New law in Arizona states 'pregnancy begins two weeks before conception
I’m not familiar with examiner.com. Is it a humour site like The Onion?
Two weeks before conception? How… is that… even possible?
Just closing the loophole on all those women who were having pre-emptive abortions.
The “date of last menstrual period” is the way doctors often calculate women’s due dates, since most women don’t know when they conceived.
That certainly does not explain what these guys were apparently thinking when they phrased the statute that way (if they did - I’m not seeing any real news sources running this story) but hell, it’s probably in response to another one of those mysterious biological functions right wing nutjobs think women possess. Time traveling uteri. I guess.
Okay, for a serious answer, this law is intended to restrict abortions. (Show of hands. Who was surprised by this?)
Existing Arizona law only allows abortions in the first twenty weeks of pregnancy. By backdating the start of pregnancies this way, Arizona cuts the window down to eighteen weeks in the real world.
I have a feeling the courts will toss this one two weeks before it was signed.
But wouldn’t [date of last menstrual period] plus 15 days be a more accurate estimate? An egg isn’t released for about 2 weeks after a period commences.
Don’t blame us guys for this one. The bill was introduced by a female legislator and signed into law by a female governor.
Right, but because most women know their menstrual cycle pretty well, doctors for years have used the date of last menstrual period as the starting date of pregnancy, even though it’s biologicially impossible.
I remember when my wife was pregnant the doctor was telling her that even though she was nominally 4 weeks pregnant, it was really only 2 weeks since fertilization. That’s just the way they all do it. So a standard 40 week pregnancy is really only 38 weeks of gestation.
Here’s a typical week-by-week pregancy description, confirming this:
I think that’s how those laws always work anyway. Maybe someone was trying to challenge it to add two weeks to the window of time, but I would imagine that basing it from the first day of the last menstrual period was the intent anyway, since that’s how pregnancies are dated.
No, Arizona appears to be going it alone on this one. Eight states have set a twenty-week limit on abortions and, as far as I can tell, every state up to now has set the twenty week period as starting at the date of conception.
These laws have been challenged and upheld. But the court decisions appear to say that while a twenty week limit is legal, a shorter limit might not be. (Apparently, no state has enacted a limit of less than twenty weeks.) Arizona legislators must have known that changing the laws to enact an eighteen week limit would not only have started a new round of legal challenges but might also have been overturned.
So they reduced the limit by subterfuge instead. They kept the existing twenty-week limit, which has been upheld in court, and just moved the starting date back.
Oh, I guess you’re right. I just figured they’d do it that way because the info about abortion I see always says from last menstrual period, but now I see they do add two weeks to it (they say the abortion pill is available until 9 weeks after LMP instead of the 7 weeks I’d heard, which apparently means after conception).
Anyway, this article says the law also says, “women must first look at a state-established anti-choice website that will provide lists of abortion health risks, adoption information and photos of fetal development.” WTF, I wonder how that works. Does someone peer over your shoulder and make sure you’re really looking, and how long do you have to peruse this website?
New pick up line- “Hey babe, I bet you’re already pregnant!”
Our favorite line here in the Haboob State is “Pregnancy begins at last call.”
It is indeed a more accurate estimation of true fetal age, but the standard (in the US at least) when discussing “weeks pregnant” is to calculate it based on the last menstrual period (LMP). This is because that’s generally easier to pinpoint than actual ovulation dates.
So when a doctor says “20 weeks pregnant”, they mean 20 weeks LMP, and they know that it actually means 18 weeks since conception, give or take.
Standard pregnancy duration is 40 weeks LMP. If a woman has strong reason to believe conception occurred earlier or later than LMP+14, then they’ll adjust the due date (which is really only important for determining whether the child is premature or has been cooking too long and needs to be induced).
Getting back to the OP, I’d have to see how it was phrased in the law, but as wacky as it sounds (and I don’t agree with most of the antiabortion laws out there), the snippet does indeed sound like standard medical practice.
Does that happen two weeks before a legitimate rape also?
And its about another week from conception to implantation. When I was going through fertility treatments, the RE didn’t want to consider me “pregnant” until we were through the implantation window (apparently, we had no problem conceiving, but a lot of problem with implanting - from what they could tell - which wasn’t, honestly, much)
What I think this really does that is scary is set up the ability for state to limit types of birth control that prevent implantation, should Roe be overturned. The pill does. The IUD does. The pill keeps you from releasing an egg, but if you do, creates an unwelcome environment. The IUD doesn’t even stop the conception.
So, here is the Big Sister question: who checks on when her last period was? She might tell whomever that her last period was weeks later than it actually was, do they really expect to be able to gainsay her, and how?
Well, she could lie (or be mistaken) about when conception was too. If there’s any question then they need to date the pregnancy another way, and then just add on two weeks to the answer. It doesn’t mean that the only way they can date a pregnancy is by LMP.