Centerfield

I'm pro-life but I keep wondering why the GOP keeps pursuing these "silly" tactics. If one were a strictly anti-abortion they would ask "Does it make any difference if the fetus feels pain while being killed?". Likewise, "Does it make any difference if both the mother and father agree that abortion is the way to go?" or "If the teen AND her parents agree on getting the abortion does that make it ok?"

It just smacks of silly political posturing.

Posted by: c3 at December 1, 2006 01:36 PM

I'm pro-life but I keep wondering why the GOP keeps pursuing these "silly" tactics. If one were a strictly anti-abortion they would ask "Does it make any difference if the fetus feels pain while being killed?". Likewise, "Does it make any difference if both the mother and father agree that abortion is the way to go?" or "If the teen AND her parents agree on getting the abortion does that make it ok?"

It just smacks of silly political posturing.

Posted by: c3 at December 1, 2006 01:40 PM

Sorry for the duplicate

Posted by: c3 at December 1, 2006 01:40 PM

Brian: Your premise is somewhat inaccurate. As the study below shows, it can probably at least be said that no pain is felt until the brain is capable of transmitting a signal, i.e., between 25 and 32 weeks or from sometime after the middle of the 5th month. In fact, considering how we define death, it seems rational to define life based on the beginning of cognition. Since 99% of abortions occur prior to this time, would this yield a rational compromise in the pro/anti abortion debate?

From Morowitz, Harold and James Trefil, The Facts of Life: Science and the Abortion Controversy (Oxford U. Press, 1992)

Synapses are what form the overwhelming number of connections between nerves. Since the functions of the brain depend almost exclusively on the ability of nerve cells to communicate with each other, synapses are also key to understanding the brain. . . . The cells that will eventually be part of the cerebral cortex [the higher brain, the foundation of human consciousness] begin forming in the seven-week embryo. . . . They migrate to positions in what will eventually be the cortex, where they build up in layers. . . . Before synapses are formed, the fetal brain is just a collection of nerve cells. The fetus is incapable of awareness or volition. . . . [The] burst of synapse formation [between 25 and 32 weeks gestation] marks the period during which the brain is transformed from a collection of individual cells into a connected machine capable of carrying out human thought. . . . [B]efore the wiring up of the cortex, the fetus is simply incapable of feeling anything, including pain. . . . [S]ignals may be sent by the nerves, but there is simply nothing to receive them. They stop at the brain stem for the simple reason that there is nowhere else for them to go. (Morowitz and Trefil 112-113, 116-117, and 158-159)

Posted by: BobPM at December 1, 2006 03:58 PM

I should also note that the above quote was taken from a footnote in "Abortion and Personhood: Historical and Comparative Notes by Dr. David L. Perry." This article provides an interesting historical summary of the development of Christian, Jewish and Muslim teachings on abortion, especially, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Augustine's view that a fetus did not receive a soul until it was developed enough to contain it. If there was no soul there was no murder and abortion was thus a lesser sin until more recent Vatican pronouncements.

http://home.earthlink.net/~davidlperry/abortion.htm

Posted by: BobPM at December 1, 2006 04:11 PM

Actually, we ought to be able to know objectively whether they can feel pain at 25-32 weeks gestation. They're viable outside the womb (obviously with substantial technical assistance) by as early as 20 weeks gestation. (I've got a 7 mo who is climbing and intermittently fussing all over the place currently in my lap, so I don't have time to search out reliable, up-to-date figures.) Anyway, there are tons of babies born in that age range every year who survive. It should be relatively easy to design a study to find out whether they are capable of feeling physical pain. (I'll bet NICU nurses already know the answer to the question, since they insert IV's and get blood from preemies all the time.)

Of course, if they're viable outside the womb, it's really beside the point whether or not they can feel pain if the question is abortion. Age of viablility is surely a better point to compromise at (assuming that you're interested in compromise) in creating a cut-off for abortions. (BTW, I am very deeply pro-life, but I am also very interested in compromise. If we'd like to see fewer abortions, then we are going to have to compromise.)

Posted by: isidora at December 1, 2006 09:58 PM

If we'd like to see fewer abortions, then we are going to have to compromise.

If we'd like to see fewer abortions, we need to make sure that there are much fewer unwanted pregnancies.

Posted by: Heather at December 1, 2006 10:34 PM

Not as easy as it seems. Preemies that young don't spend a lot of time conscious--"viability" in an incubator is a poor guage, and if anyone tried to develop a way to hurt them so as to make that study, everyone in the neonatal unit would be hitting them with large sticks. I'd lead the parade if they'd let me in, and add spikes to my stick. Then I'd take the bleeding would-be experimenter outside and cripple them properly. Preemie neonates have enough problems, often including medical conditions that will last forever. "Viability" just means "breathing with heart action while on life support" in that context. A 32-weeker usually just need some monitoring. A 25-weeker needs life support. Big diff a few weeks makes.

Nor can the NICU nurses (or anyone else) necessarily tell the difference between reflex and pain with just observation. Though that's one place I'd ask if I wanted to do a (non-scientific) inquiry. And since I have an extremely qualified source in the family, I'll ask them next time we speak.

Posted by: Tully at December 1, 2006 10:36 PM

Actually, we ought to be able to know objectively whether they can feel pain at 25-32 weeks gestation. They're viable outside the womb (obviously with substantial technical assistance) by as early as 20 weeks gestation.

I'd have to agree that given that premies can be viable as early as 23 weeks (I've never heard of 20-week premies) and are able to react to certain stimuli, it makes sense to me that they would probably feel pain around this time. Then again, how would you ever prove such a thing?

As far as compromise, I don't think there is realistic compromise on the abortion issue. Typically, opposition to abortion is founded on the principle that abortion is the taking of an innocent human life. For those who believe this on general principle, I don't really see that there is a middle ground.

In what I would call as more of a trade-off than a compromise, I'd suggest that the government get out of the abortion issue altogether--that is, the government neither funds/promotes abortions nor does it prohibit them. Individual hospitals would decide at what gestational age they stop performing abortions or whether they perform abortions at all.

One major problem with my proposal, however, might be the embryonic stem cell research issue. Even if you support embryonic stem cell research, would you still support embryonic stem cell research financed with taxpayer dollars?

Posted by: nicrivera at December 1, 2006 10:54 PM

In what I would call as more of a trade-off than a compromise, I'd suggest that the government get out of the abortion issue altogether--that is, the government neither funds/promotes abortions nor does it prohibit them. Individual hospitals would decide at what gestational age they stop performing abortions or whether they perform abortions at all.

That, to me, is the TRUE pro-choice position, because it neither criminalizes mothers nor doctors that perform abortions, nor does it force pro-lifer Americans to fund a procedure that they consider to be morally repugnant.

Posted by: nicrivera at December 1, 2006 11:03 PM

when i was training as a nurse in the late 70's, one of my rotations was in the O.R. -- i was shocked to find out that many surgeries performed on newborns were done without anesthesia. i was told either the effects of anethesia could kill them or they newborns don't feel pain -- i was glad that that practice was phased out. here's an article that kinda goes over the issue:

Believing babies feel pain

Posted by: lurker at December 2, 2006 02:58 AM

"it seems rational to define life based on the beginning of cognition."

You mean life as the beginning and END of cognition? And I think you mean a “person’s” life.

A "cognitive state" involving a "working group" of cerebral and peripheral synapses processing and responding to stimuli seems a good starting point for defining the beginning of the "individual collective". There is alot left to organize however, before "human thought" and a "self-aware personality" begins. Meiotic recombination and the successful pairing of two parental genomes cannot occur outside the parental body nor does the fetus exist naturally outside the womb .

A "living person" by any legal definition always someone who has already been born. The unborn are not persons. The line maybe hazy, but appealing to pain misses the emergent nature of life. All cells can be irritated. One can then call this irritation, pain. If one could only process and feel pain, is that person’s life over?

On the other hand, terminating a fetus (and potentially, a potential individual’s life) past a certain developmental line reasonably warrants some legal regulation based on the utilitarian principles guiding social stability and the healthy growth to our herd . One need not imbue the blastula with soul, to see that that there are still moral issues aborting a third trimester fetus..

Somewhere, as Bob points out, between the first organized cognitive awareness in the womb to the last one outside it, is a person’s life. Those who believe in Heaven, don’t really acknowledge death (the termination of individual self-awareness), because the individual continues to live, all be it in a more ethereal form. I am not sure why they are so concerned with abortion.

I would like to think the cut off point is somewhere in the third trimester near where rational people might agree a pre-person really begins. If it is about soul, then Chris is right. When you terminate doesn’t matter. You are murdering a soul. Still, I’m not sure why with a go-directly-to-Heaven-card, it is called murder. At worst you deprive that unborn the experiences of human life which are terminated decades later. This MIGHT be relatively MORE painful.

And while we argue when life starts, science will push back when life ends. Or will these discoveries be suppressed? Already, religion is quite opposed to life extension. They fear the obvious nightmare. What person would not wish to live longer? And thus what is natural will be redefined. How long can one own the means to extend life for the many? Some say this will be the mantra for a future socialist revolution………..

Seems like 2056 is going to be wild.

Posted by: Maxtrue at December 2, 2006 10:24 AM

Tully, please don't beat me with a spikey stick! I wasn't advocating intentionally hurting preemies. Any experiment along those lines would only involve monitoring the babies during normal hospital proceedures, since some of those proceedures cause pain.

Ack! Gotta go. My 7 month old is telling me that she would rather spend the next several hours unconscious - but needs my help to acheive said state.

Posted by: isidora at December 2, 2006 03:54 PM

Just realized how the end of that last post might have sounded. For clarification, unconscious=asleep, and that is not a state that that she often acheives or maintains on her own, even at seven months (although she often spends 16 out of 24 hours sleep.) I thought the clarification might be in order, considering the big, pointy sticks aimed in my direction ;)

Believe me, Tully, I do have a good idea how much difference a few weeks can make in utero. At this time last year, I was counting weeks. This pregnancy was my third (and presumably last) and also the third one where I had had had trouble with pre-term labor, although all three were full-term births. The contractions have begun earlier every time: 34.5 weeks with my older daughter, before 24 weeks with my son, and at 17.5 weeks with this one. That was genuinely disturbing, but I had a really good doctor this time round since I pretty much expected something like that to happen.

I have to say that lurker's article was certainly interesting, not to mention disturbing.

Posted by: isidora at December 2, 2006 06:48 PM

If it is about soul, then Chris is right. When you terminate doesn’t matter. You are murdering a soul.

Did I say that? Note: I came to my pro-life position before and outside of my Christian "rebirth". There are many good religious and non-religious arguments for a pro-life position. "Ensoulment" is an interesting concept (and at the heart of the Catholic position) but I've never felt comfortable with it.

PS I've put in IUD's and would have prescribed the morning after pill if I was still in practice so I don't have the rigid "at the point of fertilization" pro-life position.

Oh yeah, Isidora, if we could easily measure pain then we docs would have figured out a long time ago which of those folks coming to the ER at 10 pm with "excruciating back pain" were actually having pain vs just needing a few Percocets.

Posted by: c3 at December 3, 2006 10:16 AM

What Chris said about measuring pain. I remember my family member's ER rotation as a resident--spent half his time fending off pill junkies and had to get a new phone number, as many who slipped past the "pain med junkie" screening and got pills would call him at home at all hours for more, his name being on the scrip.

No need to hide from me, isidora, I knew exactly what you meant. I have two of my own, two years apart, and was the "at-home parent" birth through school age. I'm very familiar, having logged much much more than the usual male-parent contribution of feedings and changes and play dates and doctor visits and so on. (Our pediatrician once asked me if I had become a single parent...) Babies are fun! Exhausting stressful sleep-stealing sanity-and-social-life-and-budget-destroying fun! Somewhere along the line between baby and adolescent they mvoe from high physical maintenance to high psychic maintenance....

Posted by: Tully at December 3, 2006 11:16 AM

LOL, Tully. Spikey sticks aside, I remember my old college biology professor saying that a newborn's capacity to feel pain fully develops sometime after birth--"otherwise, the birth trauma would make a newborn baby die of shock." (Of course, he was a grizzled old bear whose last contact with a newborn was probably around WWII, so he and I could be wrong.)

Parents' capacity to feel pain, on the other hand, begins shortly after conception and continues indefinitely. ;-)

Posted by: Blue Jean at December 3, 2006 08:53 PM

Chris,
I meant your restating above that a strictly anti-abortion position based on "encapsulation" would see no difference between one or eight month termination of the fetus.

I didn't mean to imply you actually advocate such a view. I am relieved to hear you don't.

And what everyone seems to be saying about pain as the standard.

Posted by: Maxtrue at December 3, 2006 10:04 PM

You can come up with all kinds of "standards," and both sides do. Their relevance to the issue is always debateable. Seems to me that having failed to get traction with other "standards," the pro-lifers are trying to stack the rhetorical deck some more. Throwing more sand under the wheels, as it were. (Not that pro-choicers aren't, but the example offered is a pro-life one).

Jean, re: parental pain--oh yeah. And don't I know it! Fetal pain: Personally I take my counsel on such things from board-certified neonatologists and board-certified maternal/fetal medicine specialist OB/Gyns. Fortunately for me, I know some. I generally leave theology to theologians, and simply request they not attempt legislating metaphysics.

Posted by: Tully at December 4, 2006 09:23 AM

I'm happily surprised to find an 18-comment-and-counting thread on abortion has unfolded so decently.

Bob, I'm fairly well aware of the points you've made, and it's not that I disagree so much as I acknowledge the ongoing lack of precision based on what science has been able to determine so far. Even presuming the 25-32 week range, that's still a large range. And the rest of the stuff doesn't really get very precisely at the nature of pain. It's not that no one knows anything, it's that there is still far too much to figure out to try something like this right now, and that problems with the question "what is pain" leave me skeptical about satisfying the vast majority with any given policy using this basis.

I do think that viability suggests a decent starting point for crafting policy or at least having a discussion about policy, because I think most people can get on board with the idea that any healthy viable fetus removed from a womb ought to be nurtured, not discarded.

Posted by: bk at December 4, 2006 09:33 AM

Jean;

Parents' capacity to feel pain, on the other hand, begins shortly after conception and continues indefinitely

Amen to that. Our youngest is 18 and we've had more pain this past year than the previous 17 combined.

Posted by: c3 at December 4, 2006 03:45 PM