St. Paul Cathedral. Source: Wikipedia

Minnesota’s Catholic bishops sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Thursday urging her department to drop a mandate on health insurance companies to cover birth control as part of their health plans.

The bishops argue that entities like Catholic Charities would have to offer insurance plans to their employees that offer coverage for contraceptives or else stop providing health benefits to employees.“While we support providing access to those services which can truly prevent disease or disability for woman such as pap smears and mammograms, we join other persons of good will who strenuously object to mandatory coverage for contraceptives and sterilization procedures,” the bishops wrote in the letter (PDF).

In August, the Obama administration announced that it would mandate that private health insurance cover women’s health care services such as cancer screenings, domestic violence support and birth control. The Catholic Church believes that birth control methods other than the rhythm method are sinful.

The bishops said the rule would “require taxpayers and providers to act against deeply-held convictions regarding the sanctity of life, as the promotion and provision of drugs like “Ella” (ulipristal acetate) and other abortifacient agents are enabled by this mandate.”

Coverage of abortion services is not included in the mandate. Calling drugs like Ella abortifacients is not the legal definition; they don’t actually cause abortions. However, as Christianity Today noted, the Catholic Church and other conservative Christians view the drug as abortion-inducing from a moral perspective.

The bishops also object to the current “conscience clause” in the mandate.

A religious organization is exempt from the mandate so long as it “has as the inculcation of religious values as its purpose, primarily employs persons who share its religious tenets, and primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets.”

The bishops worry that religious charities would either have to provide health coverage that offers birth control or opt not to cover their employees at all.

“By exempting only those who employ and/or serve persons of the same religious tradition from its mandates, Catholic health care providers—the safety net for many of our marginalized sisters and brothers—cannot enjoy the exception without abandoning our mission, to the significant detriment of those in need.”

“Requiring Catholic individuals and institutions to pay for and provide abortion drugs and contraceptives contrary to Catholic teaching in the name of ‘reproductive autonomy’ is an unprecedented attack on the cherished liberties of religious and associational freedom,” said Jason Adkins, executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of the Roman Catholic Church in Minnesota.

Minnesota’s Catholic bishops are the latest in a long list of Catholic institutions that have spoken out against the policy, as have Catholic hospitals. At least 18 Catholic institutions of higher learning have come out against the rule as well as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

But, as our sister site the Florida Independent recently reported, not all Catholics agree with the hierarchy. In fact, some see the exception for religious institutions as dangerous for women.

“In allowing religious institutions to refuse to include contraceptive services in the health insurance plans they offer their employees, the Obama administration has once again sided with the Catholic bishops over the needs of women and their families,” said Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice. “The multi-billion dollar Catholic health care industry has a lot of influence with this administration, influence that it has now used to allow religious institutions to ride roughshod over the needs of their workers. Not only that, it ignores the consciences of those who decide that to use a modern method of family planning is what is best for them and their families.”

In fact, recent polling suggests that most Catholic women could benefit from the mandate. A poll released in April showed that only 2 percent of sexually active women followed Catholic teaching on birth control. Ninety-eight percent of Catholic women have used some form of birth control that is banned by the Church.

Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life (MCCL) sent a scathing fundraising letter to supporters complaining about the 2011 legislative session and blaming Republican leadership for not pressuring Gov. Mark Dayton to sign anti-abortion legislation.

Politics in Minnesota’s Paul Demko notes that MCCL President Leo LaLonde went after House Speaker Kurt Zellers and Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, both of whom are Republicans. The letter notes that MCCL’s finances are at an all-time low.

“I am going to be brutally honest,” LaLonde wrote. “I am devastated by the fact that not only were we unsuccessful in enacting any new pro-life laws this session, but we lost an existing pro-life policy for the first time since Roe V. Wade legalized abortion on demand!”

LaLonde criticized Republicans for the group’s legislative failures.

“[We] felt confident that House and Senate leaders would insist that at least some of our protective measures would be included in the final budget,” he said. “Senate Majority Leader Koch and Speaker of the House Zellers quickly struck a deal with Gov. Dayton, and in the blink of an eye all five pro-life measures that has been passed by nearly two-thirds, veto-proof margin during the legislative session were negotiated away.”

He added, “The Republican leaders lost sight of what is truly at stake—the lives of innocent human beings.”

The letter asked supporters for donations because MCCL is struggling financially.

“The uncertainty of the economy has not been kind to MCCL. Donations are down,” the letter reads. MCCL also said that they spent a lot of money in the 2011 legislative session: ”Our coffers are at an all-time low-will you help us?”

As with every year, the 2011 Minnesota State Fair will feature plenty of things on sticks — mainly food items — but one object may stand out: Condoms. And they’re being marketed to grandmothers. It’s the work of Pro-Choice Resources, a group that provides reproductive health services and has gone to the fair for 38 years to encourage families to have open and honest discussions of sexual health.

The group says that grandmothers comprise the bulk of the visitors to their booth.

“It’s a smart and fun way to start a conversation about sex with the grandchildren and children in our lives and let them know we care about their relationships and safety,” said Karen Law, the group’s executive director. “Every year some of the same grandmothers stop by our booth just to get condoms-on-a-stick. They make for wildly popular and unusual items in care packages.”

The group plans to hand out 7,000 of the condoms on a stick.

Minnesota saw a large increase in sexually transmitted diseases in 2010, up 5 percent over 2009. Chlamydia is a large driver in the epidemic which has hit rural, poor and minority communities the hardest.

Tim Pawlenty has been touting his record of opposition to abortion and funding for Planned Parenthood, but this hard-line on abortion is somewhat new. One acquaintance of Pawlenty’s says that his “pro-life” stance is faked, and a report by Mother Jones on Thursday demonstrates that Pawlenty approved a “dizzying increase” in funds for Planned Parenthood and other family planning agencies — according to a local paper at the time — during his two terms as governor, as well as cutting abstinence-only programs.

In April, Pawlenty said funding for Planned Parenthood should end.

“Washington has a massive spending problem, and we need to set priorities,” he said. “Recent undercover videos show that employees of America’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, aided alleged human traffickers wishing to exploit young girls. Yet, they continue to receive significant taxpayer funding. That should come to an end.”

But it’s not just Planned Parenthood that Pawlenty wants to yank funding from. In a June interview with religious right radio host and lawyer Jordan Sekulow, Pawlenty said he wants to defund any organizations “that are involved in” abortions.

Sekulow asked him, “If you were president and Congress would pass a law in the House and Senate to de-fund Planned Parenthood, would you sign the law?”

Pawlenty responded:

“Yes. I have been strongly pro-life. In fact, the National Review Online, which is of course a conservative publication, did an article about the 2012 candidates and the headline was — the point of the article was — that, based on results and not just rhetoric, I’m the most pro-life candidate running in the race. And so I don’t think taxpayer money should be used to fund organizations that are involved in performing abortions. I think most Americans would agree with that and I strongly would agree with that and would lead those efforts. Beyond that, I’ve got a record of results in this area in Minnesota — having proposed and signed a Women’s Right to Know bill, having proposed and signed legislation on positive alternatives to abortion, a fetal pain bill, and much more. And the pro-life group in Minnesota — the leading one and all the other ones — have said I was the best governor in the modern history of the state on these issues.”

But a report from Mother Jones on Thursday questions Pawlenty’s anti-abortion bonafides.

Over the course of Pawlenty’s career as governor, he increased funding to family planning groups — including those that performed abortions or referred clients to clinics that performed abortions — from $3.8 million to $5 million.

Pawlenty also rejected abstinence-only sex education funding from the federal government in 2008 (though he asked for it back in 2010 as he geared up for a presidential campaign).

The reason for his shifting stance on funding for Planned Parenthood and other family planning organizations may have been revealed in an article by Shawn Lawrence Otto in MinnPost last week. Otto was mulling a run for state Senate in the late 1990s as a Republican and asked his friend Tim Pawlenty about campaigning. Pawlenty has some advice on abortion politics:

Pawlenty is a very talented guy, and I respected his opinion. His first question was, “What’s your position on choice?” I hadn’t ever been asked the question quite so pointedly. “You’ve got to take a stand on that first,” he said. “Well,” I said, “OK. I don’t like abortion; I think it’s a really tough personal decision, but not something the government should be getting into one way or the other, so I guess I’m pro-choice.”

He looked at me over his lunch and said, “Well personally, so am I, but here’s the thing. You’ve got to find a way to get your mind around the language of saying ‘pro-life.’ It’s in how you phrase it.”

I’ve since learned I’m not the only one Pawlenty has said this to.

GOP presidential contender Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has taken a further step proving his anti-abortion-rights commitment since signing the Susan B. Anthony List’s “2012 Pro-Life Presidential Leadership Pledge,” a pledge also signed by Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty.

This week Paul issued a statement of his budget priorities were he to be put in the White House.

His second point of action — after “vetoing any spending bills that contribute to an unbalanced budget,” would be to “veto any spending bill that contains funding for Planned Parenthood, facilities that perform abortion and all government family planning schemes.”

“Like millions of Americans, I believe that innocent life deserves protection and I am deeply offended by abortion,” Paul said in the statement, without explaining what he means by “government family planning schemes.”

“As a Congressman, I’ve never voted for any budget that includes funding for Planned Parenthood. Instead, I’ve introduced the Taxpayers’ Freedom of Conscience Act to cut off all taxpayer funding of abortions, so-called ‘family planning’ services and international abortionists.”

Paul’s other economic plans include ending “ObamaCare” and repealing “unconstitutional and burdensome” regulations on businesses.

As the Iowa Independent recently reported, Paul is among five GOP presidential hopefuls that signed the SBA pledge, essentially making four promises:

“To nominate to the U.S. federal bench judges who are committed to restraint and applying the original meaning of the Constitution, not legislating from the bench;

To select only pro-life appointees for relevant Cabinet and Executive Branch positions, in particular the head of National Institutes of Health, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Health & Human Services;

To advance pro-life legislation to permanently end all taxpayer funding of abortion in all domestic and international spending programs, and defund Planned Parenthood and all other contractors and recipients of federal funds with affiliates that perform or fund abortions;

To advance and sign into law a Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act to protect unborn children who are capable of feeling pain from abortion.”

Since Paul’s post-pledge pledge, SBA List has dubbed him a “Libertarian for Life.”

Presidential contenders Mitt Romney, Gary Johnson and Herman Cain have not signed the pledge, despite pressure within the Republican Party.

Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty have signed on to the Susan B. Anthony List’s 2012 Pro-life Presidential Leadership Pledge. The presidential candidates have pledged to roll back abortion rights in four key areas, and the duo join three other presidential contenders: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Bachmann went after fellow presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Sunday for not signing the pledge and not committing to “ending the practice of abortion.”

The candidates pledged to appoint anti-abortion judges, to appoint anti-abortion cabinet members, to defund Planned Parenthood and to sign a bill banning abortion after 20 weeks gestation.

Bachmann went after Mitt Romney for not signing the pledge.

“It is distressing that Governor Romney refuses to sign the SBA Pledge, even while claiming to be pro-life,” Bachmann said in a statement on Sunday. “The excuses for not signing clearly continue the doubts about his leadership and commitment to ending the practice of abortion – particularly for a candidate who ran as pro-choice for the Senate and Governorship of Massachusetts. Any Presidential candidate seeking our party’s nomination should sign the SBA Pledge and vow to protect life from conception to natural death. Governor Romney should reconsider his decision not to sign the Pledge just as he reconsidered his position on the life issue during the last campaign.”

On Thursday, the House Health and Human Services Reform Committee will hear a presentation on vaccine safety by a researcher who asserts that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine may not be safe for children — and part of the basis for the concern appears to stem from her religious opposition to the use of human cells in the vaccine. The testimony of Dr. Theresa Deisher is part of an official informational hearing, but Deisher’s assertions regarding autism and vaccines have been debunked by many researchers. Deisher — who is the hearing’s only testifier — has earned praise for her work from both the anti-vaccine and anti–abortion rights movements.

Deisher will present her findings at a hearing called, “Presentation on Vaccine Safety: New Considerations, Concerns and Insights.” According to her press release, she will present “a continuation of her public efforts to shed light on key elements regarding vaccine safety, specifically as regards the likely adverse affects of human DNA residuals in many widely utilized vaccines.” No one else is scheduled to testify.

Deisher contends that the MMR vaccine may cause autism in young children. She doesn’t assert that it does, only that it may and that she feels more research should be done. And her lab is soliciting money to do that research.

In 2008 testimony to the President’s Commission on Bioethics under President George W. Bush, Deisher proposed that DNA from human cell cultures used to make the MMR vaccine may be causing autism in America’s children.

“How might the human DNA contaminated vaccines contribute to human disease? First, there is the potential for the contaminating DNA to be mixed with our own genes by a process called homologous recombination,” she said. “We do not yet know if this occurs with the contaminating human DNA found in some of our vaccines, and if so, to what extent. Imagine the potential consequences of human DNA from a vaccine, a vaccine that is given to children at an average age of 15 months, being incorporated into a child’s developing brain. One does not need to be a rocket scientist to know that this potential has to be studied.”

The Minnesota Independent contacted several leading vaccine researchers who say Diesher’s claims are far from accurate.

Dr. Paul A. Offit, MD, is the head of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a professor of Vaccinology and Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, as well as the author of the book “Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure.”

“I don’t know where that comes from,” he told the Minnesota Independent of Deisher’s claim.

In the 1970s, vaccine producers switched from using animal cells for the rubella vaccine — a component of MMR — to human cells. Researchers derived those cells in 1961 from embryonic lung tissue, a bit similar to the embryonic stem cell lines used today to study and develop cures for chronic diseases. That 1961 line is still used today for vaccine production, and manufacturers list DNA from those cell lines as ingredients in the MMR vaccine.

Offit says that the amount of DNA in a vaccine is extremely small and unlikely to cause any problems: “We are talking picogram levels, or one trillionth of a gram.”

“There’s very little chance that a DNA fragment could cross the blood-brain barrier and insert itself into brain cells,” he said. “This would be the best news for gene therapy,” a process that seeks to use fragments of DNA to cure disease.

If incorporating DNA into cells — let alone brain cells — were as easy as Diesher says it is, Offit says it could revolutionize gene therapy research.

He says that the trivial quantities from vaccines make no difference. “You are injecting foreign DNA all the time” from the food we eat. “Look, if it worked that way, after eating at McDonald’s, we’d all turn into cows.”

The bottom line, he says, is that the science is confusing and people become skeptical. “It’s easy to take advantage of the fact that most people don’t understand vaccine science.”

Dr. Neal Halsey, professor of International Health and director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, concurred.

“This claim has no merit,” he said. “The scientific data is now overwhelming that MMR is not a cause of autism.”

He added, “There is no evidence that small residual amounts of DNA from any source contribute to the development of autism.”

Dr. Halsey said that past research on links between autism and vaccines has been debunked.

“As I’m certain you know, Dr. Andrew Wakefield was the originator of the hypothesis that MMR causes autism,” he told the Minnesota Independent. “We have known for more than 10 years that the science behind his studies was seriously flawed. We now know through recent publications, that the studies were based upon fraudulent evidence.”

Earlier this year, British authorities found Wakefield’s research unethical, noting four counts of dishonesty and 12 counts abuse of autistic children through invasive and unnecessary testing.

But, the skepticism raised by Wakefield — and now Deisher — has had consequences beyond bad science.

So far this year in Minnesota, eight children have been hospitalized after contracting measles, and in at least some cases, parents of those children have followed Wakefield’s skepticism. Measles can be fatal in young children.

Does the MMR vaccine cause autism? “The answer could not be clearer and that answer is ‘no,’” said Offit. He said the vaccine has been researched in 12 large studies on three continents, and findings show the risk for autism after vaccination is no greater than for those children who have not been vaccinated.

Deisher: “Our pro-life work is our top responsibility”

Deisher’s questioning of the MMR vaccine seems to come from two related sources: religion and opposition to abortion.

In an interview in 2008, when she first opened AVM Biotechnology, LLC — the acronym stands for “Ave Maria” — Deisher said, “It is our goal to develop human therapeutics that are morally acceptable and compatible with the magisterium of the Catholic Church.”

Her ties to the church remain close; last year, the Archbishop of Seattle, Alexander J. Brunett, conducted a blessing of Deisher’s lab — complete with holy water and solemnization.

Deisher’s original focus was on embryonic stem cell research, and she successfully filed suit against the Obama Administration in 2010. The suit halted funding for embryonic stem cell research for a period in August of last year before an appeal was filed and a stay issued to continue the funding.

Now, the focus appears to be on vaccines, and an embryo that was killed in 1961 to create cell cultures that assist in the production of vaccines. That embryo was donated to research and was not aborted specifically for vaccine production.

“Many vaccines in the U.S. are contaminated with aborted fetal tissue,” she said. “There are no ethical alternatives, putting parents, physicians and pharmacists in a moral dilemma.”

Further, Deisher has said using research that involved embryonic stem cell research or fetuses would be akin to Nazism.

“It would be like using the research results on hypothermia from Nazi Germany that involved murdering people,” she said.

Diesher’s zeal in opposing human cell cultured vaccines and embryonic stem cell research has achieved for her star status in the anti-abortion movement.

“We are clearly unique in that we are open and upfront about our pro-life mission,” Deisher said in an interview with Xcomony Seattle. “Our pro-life work is our top responsibility. For most companies, fiduciary return is the top priority. We hope our investors will make lots of money, but that’s not our first objective. We won’t compromise our pro-life mission for economic returns.”

While it’s unclear who invited Deisher to testify at Thursday’s hearing, the committee is chaired by Rep. Steve Gottwalt, R-St. Cloud, the cosponsor of several abortion-related bills, including one that would criminalize embryonic stem cell research and another that would direct taxpayer funds to anti-abortion groups through sales of “Choose Life” license plates.

Recently proposed federal and state family-planning spending cuts would disproportionately hinder low-income Latinas’ access to reproductive care, said several women’s reproductive care providers and advocates during a teleconference organized this week by Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Clinic directors from local Planned Parenthood affiliates near predominantly Hispanic communities illustrated how federal and state legislation might impact low-income Hispanic women, many of whom are uninsured and rely on grant-funded services offered by Planned Parenthood or other community health clinics to obtain low-cost contraception, gynecological exams, testing for sexually transmitted diseases and family-planning education.

“Threats to Planned Parenthood at the federal level mean threats to our ability to provide vital primary and prenatal care to Latinas and their families via Medicaid,” said Guadalupe Rodriguez, director of public affairs at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, whose health centers serve 29 counties in California.

Despite threats from the Republican-led U.S. House, the approved 2011 budget maintained Planned Parenthood funding for family planning services; however, in the final spending plan, programs that provide low-cost reproductive health care access and pregnancy prevention received significant cuts. The appropriation to Title X of the Public Health Service Act was reduced from $317 million to $300 million, and the budget cut approximately $500 million from the Women, Infants, and Children program, which provides federal grants to states for supplemental food, health care referrals and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding and non-breast feeding postpartum women, as well as infants and children up to age 5 who are found to be “at a nutritional risk.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Hispanic population grew by 43 percent during the past decade, to 50.5 million people, making up 16 percent of the total U.S. population. In 2009, 23 percent of Planned Parenthood patients nationwide, approximately 620,000 people, were Hispanic, said Destiny Lopez, director of Latino engagement at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She noted that the number of male Hispanic patients increased by 191 percent in the last decade.

Lopez said that in the nine states where the Hispanic population more than doubled between 2000 and 2010, in all but one have several measures — such as family planning cuts, abortion restrictions and abstinence-only education programs — been introduced that could potentially restrict access to reproductive health care.

“With the attacks on women’s health care in Congress and in the states, even more Latinas could be cut off from basic reproductive health care like birth control, cancer screenings, and other essential services,” said Elizabeth Barajas-Román, director of policy at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health.

Barajas-Román said that women with legal status have to wait five years to qualify for public health care, including access to reproductive services such as birth control. These cuts will make it even harder for these women to get care, she said.

In Texas — where Latinos make up 37 percent of the state’s population, according to 2009 census figures — the state House voted this month to cut $60 million from family planning programs in their version of the state budget.

Last year, the federal government designated $155 million in new funding for the Personal Responsibility Education Program, a state grant program that funds sex education that includes information on abstinence, contraception and pregnancy- and STD-prevention. But state lawmakers only have until the end of the month to decide whether to apply for approximately $9 million of this grant money — meaning they might not put in a request.

“The [Texas] House budget looks terrible,” said Patricio Gonzalez, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Association of Hidalgo County, the seventh-largest county in Texas, located on the Texas-Mexican border.

Gonzalez said the funding cut proposal translates into nearly 70 percent in cuts to family planning services, which he predicted would lead to the shutdown of eight to 10 of his clinics, affecting approximately 18,000 women.

Lillian Tamayo, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of South Florida and the Treasure Coast, which covers Key West to Indian River, said that Hispanic women make up 20 percent of the population in her area and have disproportionately higher pregnancy, birth and cancer rates.

“The Florida Legislature, rather than being concerned on the creation of jobs, what they’ve done is dismantle women’s rights and attack women’s health,” Tamayo said, noting the 18 bills the state has introduced related to reproductive rights restrictions. ”It’s a wholesale attack on women.”

DFL Rep. Collin Peterson is joining with Republican Reps. Michele Bachmann and John Kline in strongly urging the District of Columbia to act quickly in implementing a ban on publicly subsidized abortions in the city. As part of the continuing resolution passed last week, Washington, D.C. has to halt paying for abortions under its programs for low-income women. Peterson, Bachmann and Kline were among several dozen Congress members who issued a letter on Tuesday that also asks D.C. for detailed reports about the new ban.

“We trust you will act immediately to respect and faithfully implement the law by ensuring that no further taxpayer funds are expended for elective abortion,” the members wrote. “We further request detailed information about abortion funding in the District during the period in which the D.C. Hyde amendment was not in place. With reinstatement of the D.C. Hyde amendment public funding for the destruction of innocent human life will no longer be permitted in D.C. However, history has shown that the District has not always complied with this policy when it has been in place in the past. When this policy was reinstated for FY96, the District continued to fund abortions in violation of the law until the violation was uncovered in FY98.”

The authors added, “We do not anticipate that this situation will occur again, but in light of this history, we ask that you provide detailed information outlining what steps you are taking to ensure that no more public funds are used to pay for elective abortion in D.C.”

The letter was sent to DC Mayor Vincent Gray, who, along with several DC council members, were arrested after protesting the riders in the continuing resolution which impose mandates on the District. In addition to the abortion ban, the continuing resolution also mandated religious school vouchers at taxpayer expense.

Here’s the letter:

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Republican lawmakers and anti–abortion rights group Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life are pushing a ban on abortions at 20 weeks of pregnancy and after conception, citing a medical and scientific “consensus” that fetuses feel pain at 20 weeks. But according to statements and research from leaders in the medical and scientific communities, no such consensus exists. In fact, researchers continue to debate whether fetuses feel pain at 20 weeks or at much later stages.

“This legislation would prohibit abortions on unborn children at the point the unborn child feels pain. The unborn feel pain specifically at 20 weeks after conception,” Andrea Rau of MCCL testified last week. “There is consensus that the unborn child at 20 weeks after conception can feel pain,” said Rau, pointing to the legislative findings portion of the bill.

Those findings contain a list of medical assertions concerning the ability of a fetus to feel pain and can be viewed in the original bill, SF649.

“And these findings have been backed up with abundant written documentation,” she said. “There are a number of facts that are not disputed in the medical community.”

But, in a March 30 letter to legislators, a team of experts in the field of gynecology and reproductive science evaluated the legislative findings promoted by MCCL and demonstrated that there is no medical or scientific consensus on fetal pain at any stage of development and that research continues to be contradictory.

“These findings are inconsistent with published science and thus should not be used to inform potential policy change,” wrote the letter’s authors, Prof. Philip Darney of the Department of Obstetrics Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California – San Francisco and Dr. Mark Rosen, who is the Director of Obstetrical Anesthesia at UCSF. Both are part of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health.

“[S]cientific evidence does not support the elimination of legal abortion at 20 weeks’ gestation based on concerns about the existence of fetal pain,” the letter concluded.

The letter points to two large studies of fetal pain that demonstrate that there is not agreement within the medical community. The first study, conducted in 2005, did an exhaustive review of existing research on fetal pain.

“This review concludes that based on the best available scientific evidence, a human fetus probably does not have the capacity to experience pain until the 29th week of pregnancy at the earliest.”

In 2010, another review undertaken by the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (RCOG) in the United Kingdom showed very similar results.

The letter’s authors found significant problems with the bill’s legislative findings and offered research that countered claims that a fetus at 20 weeks has the physical structures necessary to experience pain, that a fetus at 20 weeks reacts to stimuli, and that abortions at 20 weeks cause pain to a fetus.

But Rau and MCCL contend that those studies are biased.

“There have been a small handful of medical literature reviews that indicate that the unborn child may not be capable of feeling pain until later in the pregnancy, but these appear to contain biases,” said Rau. “Most, including the fetal surgeons who do these surgeries, agree with the consensus that the unborn child is capable of feeling pain by at least 20 weeks post conception.”

Rau is referring to the 2005 study that included an obstetrics researcher who performed abortions as part of her practice. It was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which was headed at the time by a Catholic who opposed abortion. According to the Chicago Tribune at the time:

Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, the journal’s editor-in-chief, said she wasn’t concerned by [Dr. Eleanor Drey]‘s failure to indicate she performed abortions. “That’s part of [an obstetrician's] scope of practice. They don’t have to reveal that.”

A Roman Catholic who opposes abortion, DeAngelis said she has been swamped this week with critical e-mails about the fetal-pain study from “people with no medical background, no science background, religious fanatics, people who are mean-spirited.” She stressed that the report was reviewed by several outside experts and thoroughly examined by her own staff.

“It is a peer-reviewed article,” DeAngelis said. “They are not reporting their own findings. It’s a review article based on what’s in the literature. … The references are there. Anybody who doubts the veracity can go to the original article and say they misinterpreted it.”

By MCCL’s account, its own research is biased. Of the experts the group mentions on its website about fetal pain, most are active within the anti–abortion rights movement.

For instance, Dr. Steve Calvin of the University of Minnesota has been involved with the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The late Dr. Robert J. White testified before Congress that he opposed abortion, and Dr. Paul Ranalli is a well-known anti-abortion activist.

In 2010, when Nebraska became the first state in the country to pass a fetal pain law (Idaho and Kansas have since passed such measures), Discovery News ran a feature on the debate. Stuart Derbyshire, a fetal pain expert at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, said, “Basing laws on this is really unreasonable. Abortion is not a scientific question. It is a moral and political question. To try and make science answer a moral question like that is just wrong. It’s cowardice on the part of lawmakers.”

In Minnesota, only 2 percent of all abortions are performed after 20 weeks of pregnancy, and in many cases those are the result of fetal abnormalities or a threat to the health of the mother. In 2009, fewer than 80 of the 12,300 abortions performed were after 20 weeks and none were later than 23 weeks.

The bill has passed committee in the House and awaits a vote in that body before being sent to Gov. Mark Dayton. In the Senate, the bill has advanced through one committee.

Here’s the letter that was sent to legislators: