EXCLUSIVE: Planned Parenthood event claims fetuses experiencing pain is a ‘misconception’
Campus Reform snagged a photo of one of the slides of the group’s presentation, in which it alleged that the notion of fetuses experiencing pain is a “misconception.”
The University of Florida’s Planned Parenthood chapter hosted an event called How to “Get an Abortion in Gainesville.”
A Planned Parenthood chapter at the University of Florida argued in a Thursday presentation that the idea that “fetuses experience pain during abortion” is a “misconception.”
Planned Parenthood Generation Action UF made the claim at its second general body meeting, entitled, “How to Get an Abortion in Gainesville,” attended by Campus Reform.
A 2005 study suggests that pain perception may start in the third trimester of pregnancy, or around 29 to 30 weeks into gestation, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that one percent of the 638,169 legally-induced abortions in the U.S. in 2015 were performed in the third trimester, suggesting that more than 6,300 aborted fetuses experienced pain just that year.
Some scientists and activists, though, say that a fetus’s perception of pain starts much earlier.
The pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute cites studies, which claim that pain perception starts around 20 weeks.
[RELATED: Emory University hosts ‘abortion as a moral good’ lecture]
The UF group also included “people are coerced to get abortions” and “abortion causes breast cancer” on its list of “misconceptions.”
The organizers also discuss an amendment, which prohibits federal funds to be used in abortions done on pregnancies that do not arise from rape or incest and do not endanger the life of the mother. The speaker asks attendees if they know which amendment that is.
“Yeaaaah!” the speaker shouts when one audience member correctly answers the Hyde Amendment.
“Well, that’s not an exciting thing,” the speaker clarifies. “That’s a bad thing.”
The audience laughs.
[RELATED: Student proposes not funding abortions with student fees...and faces brutal backlash]
There are two types of abortions: medical and surgical abortion. Medical abortion, also known as the abortion pill, is typically performed during the first two months of pregnancy. UF Planned Parenthood played a program that, at one point, compared medical abortion to a miscarriage, listing the symptoms of bleeding and cramping.
Follow the authors of this article: Rachel Lalgie and Hannah Lalgie
