British scientist says US anti-abortion lawyers misused his work to attack Roe v Wade
Source: The Observer
British scientist says US anti-abortion lawyers misused his work to attack Roe v Wade
Giandomenico Iannetti, a pain expert at UCL, angrily denies that his research suggests foetuses can feel pain before 24 weeks
Anna Fazackerley
Sun 8 May 2022 11.30 BST
A University College London scientist has accused lawyers in the US of misusing his groundbreaking work on the brain to justify the dismantling of Roe v Wade, the landmark ruling that legalised abortion nationally in America.
Giandomenico Iannetti said his research, which used imaging to understand the adult brain’s response to pain, had been wrongly interpreted to make an anti-abortion argument.
Last week an unprecedented leak of a draft legal opinion showed a majority of supreme court judges support overturning Roe v Wade and ending federal protections for abortions, in a move that could result in 26 states banning it. The court is considering a case, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organisation, which challenges Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks gestation.
Anti-abortion lawyers in that case argued that scientific understanding has moved on since the court’s 1973 ruling that enshrined the constitutional right to abortion, and it was no longer accurate to say foetuses cannot feel pain before 24 weeks.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/08/british-scientist-says-us-anti-abortion-lawyers-misused-his-work-to-attack-roe-v-wade
= new reply since forum marked as read
