Utah Republicans aim to enshrine the notion of "fetal pain" into state law with a measure requiring abortion providers to anesthetize a fetus before abortion care.

Utah Republicans aim to enshrine the notion of "fetal pain" into state law with a measure requiring abortion providers to anesthetize a fetus before abortion care.

Gary Herbert For Governor / YouTube

Utah Republicans aim to enshrine the notion of “fetal pain” into state law with a measure requiring abortion providers to anesthetize a fetus before abortion care.

Abortion rights opponents in multiple states have advanced or enacted unconstitutional 20-week bans on abortion services under the guise of preventing a fetus at that gestational stage from “feeling pain.” The medical establishment debunks the notion, charging that “fetal pain” is “unlikely before the third trimester.”

The Utah GOP bill hasn’t yet been introduced, so details are scanty, but its author, state Sen. Curt Bramble (R-Provo) told KSL.com that it’s his intention to shield the fetus from “the pain inflicted at the time that that unborn child’s life is taken.”

It’s a specious contention that runs contrary to a 2010 report by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG). After reviewing scientific evidence, the RCOG Working Party found no research to support the notion that a fetus feels pain prior to 24 weeks’ gestation. The group did not recommend anesthesia before that point in gestation.

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A scientific review of evidence published in 2005 in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester. Most abortion care—89 percent—occurs in the first trimester, according to the most recent figures from the Guttmacher Institute, while 1.2 percent of terminations occur at 21 weeks or later.

“Because neural connections are not completely formed or fully active, most experts believe that fetuses at less than 24 weeks don’t have the capacity to feel pain, and so providing anesthesia for something that probably doesn’t exist at the point in pregnancy where abortion care is provided would involve unnecessary risks to pregnant woman,” Eleanor Drey, professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, told Rewire in a phone interview. “These measures are proposed in an effort to make abortion care less accessible and to increase public discomfort.”

Montana Republicans passed similar legislation last year that the state’s Democratic governor vetoed. The bill banned abortions performed at 20 weeks or beyond without anesthesia.

Bramble told the Associated Press that his proposed legislation is in lieu of an earlier bill, which he abandoned, to outlaw abortions at a stage when Bramble claims a fetus can feel pain.

Karrie Galloway, CEO of the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, said Bramble is injecting politics into medical care.

“Obviously, he wants to insert his political opinion in a private decision between a woman and her physician,” she told the Associated Press.

Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) told reporters he’d back Bramble’s measure, saying, “Rather than get into the abortion debate, I guess the question is: If we’re going to have abortion, what is the most humane way to do it?”