[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 6 (Wednesday, January 26, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S512-S514]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
UNBORN CHILD PAIN AWARENESS ACT
Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, these are difficult times but they are
also times of opportunity. We will face on Sunday, with the vote in
Iraq, difficulty, but also a time of opportunity for people to know
democracy and freedom who have never known it before. Freedom, however,
always comes at a price. We are paying for this opportunity for freedom
with loss of life from our own country. Yet democracy and freedom is
something for which we have fought for over 200 years.
I rise today to speak about something else we need to fight for. I
speak of one of the most difficult debates we have had to discuss in
this country: it is the debate on the issue of life and the moment that
life begins. I am introducing today, with over 30 cosponsors, a bill
that speaks to this critical issue. It is S. 51, the Unborn Child Pain
Awareness Act. It has 31 cosponsors. This legislation, I believe, is
strongly pro-woman, pro-child and pro-life, and
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it will help in the creation of a culture of life in America.
The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act is about empowering women with
information. It is also about respecting and treating the unborn child
more humanely. This legislation is, at heart, an informed consent bill,
which would do two simple things:
First, it would require abortion providers to present medical,
scientific information to a woman, who is seeking a late-term abortion,
about what is known regarding the development of the unborn child
inside of her womb.
Second, should the woman desire to continue with the abortion after
being presented with this information, the legislation calls for her to
be given the opportunity to choose anesthesia for the unborn child in
order to lessen its pain.
No abortion procedures would be prohibited by the Unborn Child Pain
Awareness Act. It is an informed consent bill.
I do not believe that anyone in this esteemed chamber thinks that
women should not be fully informed. I believe, along with a majority of
Americans, according to all the polls of which I am aware, that women
have the right to know what their unborn child experiences during an
abortion. Most Americans believe that women are capable of processing
information, even when faced with a crisis pregnancy.
In fact, according to a Wirthlin Worldwide poll conducted after the
November election, 75 percent of respondents favored:
laws requiring that women who are 20 weeks or more along in
their pregnancies be given information about fetal pain
before having an abortion.
After being presented with the medical and scientific information on
the development of the unborn child 20 weeks after fertilization, the
woman is more aware of the pain experienced by the child during an
abortion procedure, and more equipped--at the very least--to make an
informed decision. It is simply not fair for a pregnant mother to be
uninformed.
In the proposed legislation, we have settled on a 20-week benchmark
because there is a strong medical and scientific knowledge that unborn
children feel and experience pain by 20 weeks after fertilization.
Looking over the data--and I am certainly not a doctor--but it seems
reasonable to me that unborn children actually feel pain weeks earlier,
but we chose the 20-week benchmark as a point on which more scientists
and doctors can agree. At some point, perhaps Dr. Coburn--a new member
who is a physician who has delivered thousands, of babies, one of this
bill's cosponsors--might further enlighten us on this subject based on
his extensive experience.
How do we know that unborn children can feel pain? We know that
unborn children can--and do--feel pain thanks to great advances in
medical technology. Unborn children, experience pain as evidenced by
anatomical, functional, physiological and behavioral indicators that
are correlated with pain in children and adults. We have Dr. Sonny
Anand's Expert Report for the Partial-Birth Abortion trials, that were
made part of the Federal Court record.
Of course--though perhaps less scientific--any mother can tell you
her unborn child can feel. The little unborn child most certainly feels
and responds to stimuli from outside the womb. Sometimes a voice will
cause the unborn child to stir. And usually, at some point in the late
second trimester, even the father can feel and see the unborn child's
movements. And if you push the unborn child's limb, the limb may push
back. I have happy memories of this with my wife and our children.
All along, women have been able to feel the child inside of them, but
now, science is telling us exactly what the child inside of his or her
mother can feel. We now know that unborn children can not only feel,
but that their ability to experience pain is heightened. The highest
density of pain receptors per square inch of skin in human development
occurs in utero from 20 to 30 weeks gestation.
Think about the pain that unborn children can experience, and then
think about some commonly used abortion procedures. Of course, we have
heard about Partial-Birth Abortion, but also consider the D&E abortion.
During this procedure, commonly performed after 20 weeks when there
is medical evidence that the child can experience severe pain, and we
have a chart of this that I will show, the child is torn apart limb
from limb. Think about how that must feel to a young human. We would
not allow an animal to be treated this way. Yet, the creature we are
talking about is a young, unborn child.
Women certainly have a right to be given the facts about the baby
growing inside of them. Armed with these facts, women then have the
opportunity to make a more informed decision.
Should the woman continue with the late-term abortion, she ought to
have the option of anesthetizing the unborn child before it undergoes a
painful termination of its young life.
This should not be a Republican or a Democratic issue. This should be
a human issue.
The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act offers us a rare chance to
transcend the traditional political boundaries. It is a matter of human
decency.
It is my hope that this bill will offer us a chance to work across
political divides to forge new understandings in this Chamber.
I think that we can all support giving women more information when
they are making life-altering decisions.
A recent Los Angeles Times--December 23, 2004--article offers a
glimmer of hope in this regard. The article notes that:
[Democrats] are looking at ways to soften the hard line
[support for abortion-rights], such as promoting adoption and
embracing parental notification requirements for minors and
bans on late-term abortions.
Adoption and parental notification for minors are issues, on which I
hope we can work together. Perhaps we can begin with this measure: The
Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act is not a ban on late-term abortions,
but it is a measure that would provide a wonderful opportunity for us
to work together on an issue that is pro-woman, pro-child, and pro-
life. It is creating a culture of life.
I want to take a few of the minutes I have to describe a procedure
that takes place on a post-20-weeks-of-age gestation child, described
here on this chart. There may be people who may not want to look at
this. I would offer that they not, if they choose not to, but I think
it is important they have this information.
We are talking about a D&E procedure at 23 weeks performed on an
unborn child. It is important to note that the legislation that I have
introduced today does not ban this procedure or limit it in any way;
this legislation simply says that a woman needs to be informed about
the pain the child in her womb would experience if she undergoes that
procedure, and be given the option to offer the child in the womb
anesthesia in the procedure of the child being pulled out of the womb,
as you can see in this diagram.
I want to get some expert testimony that was provided at the partial-
birth abortion trials.
This was information submitted by Dr. Sonny Annand at the trial about
the nature of the pain the child experiences.
I held hearings in the Senate Commerce Committee about in utero
surgery. The surgeon talked about having to chase the child around in
the womb somewhat to give it its shot to anesthetize the child because
the child didn't want the needle to go into its buttock. He described
how the child was constantly moving around to avoid the needle. That
made perfect sense to me, having children who do not like to get shots.
I don't like shots. And the child would move around.
But it also heightened my awareness--that if you go through this
abortion procedure, what does the child feel at that point in time? It
doesn't want to get a shot in its rear end. What does it feel when it
goes through a procedure like this?
This was reported by the Associated Press at the trials last year,
April 4, 2004. Dr. Sonny Annand said:
Abortion would cause severe and excruciating pain to 20-
week-old fetuses.
There is now scientific information about the increase in the heart
rate of the child when a procedure like this is taking place, the
increase in the physiological trauma that indicates somebody going
through excruciating pain. And while you can't hear the child in
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the womb--it can't scream--it has a silent scream, nonetheless it is
showing all the time the physiological nature of going through
excruciating pain.
I have another chart to put up here to illustrate this point as well.
This is from the same physician. Dr. Annand says:
The fetuses show increased heart rate, blood flow and
hormone level in response to pain.
This is how you and I, adults, respond to pain, although the
difference for us is we have less pain receptors per square inch, and
we also have developed a part of the brain that holds down or
suppresses pain. So actually we feel less pain because of the way our
brain is further developed. But the child feels more pain.
This issue is something I think most of us would probably choose to
ignore, if we could, and say ``let's just not talk about it.'' But when
this is going on and you know about it, how can you ignore it? It would
be like us saying, about some of the tragedies in our history, I just
do not want to know about it. Just do not tell me about it. I would
rather be ignorant. Yet today we cannot deny the scientific
information.
Here is a picture of a child in the womb. I do not know the age of
this child. But can you deny the humanity of this child?
I have a coin given to me yesterday from a Croatian, a gentleman from
Croatia that I want to show you has the same picture of this unborn
child imprinted on this coin minted in Croatia. They just ask basically
on the coin, as you can in the picture, how can you deny the humanity
of this child? If that is the case--and if you dismember this child in
a late-term abortion, how can you deny the humanity of this child and
the pain it experiences? We know physiologically because of the
scientific advances taking place what this child experiences. How can
you ignore scientific evidence and say it is simply not taking place,
or I just do not want to see it, which was unfortunately typically done
too often in our past. But the facts seem too horrific for us to look
at. We have seen recently in places around the world the horrific
suffering. Many times we just want to say: Don't show it to me. I don't
really want to see it. Yet it can't be denied. It must be confronted.
The sooner it is talked about, the sooner it will be addressed.
Let us have a lively debate. If people don't believe the child is
experiencing pain, come forward with the scientific information. It
would be counter to all common experience of women in pregnancy at that
20-week stage or later. It would be counter to all the current
scientific information. Bring it forward. Let us have a lively debate
about this. This bill does not ban any abortion procedure. It simply is
an informed consent bill that women deserve to know about.
It is my hope that once a woman receives this information she would
decide to go ahead with the pregnancy and have the child. If she looks
at her situation and believes it is just too difficult to continue to
care for the child, she could put the child up for adoption. There are
millions of families who would love to provide a loving home for a
child. No matter what the difficult circumstance, they would love to
adopt; but perhaps she would choose to make her child go through this
procedure. What if she decided to go through the procedure, and then
later found out through scientific evidence that she put her child
through this pain and had to live with that in her life. We have women
coming forward now in the Silent No More Campaign--women who have had
abortions who have for years afterwards--decades afterwards--struggled
with the thought of having an abortion. They say: My goodness. How
could I do that to my own child in the womb? They are saying women
deserve better. They have struggled with this for years and are now
coming out with it; receiving the sympathy which they deserve for
having gone through something at a very difficult time in their lives.
This bill will be introduced in both Chambers today. It is an
important piece of legislation. It is one which I hope we can move
forward with aggressively. If there is evidence on the other side, I
would welcome it coming forward. Let us have this debate, but let us
not ignore it any longer.
Thank you, very much, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority side has 40 seconds remaining.
The Senator from Virginia is recognized.
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