Thread by @GChristiemd

1: Justice Sotomayor's assertions in today's oral argument in the landmark abortion case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health about fetal pain were wholly ignorant of the tremendous scientific advances in fetal medicine. #DobbsvJackson

2: As recently as last year, doctors in the Journal of Medical Ethics wrote, "Current neuroscientific evidence supports the possibility of fetal pain before the 'consensus' cutoff of 24 weeks" and may be as early as 12 weeks.

3: Not only does medicine agree that fetal anesthesia be administered for fetal surgery, a clear reflection of the medical consensus that unborn babies can feel pain, but like viability, the line marking when they feel pain continues to inch earlier.

4: And contrary to the arguments of Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, incredible advances in science and fetal medicine have rendered viability a totally incoherent legal standard. Just last week, the world heard news that a baby born at 21 weeks and survived set a new record

According to The New York Times, the baby, now 16 months old, ‘defies long odds and astonishes doctors.’ As a practicing diagnostic radiologist, I can attest that advances in ultrasound technology continue to astonish the medical community as to the humanity of the unborn child,

6: a truth and medical reality that we can now see clearly in the earliest weeks of life. 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

7: pumps 26 quarts of blood a day, and her lungs are already practicing drawing breath. This case is before the Supreme Court today in large part because Americans have seen the evolving science and increasingly want a voice in a question of great moral consequence.