Dangerous "research"

Report Finds Fetuses Feel Pain Later Than Thought - New York Times

The doctors who wrote this report deserve some stick, I think.

I would have thought that the obvious way to look at it is whether a premature baby under 29 weeks, of which there is plentiful experience, appears to experience pain. Like by crying. And a doctor sceptical of this research agrees (to quote from the above New York Times article):

"Not all physicians agree. Dr. K.S. Anand, a pediatrician at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, said: "There is circumstantial evidence to suggest that pain occurs in the fetus."

For example, he said, tiny premature babies, as young as 23 or 24 weeks, cry when their heels are stuck for blood tests and quickly become conditioned to cry whenever anyone comes near their feet."In the first trimester there is very likely no pain perception," Dr. Anand said. "By the second trimester, all bets are off and I would argue that in the absence of absolute proof we should give the fetus the benefit of the doubt if we are going to call ourselves compassionate and humane physicians." But despite his view, Dr. Anand did not recommend trying to anesthetize fetuses during abortions. "It is premature at this point to say we should do this or not do it," he said. "As a scientist, I'm not sure we have the best methods."

Dr. Anand said he did not oppose abortion, but had testified that fetuses feel pain at hearings called by legislators seeking to ban late-term abortions."

As far as I am concerned, that is game set & match.

The argument against this would have to say, I suppose, that the crying is a reflex which does not reflect true processing of pain in the undeveloped brain. But this is running not a million miles from the Peter Singer argument that you can ethically treat even full term babies as less than fully "human" because they don't have the same self awareness that even a smart animal has. (I don't think I am misrepresenting his position here.)

Nope. If a human body cries when stuck, you gotta deem it to be human and ethically assume that causing the crying is a bad thing.