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

I am not going to get drawn into starting a political debate on that thread. However, since, unlike Della, you didn't make your posting insulting in a way that the new editorial declaration about the house rules considers to require a "yikes" rather than a responce, I feel I should respond to you.

<<Is it just me or are we getting very political here?

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Here in the UK, a woman can have an abortion up to 24 weeks of the pregnancy. But it has actually been shown in studies that unborn foetuses can fel pain from about 20 weeks. Is this not an indication that the uncorn child is a living being?

Read this passage from the website http://www.covenantnews.com/abortion/archives/2005_03.html:

"MADISON -- Physicians would be required to tell a woman considering an abortion that a human fetus of 20 weeks or more gestational age likely experiences pain under a bill introduced Monday. "I don't think the abortion clinics are advising their patients that an unborn child feels pain," said state Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, who introduced Senate Bill 138. Advocates of abortion rights, however, say Grothman's bill is politically motivated, lacks scientific merit and is intended to scare women.">>


If we define life as = feeling pain and anti-life = supporting destroying something that feels pain, than both you and Della are anti-life unless you're vegetarians. Certainly, most people who claim that abortion is anti-life are not vegetarians, so to use that arguement, you have to alienate most people who would agree with you even if you are vegetarian.

What this is really about is the belief that a foetus, becuase it has human DNA and has the potential to become an adult human eventually, is somehow different from and more deserving of protection than other life. To be against all abortion or abortion after 20 weeks on the grounds that the foetus has enough of a nervous system to feel pain makes no sense for the majority of antiabortion activists who aren't vegetarians. The only way to claim that a 20-week old foetus deserves more protection than an adult cow or pig that we have no objection to slaughtering for food is to claim that it is special because it "human life" as defined by one of the following traits: (a) has human DNA, (b) could become an adult human, or (c) has a human soul. It is pretty clear that most people who use the phrase "anti-life" must really mean "anti-human life", since the vast majority of them aren't vegetarians. I wrote my responce assuming Della meant that modified definition. In which case, it is perfectly reasonable to say that some people, myself included, don't consider a 20-week old foetus to be "human life" because we don't feel any of those three characteristics is sufficient to make it deserve the special rights that our society accords to humans but not other animals.

(a) I disagree with, since it would make being alive equivalent to murder, since many biological processes involve the death of body cells. Also, it would make bleeding and other similar things equivalent to murder, too.

(b) I disagree with, because it could be interpereted as making it murder for a man to not have sex every three days or a woman every menstrual cycle, since in not doing so, they would be wasting sperm and eggs that could become adult humans. Besides, I don't see why it follows that because something could become an adult human, it must be allowed to do so.

(c) I disagree with, because I don't believe that humans have souls.

So I do not believe that an abortion at 20 weeks is "anti-human life" because I disagree with the anti-abortion movement's definition of "human life", and it is pretty clear that Della and you probably mean "anti-human life" when you say "anti-life" and that, even if you don't, the vast majority of those who use that phrase do mean "anti-human life".

It certainly seems that you've thought a lot about this subject. I'm sure you'd agree that abortion is a difficult topic, whatever way you look at it.

I am curious. You refered to animal rights and vegetarians a few times there. So would you hold all life, whether human or animal, on the same level? Or is it just human foetus and animal you hold to be the same?

Personally, I disagree with animal cruelty. I think we all have a responsibility to look after the world we live in and we should take measures to prevent species going extinct. I also respect organisations like the RSPCA that take in animals that have been mistreated and find them new homes.

However, I'm not sure if I would place the live of an animal before the live of a person. There are stories every year of people who drown trying to rescue a family pet from a river, while the pet will usually survive.

When it comes to abortion, do you really have to be a vegetarian to disagree with abortion? When I mentioned the foetal nervous system and the pain felt at 20 weeks, I was simply trying to provide information. I believe any woman considering an abortion should be given all the information she needs and whatever support is necessary to help her make the right decision.

In your point b, do you think that sperm and eggs are the same as an unborn child? If you follow that point through that every man and woman should attempt to procreate at every opportunity, then that should start as soon as they enter puberty so as not to waste "sperm and eggs that could become adult humans". I'm sure you would not encourage 11 or 12 year olds to start families.

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I would make the distinction between concious and non-concious rather than between human and animal. Whether any animals should be considered concious is an interesting question that I don't think a certain answer exists for yet. Personally, I give cetaceans and primates the benefit of the doubt, but a case could probably be made that other animals are concious or that many or all cetaceans and non-human primates are non-concious. With humans the problem is difficult for a different reason--judging that a concious human should be considered non-concious would be a horrible mistake that must be avoided. Since I don't think a foetus, at least a foetus in the first trimester can possibly be concious, I would consider it non-concious the same as I would consider an adult cow. Exactly when a foetus becomes concious or under what conditions an adult ceases to be concious is hard to determine; it is probably best to overestimate the range of conditions that qualify as conciousness. For this reason, I would prefer to place the point of beginning conciousness sometime before birth, perhaps in the third trimester (my knowledge of embriology isn't good enough to come up with a good firm break point). As for under what conditions an adult ceases to be concious--I would say cesation of brain function, or at least of forebrain function, probably would be a good standard. All of these borderlines are highly argueable--I don't think we have a good enough understanding of conciousness to be too certain. I would tend to argue that a mother's life outweighs the foetus's since we know the mother is concious and whether the foetus is concious may be a matter of uncertainty. However, I have no objection to elective abortion during the time that it is fairly obvious the foetus's nervous system isn't developed enough for it to be concious.


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I would agree with that. But I don't think that necesarily means that non-concious animals (see definition in previous paragraph) cannot be killed--merely that causing extinction is wrong and that causing them to suffer reasonably avoidable pain is wrong. The chicken I ate for dinner last night almost certainly felt some pain when it was slaughtered--I think that is acceptable as long as an effort was made to ensure it suffered no more pain than necesary to serve the purpose of raising and killing it. So meat animals should be given reasonable living conditions and killed with as little pain as possible--but I don't object to raising them and killing them for food, so long as such efforts are made and they are animals I would consider non-concious (see above).

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It seems to me that it's her responsibility to find out the information she feels she needs to make an informed descisision. If she is worried about causing pain, she can look up the information herself--and will learn that scientists do not all agree that a 20-week foetus can feel pain. On the other hand, making her docter tell her scientificly questionable information creates a situation where you can certainly imagine her feeling pressured to change her mind, since it amounts to the doctor questioning the ethics of her descision. I she wishes to ask her doctor if the foetus can feel pain, he or she should tell her his or her medical opinion on the matter--anything else would be a violation of medical ethics--but to require such a statement creates pressure to change her mind and also is unwise when scientists don't agree on it and a doctor may reasonably be of the professional opinion that the 20-week foetus can't feel pain.

Giving someone all the support and information they feel they need is not the same as giving them certain state-mandated information intended to lead to a specific conclusion. Note that the law doesn't require doctors to tell a woman that a 10-week foetus can't feel pain.




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That was the point I was making. I don't think that "the potential to become concious" or "the potential to be an adult human" has any rights as such. Which is why I disagreed with that one of the three reasons I could think of for being against all abortion. While a foetus that has reached a certain level of development deserves consideration as a non-concious animal and I think it is probably wise to assume that a foetus is concious by some point in the third trimester and can derive rights from these states, I don't think the potential to be concious at some later time grants something any rights, whether it be sperm and eggs or a five-day old embriyo or a third trimester foetus.

It is a difficult question of when a foetus becomes "conscious" or self-aware or anything along those lines. I've already mentioned the pain thing. I also understand that, in situations where keyhole surgery has been performed, the foetus has been seen to turn away from the light source. It is also believed that the unborn child responds to spicy food eaten by the mother and certain sounds heard from outside the womb.

While these are not definative proofs for life and consiousness like that we know as adults, it shows that unborn children have experiences and reactions that we may have - reactions to pain, light, sound, food etc.

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I would find that there may be a case for abortion where the mother's life may be at risk if the pregnancy continues, but all possibilities must be seriously considered before action is taken. It may be that the pregnancy could go full term and the baby born without problem.

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I also agree with you there. Humans and animals, whether or not they are considered consious, are not the same. We shoulkdn't be cruel, but it's ok to have chicken or whatever for dinner if you want.

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So if a woman is in a distressed state regarding such a decision, you think it ok to male her go and look up information herself? Surely the doctor should provide information. With the pain thing, if there is a disagreement within medical research, the doctor shouldn't say definately either way. He or she should say something about how *some* believe the foetus feels pain or whatever. I don't know what doctors say and what leaflets or whatever are given out. But if they give some form of detailed literature on the subject, and it is then the woman's responsibility to read it and takl it over befiore making her decision.

<< While these are not definative proofs for life and consiousness like that we know as adults, it shows that unborn children have experiences and reactions that we may have - reactions to pain, light, sound, food etc.>>

On the other hand, they're also experiances that most animals have, so it seems to me that they aren't really evidence that can be used to distinguish conciousness from non-conciousness.

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Which I would maintain is only an important concern once the foetus has developed enough that it is probable that it is concious--before then, I wouldn't consider that to be a particularly important concern, since I would rate a non-concious foetus's life no higher than that of a cow, for example, in which case it would be seen as reasonable to kill it on an outside chance it might kill someone.


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Certainly the doctor ought to answer her questions. Which isn't the same as saying that the doctor should be mandated by law to either (a) answer questions she didn't ask unless, in the doctor's opinion, the information is relevant to her health (although leaflets with general information are probably a very good idea) or (b) give specific statements that may or may not be true in the doctor's medical opinion. It's not the legislature's job to decide what is the state of medical knowledge and the legislature shouldn't be declaring that "blank is true, doctors therefor must tell their patients blank in certain cases, even if in their medical opinion, blank is not true". And mandating one specific statement, rather than simply requiring that the doctors present the woman with information on the subject in general, creates a situation where the state/the doctor seems to be pressuring for one outcome by insisting on the importance of one legally required statement.

Is it just me or are we going round in circles? We're really not going to pursuade each other of anything here are we?

Abortion is such a complex subject. Would it be better if we changed the topic? I just don't think we're getting anywhere here.

I don't think we're getting anywhere, nor do I expect us to get anywhere if we continue on this topic.

Agreed.

So is there another topic you would like to dicuss?