This accuracy of this assertion has been questioned by real doctors who actually study this (as opposed to people who run anti-abortion organizations) many times.
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The bottom line is that regardless of your position on abortion, you should be concerned when extremist religious beliefs and junk science are used to create legislation.

I agree with this legislation. Beginning of life decisions should be made with the same criteria as end of life decisions. If there is awareness, neural activity, brain activity, sensitivity to pain, then murder is off the table. For any reason. Once the brain is active, a person exists. A person capable of feeling, thought, and emotion. Under no circumstances should abortion be permitted when a human has come into existence. No more so than we would disconnect life support. It’s just not acceptable.

Personally I feel like abortion shouldn’t be used as a form of birth control and would never consider it for myself except in very extenuating circumstances (i.e. I needed it to save my life). The idea of thoughtlessly terminating a late-term pregnancy simply because the baby isn’t wanted is especially heinous to me, but I honestly feel that it’s pretty rare. Virtually every story I’ve heard of late-term abortions involve heart-wrenching decisions to terminate wanted pregnancies because of severe defects or complications.

The truth is that any pregnancy puts a woman “at risk of death or substantial physical harm,” although in most pregnancies it is relatively low. So would a woman need a 90% chance of serious harm to qualify or would 50/50 be ok? What about a 25% or even 10% chance? Or what about fetuses who are found to have severe defects incompatible with life? Or a woman who was raped but there wasn’t enough evidence to convict or the case is still at trial? I’m not pro-abortion by any means but I don’t think politicians are the ones I want making these decisions. I’m not pro-abortion by any means but I really think these decisions are best made on an individual basis by the woman in question.

I had an abortion after 20 weeks due to severe fetal anomaly that was not detected until 19 weeks. I was under the care of an OB/Gyn the entire time, I had every check up, exam, and ultrasound I was supposed to have. They simply didn’t see it until my fetus was larger. Even after the initial diagnosis, further testing was required which took even more time. None of you or anyone else has the right to tell me or another woman that we must bear a severely diseased or malformed fetus. Not one of the women I met in the course of my termination was having an abortion because of carelessness. We all loved and desperately wanted our babies, but decided that there is, in fact, a fate worse than fetal death. These choices are agonizing, but we have a right to make them privately with our physicians.

I just wanted to point out that in end of life we don’t say that under no circumstances should life support be ended. It happens all the time and often it’s the patients themselves who are requesting that treatment be stopped (or not started at all).

People get upset about “late-term” abortions without knowing any facts. Approximately 1.4% of abortions (in the US) take place after 20 weeks. The overwhelming majority of them occur because of catastrophic fetal abnormality or imminent threat to the health or life of the woman. The remainder happen primarily because a) the woman was mistaken about how far along she was or b) she had difficulty finding both access to and funding for an abortion. In a recent study 56% of women said they wished that they could have had the procedure done sooner (which is saying something since just over 90% happen in the first trimester), but couldn’t afford it yet or couldn’t find a provider.
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Providing women with safe, affordable access to early abortions along with accelerating efforts to provide comprehensive sexual health education and make reliable contraceptives affordable would do a lot more than standing outside providers with signs screaming at women.

Chris – Comparing the pain felt by human babies (or fetuses, if you prefer) to that of animals eaten for meat is ridiculous. Most “conservative religious types” don’t value the life an animal as much as the life of a human – and I’m guessing that most liberal secualr types don’t either.

Lam- I’m so sorry to hear what you went through. ((hugs))

Whether or not a fetus is a “person”, defined by our assumptions and observations about their experience of pain, thought, and feeling, is really not the end of the abortion debate. We execute, we euthanize, we cease intervention to support life. We do choose to end the lives of other humans. These are choices made with great consideration and agony, but we still make them. We have to be able to discuss abortion beyond the concept of what “life” is, or who is a “person”. We have to acknowledge that choices of this nature must sometimes be made.
@Bunnytwenty & @Goddess – Thanks. That’s just scratching the surface. That experience redefined my whole emotional/psychological/intellectual/political spectrum.

I’d like advanced directives that WOULD permit euthanasia in the case of severe burns- and a myriad of other conditions with which I do not associate a good quality of life.