The Pain of the Unborn: the US House Feels It and You Better Too

From Washington Update via Alta Charo:

On November 1, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution held a hearing entitled "Pain of the Unborn" to discuss the merits of the "Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act." The legislation would require physicians performing abortions to tell women at 22 weeks or more gestation that "The Congress of the United States has determined that at this stage of development, an unborn child has the physical structures necessary to experience pain." The bill would also require a physician to offer women the option of anesthesia for the fetus. (An article published in the August issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that the fetus likely does not have the capacity for conscious perception of pain until well into the third trimester, if at all, and that administering anesthesia as suggested by the legislation may be harmful to the woman.) Witnesses supporting the legislation argued that the script for physicians is necessary to guarantee a woman’s informed consent prior to having the procedure. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics and chair of the Department of Medical Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, asserted that Congress should not interfere with the doctor-patient relationship and that a mandated script does not conform to standards of medical ethics. Even Kanwaljeet Singh "Sunny" Anand, a proponent of the legislation from Arkansas Children’s Hospital who disputed the findings of the JAMA article, stated that a federally mandated script is "counterproductive" to good medical practice.