Doctors and scientists corrected U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor this week after she compared unborn babies to brain dead people and claimed they cannot feel pain until at least 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, a radiology specialist and senior fellow with The Catholic Association, said the justice’s statements were “wholly ignorant” of basic scientific knowledge.
“To compare an unborn child to a brain-dead person or a corpse flouts science, which tells us that at 15 weeks gestation, a baby’s organs are fully formed, her heart pumps 26 quarts of blood a day, and her lungs are already practicing drawing breath,” Christie responded in a statement.
On Wednesday, Sotomayor dismissed arguments that unborn babies should be protected from abortion, at the very least, by 15 weeks of pregnancy when they are capable of feeling pain.
Those arguments came from Mississippi attorney Scott Grant Stewart as he asked the high court to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to protect unborn babies from abortion again. During questioning, he told Sotomayor that unborn babies at early stages of pregnancy can be seen recoiling when being poked or touched.
Sotomayor responded by claiming only a “gross minority of doctors” believe fetal pain exists before 24 weeks of pregnancy. Before this point, she asserted that unborn babies are like brain dead people who lack the consciousness to feel pain.
