Here Is Why Minnesota's Abortion Law Doesn't Say What Republicans Insist It Should Say
'Palliative care' is appropriate medical care, Jesus Christ.
During last week’s debate, JD Vance ridiculously complained that Minnesota’s abortion law “says that a doctor who presides over an abortion, where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide lifesaving care to a baby who survives a botched late-term abortion.”
Future American Vice President Tim Walz explained, patiently, that this was not the case, that Vance and others were deliberately distorting the way the law was written, because doctors are already required to provide lifesaving care when there is a possibility of survival. Duh.
In an op-ed published on Monday by The Hill, conservative writer Becket Adams tried to make the case that Vance was actually correct about the law, which he was not.
Adams writes:
But here are the relevant facts. In 1976, the Minnesota state legislature approved a measure (Section 145.423) to protect children who survive abortions. The statute declared that “A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person, and accorded immediate protection under the law,” and that “All reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice, including the compilation of appropriate medical records, shall be taken to preserve the life and health of the child.”
Later, in 2015, the Minnesota legislature passed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, which, among other things, defined “born-alive infants” as “every infant member of the species Homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.”
The Born Alive Infants Protection Act also required “civil penalties for medical personnel who did not provide adequate care, privacy protections for court proceedings related to born-alive infants, and the status of born alive-infants who survive following an abortion procedure.”
Becket notes that, even at this time, “of five born-alive cases reported between January 1 and December 31, 2021, the Minnesota Department of Health said ‘no measures taken to preserve life were reported’ for three of them.”
This is true. And if you actually go to the page he linked, it is explained that one of those cases involved severe fetal anomalies and the two others were pre-viable fetuses with no chance of survival. Lifesaving measures are not recommended prior to 22 or 23 weeks (depending on the hospital’s policy).
This is why the wording of the law was changed when Walz repealed the portion of the law pertaining to civil penalties for medical personnel.
The original text read
A live child born as a result of an abortion shall be fully recognized as a human person, and accorded immediate protection under the law. All reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice, including the compilation of appropriate medical records, shall be taken to preserve the life and health of the child.
While the new text read:
An infant who is born alive shall be fully recognized as a human person, and accorded immediate protection under the law. All reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice, including the compilation of appropriate medical records, shall be taken by the responsible medical personnel to care for the infant who is born alive.
Why was this changed? It was changed so that doctors are not penalized for doing their jobs and providing the correct, recommended standard of care. The same standard of care that would be provided if someone were to go into labor and give birth that early on.
This is not about saving any babies. No one is refusing to provide lifesaving care to anyone with a chance of survival. This is about two things: 1) Painting doctors and those having these abortions as monsters who are just in it for the thrill of infanticide and 2) upsetting people who are stupid enough to think that if the doctors just intervened and provided lifesaving care that those infants could survive and they would have a real miracle to celebrate.
But what’s the problem, really? Why can’t doctors just do the lifesaving procedures on infants with no chance of survival, just so these people feel better about everything? What’s the harm?
The harm is putting them through excruciating pain for no reason. In cases of severe fetal anomalies, the child will often be in serious pain on their own, but lifesaving care is also often painful and extremely unpleasant. In many cases these infants survive only minutes (in both cases of abortion and premature birth) either way, and so doctors will usually choose to make them comfortable instead of putting them through that.
It is also worth noting, frankly, that a stay in the NICU is unbelievably expensive. The median cost for a preterm baby at less than 30 weeks gestation in the NICU is $77,132. People have ended up owing millions. To swallow that cost for a baby with no chance of survival, just so some people you do not know, who don’t really know how these things work, can feel better? That is asking a lot!
Especially considering that these are the same people who do not support universal health care. They actively do not care if people who could survive die because they couldn’t afford medical treatment, but they want babies with no chance of survival kept alive by any means possible until their bodies give out and they die on a respirator. Nice people!
Again, I repeat for the JD Vances and the Becket Adamses in the back — no one is having post-birth abortions, post-birth abortions are not legal in Minnesota or anywhere else, end of story.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Part of the problem is that our culture has a wildly distorted view of medicine.
A few weeks ago, I was watching some reruns of "Longmire". (Shut up. Shut up. I was making meatballs. It was good enough to run in the background.) There is an episode in which a character is run over by a car and left for dead. She has a severe head injury that leaves her for unconscious FOR HOURS (as a reference guide, unconsciousness that lasts more than 5 minutes is indicative of severe brain damage and is immediately life-threatening). She spends those unconscious hours baking in the open sun in what are presumably triple-digit temperatures. When she is finally in the hospital, she's in a coma. All the doctors think she's in grave danger. And then, two days later, she just wakes up. And then a couple of days after that, she's discharged. As soon as she walks out of the hospital, this incident is forgotten, except as a plot device necessary to designate who the bad guys are. No years of physical and occupational therapy. No slurred speech. No needing to relearn how to button one's clothes. No neurological or cognitive sequelae. No brain damage. No brain surgery. She just ... waltzes out of there. It kind of reminded me of the fact that the allegations in at least half of the cases I'm defending are along the lines of "The doctors didn't save my mom or return her to the same level of functioning she had before she got sick."
There are unmistakably sadists among the MAGA. But I also meet a lot of conservatives who genuinely believe doctors can watch a woman come to the brink of death and then apply "life-saving measures", and she'll not only survive, but leave the hospital with no long-term disabilities whatsoever. They really believe a 12-week fetus is a miniature child who can be saved with CPR and IV fluids. When I tell them that one of the dangers of allowing someone to come to "the brink of death", is that they may actually die, or experience end organ failure, despite eventually receiving medical care; that allowing someone to bleed out for 2 days can disrupt hemostatis to such a degree that it will be impossible to stop the bleeding no matter what the doctors eventually do; and that "life-saving measures" on a non-viable fetus are not only futile but can be downright torturous, they look at me like I'm speaking ancient Mandarin.
Also: There is a depressing number of cases I look at where families instruct doctors to keep the patient in full code and to apply all life-saving measures even after having it explained to them there is no hope and the most humane thing to do would be to give the patient something for pain and let them expire peacefully.
I blame the way medicine and doctors are portrayed in movies and on television.
New name just dropped for PAB. From CNN:
While Biden rarely invokes Trump’s name publicly, referring to him as “my predecessor” or “the former guy,” in private, Biden calls him “that fucking asshole,” Woodward writes.