I'm not sure how much weight to give an argument that something shouldn't be killed because it can feel pain. After all, no one denies that cows feel pain and I have no problem eating them.
But a judge in New York has decided to allow expert testimony by a pediatrician who says a fetus can feel pain during an abortion. The National Abortion Federation and the ACLU are challenging the recent partial-birth abortion ban Congress passed last year, and the government lawyers defending the law think the testimony is relevant.
A pediatrician who says a fetus can feel pain during an abortion will be allowed to testify in a legal challenge to a new law banning a type of late-term abortion, a judge has ruled. ...The judge rejected arguments from the National Abortion Federation (news - web sites) that the testimony would be irrelevant and unreliable. ...
The judge said the doctor's testimony will help him assess Congress' findings that the procedure is "brutal and inhumane" and that "the child will fully experience the pain associated with piercing his or her skull and sucking out his or her brain."
I think I agree with the NAF, but the Congressional findings confuse the issue. The real question isn't whether or not the baby can feel pain, but whether or not the baby is a human being with a right to life. If not, then it doesn't matter whether there's pain involved -- we hurt non-human things all the time when it suits our purposes, and most people don't have a problem with that. If the baby is a person then it still doesn't matter because you can't kill people, painlessly or not.
What confuses the issue is Congress' use of the word "inhumane". Treating non-humans in an "inhumane" matter is inconsequential, by definition. So is Congress implying that unborn babies (at least at this stage of life) are human? Apparently so. That seems far more significant than the question of whether or not the baby feels pain.
I think you're missing the point here. For one thing, some of us who are on the fence may not have our minds made up as to the point where a fetus stops being an amorphous bundle of cells and starts being a baby that just hasn't been kicked out of the womb yet. For another, even those who consider fetuses nonhuman/subhuman/etc. might have a problem with elective procedures that tend to inflict pain on it needlessly. We don't allow cruelty to animals, so why allow cruelty to "pre-humans," either?
True enough. I think Mike is right on the real issue, but showing that the unborn do feel pain is a good fact to give the undecided.
Especially when you consider...that if someone found a pile of unborn puppies that had been ripped from a dogs womb in the trash these days, all sorts of hell would be raised.
But if its human fetuses, outside a hospital...
Xrlq: I understand what you're saying, but I'm not sure it's rational for a non-vegan (or whatever) to be swayed by the possibility that unborn babies feel pain. People don't have to be rational, I suppose, but judges shouldn't allow irrelevant information.
Would the assumed fact that basing a verdict on X would be irrational require a judge to not allow X as testimony? I don't think that anything that might sway a jury is admissable. But IANAL.
I'm not sure I understand the reference to veganism. In any event, the standard for minimal relevance is that the evidence have the potential to make a disputed fact, material to the trial, to be either more or less likely to be found to be true. For those who hold an extreme pro-abortion or an extreme anti-abortion position, pain will be irrelevant as there is no "human life" issue to prove; depending on which side you ask, we're all either supposed to "know" in advance that the fetus is a human being, or we're supposed to "know" that it's not. But for those of us who don't share either dogma, there are two very important issues to be determined: (1) is a fetus a person after X weeks of development? and (2) if not, is it nonetheless close enough to be worthy of some lesser degree of protection, as opposed to none at all? If those issues are in play in court - as they certainly are in the court of public opinion - then the question of whether or not a fetus at any given stage of development can feel pain would seem highly relevant to both. The only potential objection I can think of would be if the evidence were more prejudicial than probative (e.g., reflexes will turn a jury's stomachs and make it look as though a fetus is suffering terribly, even at an early stage where the best science available indicates that the baby's brain has not developed enough to experience anything at all).
Xrlq: I see, so you think the pain reflex will help establish whether or not the unborn baby is a human. I guess that makes more sense, but there are humans who can't feel, and non-humans that can. Eh.
That's the key: help establish, not establish per se. Setting aside the ethical concerns about torturing non-humans, the simple fact that some non-humans feel pain while some humans don't is not a problem. To establish minimal relevance for evidentiary purposes, it's enough to show that, all other things being equal, something which feels pain is more likely to be human than that which does not. How much weight to afford that piece of vaguely relevant data is up to the jury.
IT CAN FEEL PAIN YOU ASSHOLES
Elouquent, Rachel.
Yes, I believe that fetuses can feel pain, but that part of their brain only awakens part way through the second trimester, if I remember correctly.
Besides, late-term abortions are a threat to the mother's health. I thought that most abortion clinics wouldn't preform them. Hmm. I must check up on that.
"The real question isn't whether or not the baby can feel pain, but whether or not the baby is a human being with a right to life."
Technically, the fetus isn't a baby yet.
I don't believe that the fetus is a human being with the right to life. A fetus is much like a parasite. If the host is willing to carry the parasite, then so be it. If the host has no wish to have the parasite remain in their body, they are able to get rid of it.
I agree with Winston on the fact that fetus' feel pain because I'm doing a medical study on it. They send out electical inpulses to the brain that easily porves it. BUT, and that's a HUGE but, I disagree with the comment on fetuses not being human. THEY ARE!!!! As early as 19 DAYS after conception the brain divisions are defined and the brain is functioning as a pain receptor as early as the fifth week after conception. So how can one say that a fetus can't be human baby if its brain funtions as well as a born child's can? And what's next? Are we going to start killing born children?