Louisiana State House Committee Approves Abortion-Fetal Pain Measure 
Email this article
Printer friendly page
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
May 10, 2006
Boton Rouge, LA (LifeNews.com) — A Louisiana state House committee approved a bill Wednesday that would require abortion practitioners to tell women considering an abortion that the procedure will cause severe pain for her unborn child. The bill is based on expert findings that babies feel intense pain during the abortion.
The House Health and Welfare Committee backed the measure, sponsored by Rep. A.G. Crowe, a Slidell Republican.
The measure is patterned after federal legislation and bills in other states that not only inform women but allow them the chance to ask for anesthesia for the baby before the abortion.
The hope is that the bill will lessen fetal pain during abortion but also persuade many women to opt for alternatives such as adoption or carrying the pregnancy to term. Under the measure, they would get more information about those options.
Mickelberry of Planned Parenthood told the committee her group opposed the measure and said it was governmental intrusion into a private decision and another method of limiting abortions.
Dorinda Bordlee, a New Orleans-based pro-life attorney cited Supreme Court rulings saying the law was allowable because "You, as the Legislature, have the right to encourage childbirth over abortion."
The measure now heads to the full state House for debate and a vote.
Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand of the University of Arkansas Medical Center says he and other specialists in development of unborn children have shown that babies feel pain before birth as early as 20 weeks into the pregnancy.
Anand has said other medical studies conclude that unborn babies are "very likely" to be "extremely sensitive to pain during the gestation of 20 to 30 weeks."
An April 2004 Zogby poll shows that 77% of Americans back "laws requiring that women who are 20 weeks or more along in their pregnancy be given information about fetal pain before having an abortion."
Only 16 percent disagreed with such a proposal, according to the poll.
Related web sites:
Louisiana state legislature – https://www.legis.state.la.us
