Currently:
- Abortion is legal in D.C. up until birth for any reason.
- Recent polling shows that 63% of Americans support banning abortion on pain-capable unborn children and 70% of women support such a ban.
- The most common method of abortion used in the late second trimester is the “D&E” or dismemberment abortion, which involves using a long steel tool to grasp and tear off, by brute force, the arms and legs of the unborn child. Then the head is crushed and removed.
- There is substantial evidence that unborn children can feel pain at least by 20 weeks. Leading expert Dr. Anand at the University of Tennessee has stated, “It is my opinion that the human fetus possesses the ability to experience pain from 20 weeks gestation, if not earlier, and the pain perceived by a fetus is possibly more intense than that perceived by term newborns or older children.”
H.R. 3803: District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act
Sponsor: Rep Franks, Trent [AZ-2] (introduced 1/23/2012) Cosponsors (222)
Related Bills: S.2103
ALL ACTIONS
Legislative Findings:
(1) Pain receptors (nociceptors) are present throughout the unborn child's entire body and nerves link these receptors to the brain's thalamus and subcortical plate by no later than 20 weeks after fertilization.
(2) By 8 weeks after fertilization, the unborn child reacts to touch. After 20 weeks, the unborn child reacts to stimuli that would be recognized as painful if applied to an adult human, for example, by recoiling.
