Utah Lawmaker Will Propose Abortion-Fetal Pain Measure 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
August 30, 2005
Salt Lake City, UT (LifeNews.com) — On the heels of a national furor over a biased study conducted by abortion advocates over whether unborn children feel pain during latter stages of pregnancy, a Utah lawmaker is proposing a bill to tell women about the pain babies feel during an abortion.
Rep. Paul Ray, a Republican from Clearfield, says the measure would require abortion practitioners to tell women that unborn children, after 20 weeks of pregnancy, can feel the pain of an abortion.
Ray hopes the bill will convince some women to reconsider having an abortion.
"I hope the mother would think about it,” said Ray, a banker. "There’s so many families who want children, who would love to adopt.”
According to the state health department, 18 Utah women had abortions after 20 weeks in 2003.
Earlier this month, the Journal of the American Medical Association came under fire for publishing a study claiming unborn children don’t have the capacity to feel pain until nearly 30 weeks into pregnancy.
The JAMA article did not mention the lead author of the report is a medical student who former worked for pro-abortion stalwarts NARAL as an attorney. It also failed to mention another author runs an abortion facility at a San Francisco hospital.
Experts in fetal pain dispute the contested study’s findings.
Neurologist Dr. Paul Ranalli of the University of Toronto says the 20-30 week child in the womb may even feel more pain than an adult. He adds that the "pain impulse connections in the spinal cord link up and reach the thalamus (the brain’s reception center): at 7-20 weeks."
Ray says he based his legislation on a bill the Minnesota state legislature approved last year, making it just the second state to inform women of a baby’s pain during an abortion. Arkansas was the first state to approve such a bill.
Planned Parenthood CEO Karrie Galloway told the Associated Press the measure was just a political front for the 2006 elections.
"They’re going to take a vote on another abortion bill that has very little meaning in the state of Utah so they can have a political notch in their belts," she claimed.
