Last year, Dr. Colleen Malloy, assistant professor, Division of Neonatology/ Department of Pediatrics, at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, testified before a Congressional subcommittee on the development of pre-born children at 20 weeks. Malloy stated, “There is ample biologic, physiologic, hormonal, and behavioral evidence for fetal and neonatal pain. In fact, by 20 weeks post-fertilization (22 weeks by LMP), the fetal brain has the full complement of neurons that are present in adulthood.” Professor Malloy continued, “The difference between fetal and neonatal pain is simply the locale in which the pain occurs. The receiver’s experience of the pain is the same. I could never imagine subjecting my tiny patients to horrific procedures such as those that involve limb detachment or cardiac injection.”
So for Sen. Davis, requiring women to decide four weeks sooner whether or not they’re going to allow their child to continue living is “inhumane” but subjecting a 20+-week old baby to the torture of being torn limb from limb is not. Pre-born children are “literally,” as Davis put it, the ones who have no control over their own bodies while they’re in the womb. Their “destinies” lie in their parent’s hands.
The destinies of 20-week old children in the womb have also been aided by advancements in medical technology. Dr. Malloy also testified, “With advancements in neonatology and prenatal medicine, we have been able to push back the age at which a neonate can be resuscitated and resuscitated successfully.”
20-week old fetuses are now viable outside the womb with medical assistance. If a baby were born between 20-24 weeks (again, abortions after 24 weeks are already banned in Texas) there is a very strong chance that baby would live. In Texas, 1-2 babies would be saved per day if the proposed measure is passed.
It takes a special kind of moral idiocy to believe having only five months to choose an abortion, rather than six, is a war on women, while allowing little, viable women in the womb to be torn to pieces is not.
Jeff Wright, Jr. is a grateful husband, blessed daddy, and long-suffering Redskins fan. He is a Prison Chaplain in the “city of lost souls,” holds a ThM from Dallas Seminary, and is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society. Jeff is a civil liberties activist on behalf of the “sacred order of freemen” and minister of the “fellowship of twice-born sinners.”
