Arizona Republican lawmakers want doctors who perform elective or emergency abortions to revive any fetus that shows a sign of life.
Supporters said the bill is designed to protect the fetus with full human rights if there is a chance medical intervention can save its life.
Making an emotional appeal to lawmakers, Cathi Herrod, with the Center for Arizona Policy, relayed a story of a live birth where the baby girl was reportedly left for more than an hour to die on a cold steel medical table.
Neonatologist Peter Stephenson said the problem with SB 1367 is it is not limited to abortions as Herrod implied, but also impacts mothers who miscarry or need emergency medical intervention before their baby reaches 22 weeks.
At that stage or earlier, he said, the chance of survival, under optimal conditions, falls to 11 percent. That would include delivery at a Level 3 trauma center. And, in a third of those deliveries, he said, the child suffers severe complications.
Hugh Miller, another doctor specializing in high-risk pregnancies, told lawmakers that other than comfort care, trying to save babies born before they are viable is futile.
"What we can do,” he continued to further his point, “We can tragically instrument those kids and deprive those families of the last few moments of meaningful contact and nurturing with the very loved one that we want them to spend those last moments with."
He reminded House Judiciary Committee members on Wednesday that life should not be confused with what can be sustained and nurtured and what cannot be.
Sen. Steve Smith, R-Maricopa, said both state and federal law already require doctors to provide care to live-born babies, whether due to abortion, elective or induced, as well as other premature delivery. His measure would require state health officials to come up with rules of exactly what they must do to keep any baby born after 20 weeks of gestation alive.
The bill already passed the full senate last month. It now heads to the full House for a vote.
