which would send the two bills to the governor — but neither has enough votes to override a veto from Dayton.

“MCCL is pleased to see these common-sense measures approved by the Legislature,” said Fischbach. “Minnesotans established a solidly pro-life Legislature in the November election, and they expect their elected officials to pass greater protections for unborn babies and other vulnerable human lives.”

The conference committee report on the Health and Human Services omnibus bill was approved late Wednesday in the House and Senate and sent to Gov. Dayton. It includes a ban on human cloning, which would prevent the cloning of human life for laboratory experiments.

In addition, the Higher Education omnibus bill includes a provision to ban taxpayer funding of human cloning. The Legislature passed a similar ban in 2009 after learning that the University of Minnesota was considering conducting human cloning experiments with state funds. Both the House and Senate passed the Higher Education conference committee report this week.

The Nebraska law has not been challenged in court by the abortion industry and was successful in forcing late-term abortion practitioner LeRoy Carhart to take a job doing abortions in Maryland, which has no late-term abortion limits.

Fischbach said overwhelming anatomical, behavioral and physiological evidence confirms that the developing unborn child is capable of experiencing tremendous pain by 20 weeks post-fertilization. This evidence did not exist when the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision removed all protections for unborn children and established abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy.

“People on both sides of the abortion debate should agree that the gratuitous suffering of the unborn child is incompatible with a humane and civilized society,” Fischbach said.

The most common abortion procedure used at 20 weeks is dilation and evacuation (D & E), which involves dismembering the unborn child, Fischbach noted. The abortionist uses forceps to tear apart the fetus in the womb, then reassembles the arms, legs, torso and head to ensure that no parts of the unborn child’s body have been left inside the woman.

“There is substantial medical evidence that an unborn child is capable of experiencing pain by 20 weeks after fertilization,” the bill reads. “It is the purpose of the state to assert a compelling state interest in protecting the lives of unborn children from the stage at which substantial medical evidence indicates that they are capable of feeling pain.”

The science behind the concept of fetal pain is fully established and Dr. Steven Zielinski, an internal medicine physician from Oregon, is one of the leading researchers into it. He first published reports in the 1980s to validate research showing evidence for it.

He has testified before Congress that an unborn child could feel pain at “eight-and-a-half weeks and possibly earlier” and that a baby before birth “under the right circumstances, is capable of crying.”

He and his colleagues Dr. Vincent J. Collins and Thomas J. Marzen  were the top researchers to point to fetal pain decades ago. Collins, before his death, was Professor of Anesthesiology at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois and author of Principles of Anesthesiology, one of the leading medical texts on the control of pain.

“The functioning neurological structures necessary to suffer pain are developed early in a child’s development in the womb,” they wrote.

“Functioning neurological structures necessary for pain sensation are in place as early as 8 weeks, but certainly by 13 1/2 weeks of gestation. Sensory nerves, including nociceptors, reach the skin of the fetus before the 9th week of gestation. The first detectable brain activity occurs in the thalamus between the 8th and 10th weeks. The movement of electrical impulses through the neural fibers and spinal column takes place between 8 and 9 weeks gestation. By 13 1/2 weeks, the entire sensory nervous system functions as a whole in all parts of the body,” they continued.

With Zielinski and his colleagues the first to provide the scientific basis for the concept of fetal pain, Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand of the University of Arkansas Medical Center has provided further research to substantiate their work.

“The neural pathways are present for pain to be experienced quite early by unborn babies,” explains Steven Calvin, M.D., perinatologist, chair of the Program in Human Rights Medicine, University of Minnesota, where he teaches obstetrics.

ACTION: Contact Governor Dayton at https://mn.gov/governor/contact-us and urge support for the bills.