OPINION: Flimsy ‘fetal pain’ argument wins the day in Congress and ‘death-tax’ argument falls apart
Supporters' professed concern for fetal pain appears ginned up, employed by anti-choice advocates looking for new and creative ways to erode abortion rights. Since 2011, nearly 20 states have passed abortion bans based on a fetal-pain threshold set at earlier in the gestational process than the legally significant viability threshold -- roughly 24 weeks, when a fetus has a better than 50 percent chance of surviving outside the womb.
These bans are attempts to find a plausible legal justification to move the line -- established by the
Yet even though fetuses react when poked or prodded, the vast weight of research and medical opinion says they don't feel pain as we understand it until at least past viability.
Here's from a meta-analysis of fetal-pain studies published in the
"Tests of cortical function suggest that conscious perception of pain does not begin before the third trimester (starting at 27 weeks)."
Here's the
"In reviewing the neuroanatomical and physiological evidence in the fetus, it was apparent that connections from the periphery to the cortex are not intact before 24 weeks of gestation and, as most neuroscientists believe that the cortex is necessary for pain perception, it can be concluded that the fetus cannot experience pain in any sense prior to this gestation."
The British group continues, "Furthermore, there is increasing evidence that the fetus never experiences a state of true wakefulness in utero and is kept, by the presence of its chemical environment, in a continuous sleep-like unconsciousness or sedation."
Here's the
"The perception of pain requires more than just the mechanical transmission and reception of signals. ... This capacity does not develop until the third trimester at the earliest ... (and) evidence shows that the neural circuitry necessary to distinguish touch from painful touch does not, in fact, develop until late in the third trimester."
And here's an article in BMJ, formerly the
"The developmental processes necessary for the mindful experience of pain are not yet developed," in a fetus. But, the article notes, "an absence of pain in the fetus does not resolve the question of whether abortion is morally acceptable or should be legal."
This last point is a good one. Knocking down the fetal-pain argument has little practical effect on the overall abortion debate, just as banning abortions after 20 weeks would have little practical effect on the number of abortions. Only about 1 percent of pregnancies are terminated at that late stage, and the vast majority of those are cases involving fetal abnormalities or risks to the woman's health, not merely second thoughts about parenthood.
In all, these fetal-pain laws and the bill just passed by the House are simply the latest versions of waiting periods, mandatory ultrasounds, unnecessarily burdensome regulations on clinics, sidewalk "counseling" and other efforts to limit abortion rights by exaggerating insincere concerns.
This is one culture war the left is on the verge of losing.
Doubling down on my support of the estate tax
I spent a good part of last weekend corresponding with readers who were fuming about my expression of support on this page for the estate tax, which President
My critics didn't take issue with my facts -- the 40 percent tax applies only to amounts exceeding
They took issue with the very idea that even a fabulously wealthy person would be double taxed, that is, that they'd have to pay taxes again on income for which they've already been taxed.
My replies:
1. The deceased aren't paying taxes, despite the inflammatory term "death tax." Estate taxes are, in effect, paid by those to whom the money or assets are being transferred.
2. Taxing transactions is what the state does. Income taxes, gift taxes and sales taxes almost always involve money that's already been taxed at least once if not many times. And it's logically perverse to levy a tax on someone when he gets his money by working, but not on someone who gets his money by being an heir.
3. There's clearly no air-tight, consistent logic to what's taxed and how much in our system. Government nicks you where and how it can in ways that it hopes will not cause you to howl too loudly.
3. Even if double taxation were some horrifying moral wrong, the term often doesn't apply with large estates. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that the majority of the wealth of the super rich is in untaxed capital gains -- assets such as stocks or property whose increase in value since purchase has never been subject to tax. Eliminating the estate tax would assure those capital gains would never be taxed.
4. Of all the transactions that can be taxed, the passing of amounts in excess of
Re: Tweets
By late afternoon Tuesday, shortly after news footage showed
I, in turn, was not the first to say, "Great Scott! That's funny!"
On a more serious note, writer Desirina Boskovich? tweeted out this observation after the bloodbath in
It is dismaying to think that, with all the emotional wreckage experienced by direct victims, their families and, I'm sure, many witnesses, will come financial wreckage, including medical bills they'll be unable to pay.
The winner of this week's reader poll for best tweet is director
___
(c)2017 the Chicago Tribune
Visit the Chicago Tribune at www.chicagotribune.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
ATVs now legal on Madison County roads
Tax reform: Trump proposal to end estate tax renews wealth debate
Advisor News
Annuity News
Health/Employee Benefits News
Life Insurance News