h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This post has been removed.

I have met severely intellectually disabled people who are clearly 'sentient' as well, not just just physically disabled ones. In the case of Mark, the guy I met before, it is interesting to note that before computer technology enabled him to communicate, only his parents believed that he was thinking, and would benefit from education! That's one reason why I am wary of making assumptions based on what people can or do say to us, because Mark spent 20 years unable to talk. People outside his family assumed that meant "lights on, nobody home, how sad never mind."
Last year I worked with a 4 year old severely developmentally delayed boy. He didn't talk (AFAIK still doesn't, and to complicate matters, his parents are from one of the Pacific Islands and don't have very good English.) But David clearly had a lot going on in his little shaven head - as he was able to demonstrate, by the way he went about problem solving - for instance, trying to open a forbidden door at the kindergarten...
If he had had physical disabilities as well, people may well have assumed he had nothing going on in his head.
As for the unborn, I haven't any ideas. But remember that psychologists taught in the 1950s, that animals didn't really feel pain - it was all just a reflex... (I've heard the same said about foetuses.)
A good Dr Who story touching on this, is 'The Three Doctors' by Robert Holmes, it's quite creepy as an alien attempts to kill Jamie and Zoe for 'the table' and says the same thing about their cries of pain..

I'm in agreement with you Della, about not being able to judge 'sentience' of people with disabilities by looking at them or comparing them to a nondisabled norm. It makes sense that the parents of the person you know would get the truth about their son.

I read a novel in my 20s called The Skallagrig, which totally opened my eyes to this - not just that many people considered not mentally normal in fact are, but also how incredibly invisible this is to most nondisabled. The main character in the book has cerebal palsy, and I had grown up going thinking that people with CP were mentally disabled (I now assume some are and some aren't), so it was awesome to read this story of this intelligent creative woman with CP.

I highly recommend the book to anyone wanting to understand more about this. The movie of the book is not so good from what I remember. William Horwood is the author.


As for the sentience of foetuses, I think it is possibly a mistake for prochoice to argue on this basis. Science is not an absolute, it is only a best understanding that we have at the time. What happpens if science discovers that foetuses have some kind of consciousness at 3 days? (not that it's likely given that science has very little idea of what consciousness is anyway).

I'm also not in favour of the nerve/pain argument. Women having cervical biopses get told that they can't feel any pain because there are no nerve endings in the cervix. But they do feel pain. There is still _so_ much that we don't know about the human body.

I've also often heard the argument from fishermen that fish can't feel pain because they have no nervous system (I don't know if they don't). But can they still suffer? Certainly they _appear_ to be suffering when flopping on the ground gasping for water.

Maybe there is more to suffering than just the nervous system?

In terms of the soul, which has been mentioned a couple of times, there are cultures who believe that the soul comes into the baby's body at birth.

I found an interesting little bit that Peter Singer has written about the issue of when a foetus becomes a human being:

http://www.petersingerlinks.com/abortion.htm

Did anyone see whose posting was hidden?

While some might conclude that terminating a pregnancy leads to people de-valuing the life of a living child, handicapped or otherwise, I find it hard to see the connection between considering a foetus is a 'potential human' and killing live children.

Nyssa questioned awhile ago why it was morally okay to terminate a late-term foetus and not leave a colicky two-month old baby outside to die. Well, I would disagree that terminating the life of a late-term foetus was 'morally okay' but sometimes it is necessary to save the life of the mother. The percentage of D&X procedures performed is very small and they do sound terrible, but is it really any more terrible than the child perhaps dying in the birth canal during natural birth and also ending the life of the mother? I still don't understand why in these cases the foetus cannot be given an anaesthetic first.

The thing is, to totally ban this procedure is guaranteeing the death of some women. I can't see any woman choosing this procedure (or being allowed to) unless it was a last choice life&death situation. It seems very unlikely any woman would wait until she was six or seven months pregnant and then change her mind about wanting the baby to the extent that she would be willing to undergo such a procedure. So, in this sense, it's almost unfair to include D&X procedures in a discussion about legal terminations within the first trimestre (or vice versa). Although in both cases a foetus is involved I think they are two entirely different procedures undertaken for totally different reasons.

az

I think the post used an offensive term to refer to disabled people - perhaps that's why it was yikesed.

Yeah, I saw it. Didn't yikes it though - I think that sort of offensive, thoughtless ignorance damages the poster more than the subjects of the comment.

psst - who was it?

az

Read the Stringer thing and what he says makes sense in a philosophical way. It sorts out a lot of ideas, but it is only a tool for defining purpose and thought, logic is not everything when it comes to deciding laws.

It may well be inconsistent to say that we codify treatment of humans once born (even the treatment of animals)and yet pre birth we should leave it in the hands of women advised by their doctors acting within a legal framework, but I really think that this is the fairest option. As Doctors know more about this than most of us and that I cant think of any one better than the person with the foetus inside them to make the final choice.

one love

I was surprised at the removal, it's common slang for someone (or in that case, unborn foetuses) with severe physical or mental retardation or damage.

Yes it's common slang - but that doesn't mean it's not offensive.

Even so, censoring an entire post because it contained a word that some oversensitive people might get all annoyed at is rather silly.

Thanks for the link about Peter Singer.
I love Skallagrig, I recommended it to Tom (Mark's father). I didn't know it had been made into a movie.
I agree with you about the sentience of foetuses - we cannot possibly know. None of us remember our foetal life, and few of us remember much before we were 5. (My earliest memories come from when I was 3, three and a half, I can work it out from the places and people they are about. I did meet someone once who claimed to remember being a few months old, and I can't say he was wrong...
As far as the entry of the soul goes, I have heard of everything from cultures that believe that the soul is created with the body (bizarre) to that it enters *after* birth, having hung around waiting to see how things go! (Everything else in between as well).

If the poster rewrites their post without the offensive term in it, the mods will reinstate the post.


Z, I tried to find an online description of the medical proceedure of a D and X abortion last night. I avoided the anti-abortion sites, and apart from a few brief references to third trimester abortions there wasn't alot. Maybe I haven't got the right terms?

I also tried the RCOG and an American O and G site, but no luck.

Do you know of any sites, or other search terms I could use?

I tried variations of abortion, termination, D and X, third trimester.


I am wanting to find a reference to the foetus being anaesthetised in D and X abortions. I am pretty sure that they are, and someone was asking a page or so ago.

I believe its known as an intact dilatation and extraction

Here's a link to the BMJ article where it's described in a little more detail.


http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/326/7390/619/a?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&titleabstract=%2522partial+birth+abortion%2522&searchid=1049365577868_4362&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=1,2,3,4,10

I think we *can* be pretty confident that when, for example, the developing brain is a gram or two in weight, or when it's essentially reptilian in organisation, the presence of human-style sentience is next to impossible, since the structures aren't there.

Assuming we don't follow superstitions about sentience being there before a brain capable of sustaining sentience actually exists, there clearly is some window of time after conception when sentience (*however* loosely or tightly defined) can be safely taken to be absent.

There can be a valid debate about how to properly define sentience, and how to establish safe timings before which a particular definition of it is obviously absent, but doesn't seem to me to be any point including people who believe in sentient 8-cell embryos in such a debate.

<< but doesn't seem to me to be any point including people who believe in sentient 8-cell embryos in such a debate.>>
Which people would those be?

I don't know as that I have anything else worthwile to contribute to discussion about termination of pregnancy, for any reason. I think I've said quite a bit, and am grateful to everyone here for being kind and respectful, in spite of or because of their personal beliefs and experiences. I don't like to be one of those people who will carry on in circles, reiterating the same things over and over. Nor would I want to change anyone's individual mind on the issue, it's much too personal. Which is why I want the government to stop trying to legislate it- it *is* a personal matter and should be left as such. Especially when it's medically necessary- how unfair and cruel to stigmatize someone who might already be struggling with their own feelings.

Interesting, though, to read what other people think about sentience and souls, etc. Everything that all of you have posted about that has been very insightful for me, thank you!

I shall share my own beliefs, just to present another angle from which to view things. I was raised in a strict fundamentalist faith, and much of what I "believed" for many years came from what I was taught there. I was, actually, adamantly pro-life until my first pregancy, when I chose to terminate (at around 5 weeks or so, very early on and as soon as possible, not meaning to make it sound like I was *anxious*, just that I felt a certain way about at what point a fetus becomes an actual human life). My faith, and my beliefs about life, have changed.

I have no actual religious affiliation, but I am a pantheist, and am studying the Budhist philosophy. I believe that *all* life is sacred, that all sentient beings have the same inherent worth. I go a step even further, in revering *all* life.

When it comes to "souls"... well, earlier on I read some speculation as to whether or not animals have souls. I believe they do. But, I believe that all individual souls are part of the divine, part of one great cosmic "organism". When someone I love dies, when I hear on the news of death, when a child dies, I believe that their soul goes back into the collective "soul", and returns to inhabit another living being. So, the potential life that was a fetus, if not allowed to develop fully due to miscarriage or termination, does not cease to exist. It just waits to be born at a later time. Perhaps that has helped me to come to terms with the decisions I've had to make, and the people I've lost, my belief that while the physical life may have ended, or been preventing from beginning, but the soul lives on and always will.

How this relates to abortion is, I tend to agree with those who think that human (or animal) life, sentience, and ensoulment do not occur at conception, but much nearer to birth, when brain activity begins and said life could viably exist outside the womb.

Sorry for rambling again.

Due to the circular and unresolving nature of this forum I shall be unsubscribing. This is not meant as any disrespect to the participants, just that I feel I have nothing further to offer.

Hope, love and purpose to you all,
Matholwch /|\.

>> << but doesn't seem to me to be any point including people who believe in sentient 8-cell embryos in such a debate.>>
>>Which people would those be?

It isn't my problem who they are.

All I am saying is *if* there are people with a non-biological belief in an immaterial soul present from day one (or from any other arbitrary time), there isn't anything they can add to a biological debate over what stage a foetus can feel pain, stress, fear, etc. Such a debate is clearly only a small part of the whole termination issue, but probably a necessary one if terminations are to be legally allowed.
The main practical value of an onset-of-sentience debate is once it has been decided that terminations should be allowed up to some stage of development. If someone believes that terminations are wrong, period, at any stage, they can't really add much to a debate about which date is better, since for them any date is too late.

<< but doesn't seem to me to be any point including people who believe in sentient 8-cell embryos in such a debate.>>

<>

Um, this guy for starters:

http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/04/1675938.php


az