Controversial law adopts idea that fetuses feel pain after 20 weeks and has faced opposition from medical groups but governor has promised to sign

The Wisconsin state senate passed a controversial bill on Tuesday that would ban abortions in the state after 20 weeks.

The bill posits that fetuses can feel pain after 20 weeks, contrary to most scientific evidence. It has been criticized by the Wisconsin section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, as well as by the Wisconsin Medical Society and the Wisconsin chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Governor Scott Walker, who is positioning himself for a presidential run, has said he will sign the legislation if it reaches his desk.



Under the bill, the father of the fetus may bring a claim for damages against a physician who performs an abortion on a woman after the 20 week cutoff. Only 1% of the abortions performed in Wisconsin happen after 20 weeks. Nearly half – 48% – take place in the first eight weeks of pregnancy.



Doctors found guilty of violating the law by performing abortions could be fined $10,000 and sentenced to three years and six months in prison. The legislation offers no exceptions for rape or incest and only permits an abortion in the event of a medical emergency. This is defined as risk that the woman will die or have a major bodily function impaired.

The legislation, sponsored by Republican senator Mary Lazich and assembly member Jesse Kremer, mandates that the gestational age of the fetus be calculated as the “post-fertilization age”. Physicians, however, point out that the standard method for determining fetal age is different, counting from the last menstrual cycle.

Legal experts have said that the bill, if passed as written, would likely be struck down by a lower court in the event of a lawsuit, burdening taxpayers with those costs. Whether the US supreme court would change its position on permitting abortions prior to viability, currently deemed to be 24 weeks, is unclear.



Residents testified for and against the bill last week at the state capitol in Madison. Jessica Roulette, 45, an attorney who had a life-threatening pregnancy 11 years ago, spoke in opposition to it. “I worry that if this legislation had been in place when I was facing my crisis pregnancy, that day when everything went to hell, my doctors might not have been able to save my life.”



Speaking to the Guardian by telephone, she added: “Just sitting in the hearing room waiting to testify, I didn’t feel like the people who want to vote for this bill are considering the lives of mothers with high-risk, difficult pregnancies are of equal value to the child the woman is trying to have, and I don’t think that’s right.”



In an interview with Wisconsin Eye, assembly member Jesse Kremer, a Republican from Kewaskum, said that the bill protected “children that can feel that pain, that torturous, barbaric ripping limb from limb”. But Dr Steven Leuthner, a national expert on neonatal and infant end-of-life care, said most abortions after 20 weeks were performed through induced labor and delivery because of lethal issues with the fetus or jeopardy to the mother’s life.



“I’m very disturbed by the nature and tone of the bill for a number of reasons,” he said. “They make it sound like there’s no patient-physician relationship in these decisions and discussions, and everything is punitive to the doctor. There’s kind of this tone of the women being subject to the doctors doing these procedures, and that was kind of disturbing.”