Arizona bill declares women pregnant two weeks before conception
Published: 05 April, 2012, 23:35
A new bill up for vote in the state of Arizona would ban abortions for some expectant mothers, but that’s only the start of what lawmakers have in store. If the legislation passes, the state will consider a child to exist even before conception.
Under Arizona’s H.B. 2036, the state would recognize the start of the unborn child’s life to be the first day of its mother’s last menstrual period. The legislation is being proposed so that lawmakers can outlaw abortions on fetuses past the age of 20-weeks, but the verbiage its authors use to construct a time cycle for the baby would mean that the start of the child’s life could very well occur up to two weeks before the mother and father even ponder procreating.
On page eight of the proposedamendment to H.B. 2036, lawmakers lay out the “gestational age” of the child to be“calculated from the first day of the last menstrual period of the pregnant woman,” and from there, outlaws abortion “if the probable gestational age of [the] unborn child has been determined to be at least twenty weeks.”
The architects of the amendment say that prohibiting abortion after 20 weeks — except in cases of medical emergency — is necessary for the safety of both mother and child. By designating a life to begin weeks before even possible, however, some critics are condemning Arizona lawmakers for looking for a way to involve itself in abortion matters before it can even become an issue.
“Certainly, they are trying move the gestational cutoff from what had been over the last two years a 20-week gestational cutoff to an 18-week gestational cutoff,”Guttmacher Institute’s State Issues Manager Elizabeth Nash tells Raw Story. “At the same time, they are trying to say, ‘Oh, this is a 20-week abortion ban.’ And they get away with that with the definition of gestational age that’s in the bill.”
“Considering that it’s anti-choice nuts we’re talking about, it’s safe to assume that they’d simply prefer a situation where all women of reproductive age are considered to be pregnant, on the grounds that they could be two weeks from now,”RH Reality Check’s Amanda Marcotte adds in a recently-penned editorial.“Better safe than sorry, especially if that mentality means you get to exert maximum control over the bodies of women of reproductive age.”
In extending her support for the legislation, however, sponsor Nancy Barto, a Republican senator representing the Phoenix, Arizona area says that fetuses are able to feel pain after the 20-week mark. Also favoring the proposal, Senator Steve Smith (R-Maricopa) adds that lawmakers also need to consider“the 50 million-plus children who have been killed”since the US Supreme Court legalized abortion inRoe v Wade.
“I would like to listen to the 50 million-plus children that have been aborted and killed since Roe v. Wade,”the senator says.“I would like to listen to what they think of this bill.”
Mother Jones adds in their own reporting, however, that while the law could be explained as an effort to deter complications that come from late-term abortions, opening up the window for the gestational age to begin before conception can hurt the parents in the long run. Essentially the act would outlaw abortion after 18 weeks, not 20 as the legislation claims, which could keep some concerned parents from making a decision about pregnancy before some medical procedures that gauge the health of the child are able to be determined. While some tests can be conducted soon after conception to catch potential life-threatening conditions and other impairments, outlawing abortions after the eighteenth week could keep parents from opting for abortion after other tests can be carried out (before the 20-week mark).
H.B. 2036 passed in the Arizona Senator by 20-to-10 and will soon go before the state’s House. To Raw Story, Elizabeth Nash says she believes the bill has a “very good chances of passage.”
i don’t want to live on this earth anymore
I know that the US is embarrassingly behind in science but this really takes the cake. I mean just the POSSIBILITY of a fertilized egg existing (not even an actual PREGNANCY) now has more importance than the actual human being that would carry it.
I don’t blame this on the people of Arizona itself. I blame it on the lack of encouragement in schools towards science-based classes and classes that require critical thinking skills (usually science-based courses). I was never encouraged to take advanced math classes or science classes. In fact, I was doing well in math and my guidance counselor wanted me to take pre-algebra two years earlier than planned. My mom talked me out of doing it because my brother failed pre-algebra. Twice.
I never did well in math after that (until I returned to college after graduating with a bachelor’s degree) because I simply stopped believing I could do it and I stopped being encouraged. I never thought I was capable of advanced science classes but I’m doing very well in my science classes right now and quite enjoy them.
The fact that I’m a girl also plays into this. My brother, for example, was encouraged to take math, which he failed at (that’s not meant to be a value-based assessment, my brother is a more creative and artistic individual than a science based one, he just did better in more subjective courses) and because of his failure, I was discouraged from taking advanced math courses and I still refuse to take a calculus course because this discouragement goes really deep.
But, my point is that if the US spent more time encouraging science-based courses to everyone and anyone who was interested, we probably wouldn’t have the next generation of lawmakers believing that a fertilized egg is a pregnancy, when it most certainly isn’t. We wouldn’t have laws like this because even the most conservative of politicians would be too embarrassed over making such an egregious and downright incorrect assumption as a basis for these laws. If more people understood basic science (like biology) we wouldn’t have people supporting bills like this, politicians or civilians alike, because people would understand that the foundation these bills are based is not made up by accurate science (or any at all, really).
And these aren’t the only bills I’m talking about. We have people who want to pass bills that ban water because they don’t understand basic chemical nomenclature or bother to do any research on what they are voting on. We have multiple lawmakers who believe they understand pregnancy and have the right to legislate on it because they see pregnant people and their reproductive systems as the same as a farm animal’s. If we put a larger emphasis on science we wouldn’t have people believing that hormonal birth control pills are taken every time a person has sex, like Viagra is.
But we don’t put a lot of emphasis on science, and so we get bills like this one where anyone with a vagina is deemed less important than the mere POSSIBILITY of a fertilized egg.
Love,
Rabble
(Source: rt.com)
