unborn babys can feel pain

[entwined]

According to this article, unborn babys can feel pain.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4875196.stm

 

Does this change anyone's attitude about abortion?

[ecoli]

nope... animals can feel pain too, but I don't cry about when one of them dies.

[Tetrahedrite]

No, it doesn't.

[silkworm]

Abortion is gruesome and I don't like it, but it does society good. Less unwanted children, less problems now and down the road. It's unfortunate for the child, and really we should all be more thoughtful about who we're having sex with. Not for moral reasons, screw that, but simply for health and safety.

 

Two points. 1 - If you're next to a bomb that blows you to pieces you're not going to have time to feel much. 2 - Who cares, I'm in pain everyday. I figured they could feel pain because they have a spinal chord. Isn't that about the only prerequisite? Whether or not something you're destroying feels pain is about as moot as it gets. That's like winning the lottery and getting all the bills but none of the change and raising a big stink about it.

 

I'd rather be tortured every moment of every day for the rest of my life than to die instantly right now. There is no fate worse than death, no matter what the poets tell you.

[pink_trike]

what's interesting is that we needed science to tell us that unborn babies feel pain.

 

But then, it wasn't that long ago (in my lifetime) that surgery was performed on infants under the age of 1 year with no anesthesia because the prevailing medical belief at the time was that they didn't feel pain. They were believed to only be capable of reflexive responses. Of course, any mother knew better...

[padren]

According to this article' date=' unborn babys can feel pain.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4875196.stm

 

Does this change anyone's attitude about abortion?[/quote']

 

 

That is a rather gross simplification. Its like me quoting that a cell cluster resulting from fertilization two minutes before is an "unborn baby" and since it has no nervous system, "unborn babies" cannot feel.

 

The earliest tests they are doing are at 25 weeks - about 5 to 6 months into the pregnancy.

 

Does this study change your attitude towards favoring abortion before the 5 month point? If "do they feel pain" is the main issue for you, then I think its safe to say that that outlook enhances support for early-term abortion procedures.

[bascule]

There's an enormous difference between having the phenomenological experience of pain and a neural network registering information.

 

The latter is no different from the self-diagnostic systems of modern cars registering a component failure. When this happens, would anyone say the car is feeling pain?

[Jim]

According to this article' date=' unborn babys can feel pain.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4875196.stm

 

Does this change anyone's attitude about abortion?[/quote']

 

It doesn't change my position; however, the more the unborn share that complex bundle of sensations, attributes, feelings, thoughts, etc that make up "human life" the more I'm inclined to protect them.

[Skye]

It's something I already thought was likely given there was evidence going that way, so it doesn't change preconceptions anyway. I don't think abortion is a good thing in any way, unfortunately it's sometimes the best thing.

[Pangloss]

This doesn't sound like a political discussion to me.... I may move it.

[AzurePhoenix]

Does this change anyone's attitude about abortion?

It just strengthens my resolve that if an abortion needs to be performed (for reasons better than simply "oh crap I'm pregnant"), it has to be done early, with the necessary and unfortunate exception of extreme circumstances that might require an abortion later on.

[Severian]

It just strengthens my resolve that if an abortion needs to be performed (for reasons better than simply "oh crap I'm pregnant"[/i']), it has to be done early, with the necessary and unfortunate exception of extreme circumstances that might require an abortion later on.

 

I agree with that. There is of course the question, what is early? I personally think it should be before 8 weeks (or maybe even sooner).

 

It seems to me that this is another case of 'scientists' proving something which was entirely obvious. At 5 months in, the baby is pretty much all there. Why on Earth would anyone think that they didn't feel pain?

[Glider]

what's interesting is that we needed science to tell us that unborn babies feel pain.

It still hasn't. The article talks about neurological activity. That is not pain.

[entwined]

This doesn't sound like a political discussion to me.... I may move it.

 

I really didn't know where to post this, so since abortion is, to some extent, a political issue here in the US, I put it in politics.

 

The reason I posed the question was, that I have seen the position of the unborn not being able to feel pain, raised as one of the justifications for abortion in past discussions of the ethical aspects of the abortion issue.

[Pangloss]

It's no prob. I can think of a couple other places it might be a better fit, but in pondering it further I don't really see a problem with just leaving it where it is.

[Glider]

The reason I posed the question was, that I have seen the position of the unborn not[/b'] being able to feel pain, raised as one of the justifications for abortion in past discussions of the ethical aspects of the abortion issue.

It is a weak argument. Whilst it may be that the ability of a thing to feel pain may be an argument for not killing it, that a thing does not feel pain is not a justification for killing it.

[Sisyphus]

When it comes to this issue, its very rare one finds an argument not based on irrational and inflammatory appeals to emotion.

[-Demosthenes-]

I'd rather be tortured every moment of every day for the rest of my life than to die instantly right now. There is no fate worse than death, no matter what the poets tell you.

 

You, my friend, have not read Hyperion (Dan Simmons', not Keats').

[In My Memory]

Entwined,

According to this article' date=' unborn babys can feel pain.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4875196.stm

 

Does this change anyone's attitude about abortion?[/quote']

The article indicated that they feel pain at around 25 weeks, which just after the cutoff point where abortions are legal in the US. Unless there are people who think abortions should be legal all the way through the ninth month, I dont think it'll really change anyones attitudes toward abortion.

 

Maybe some people will make a compromise and say that some kind of fetal anesthetic should be used before having an abortion.

[jeskill]

Not to be nitpicky or anything, but the article says that "premature babies" can feel pain, not "unborn babies". Given that certain reflexes and functions (such as breathing) do not occur until after birth, I don't think you could say that because a premie feels pain, an unborn baby inside the womb will feel pain. I mean, it's completely possible that they do at that stage, but the article doesn't specifically state this.

[Glider]

I'd rather be tortured every moment of every day for the rest of my life than to die instantly right now. There is no fate worse than death, no matter what the poets tell you.

There are plenty. You just haven't come across any yet.

 

Not to be nitpicky or anything, but the article says that "premature babies" can feel pain, not "unborn babies". Given that certain reflexes and functions (such as breathing) do not occur until after birth, I don't think you could say that because a premie feels pain, an unborn baby inside the womb will feel pain. I mean, it's completely possible that they do at that stage, but the article doesn't specifically state this.

The article also seems to base its argument on cortical activity, but there is no 'pain centre' in the brain. These areas are just as likely to light up with any tactile stimulation.

 

The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) definition of pain includes the statement that: "Activity in nociceptive fibres or pathways is not pain".

[bascule]

It seems to me that this is another case of 'scientists' proving something which was entirely obvious. At 5 months in, the baby is pretty much all there. Why on Earth would anyone think that they didn't feel pain?

 

Perhaps because they aren't conscious

 

When a baby was born, breathing oxygen caused a critical chemical messenger, adenosine, to be cleared from the bloodstream in seconds, allowing it to start experiencing consciousness.

[Severian]

Perhaps because they aren't conscious

 

How do you even define pain? Is pain the triggering of pain receptors in the body, is it only pain when the signals from these receptors get to the brain, or does there need to be some reaction to the stimulus before it is called pain?

[bascule]

How do you even define pain? Is pain the triggering of pain receptors in the body, is it only pain when the signals from these receptors get to the brain, or does there need to be some reaction to the stimulus before it is called pain?

 

Pain is the phenomenological experience of suffering, and therefore is meaningless without a conscious perceiver. An individual's nervous system may register pain when they are incapacitated by general anesthesia, but since they are not conscious there is no suffering. Babies are no different.

[husmusen]

In response to bascule

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2005/s1307515.htm

 

DAVID MELLOR: The foetus is asleep all the time before birth, and not only that it is asleep all the time, that there are chemicals in the foetus that are produced by the placenta and in fact its own brain, that actively keep it asleep.

 

This means that the idea of consciousness before birth is ruled out because sleep is a form of unconsciousness. But it doesn't mean that input from sense organs like the ears or the eyes, taste, touch smell, things like that, are having no effect on the brain.

 

Correction:

Being asleep is a form of altered consciousness, not unconsciousness(as in insensate). There is a world of differance between someone who is asleep and someone with a GCS of 3.

 

Husmusen.