Crossposted from European Tribune.
According to a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), foetuses cannot feel pain until the last few weeks of a pregnancy, reports the BBC.
But, writing in JAMA, they say pain requires the conscious recognition of an unpleasant stimulus.
This cannot happen until certain brain structures connecting the thalamus and the cerebral cortex develop during the third trimester of pregnancy.
These connections are not usually apparent until the 23rd week of pregnancy and may not begin to be made until the 30th week.
[snip]
But Julia Millington of the UK’s Pro Life Alliance said: “It is not the ability of the victim to feel pain that makes killing objectionable but rather the violation of that individual’s most basic human right, the right to life.”
I find the latter assertion untenable. In philosophy, there are two rival conceptions of what a ‘right’ is. On one analysis it is a norm protecting some rational agent’s opportunity to choose in some specific respect. Clearly, this is out as far as foetuses are concerned, inasmuch as they are not yet rational agents. On the other, more inclusive analysis, a right is a norm protecting a certain interest of some being, whether a rational agent or not. This is more promising for a rights-based pro-life position, since it could be argued that a foetus does have interests worth protecting.
But which are the minimum conditions for having an interest? One such, it seems to me, must be the capacity to have experiences. There must be a way in which events in the world can impinge on your consciousness for better or for worse. Thus a cat, for instance, has interests, but a tree does not, because only the former (as far as we know) has any mental states at all.
Now, the most primitive experience conceivable is the experience of pain. If a nervous system can’t even support that, it’s reasonable to infer that it can’t support any experience. And since having experiences is a necessary condition for having interests, which in turn is a necessary condition for having rights, the foetus cannot have any rights, including the right to life, until its brain is more developed. If the current findings hold up, that is not until the 23rd week of pregnancy.
To be sure, it is wise to err on the side of caution, so one might want to subtract a few weeks from that. But this is incidental to my point.
Also note that, in my view, it will not do to argue that the foetus, if left alone in the womb, would later develop the neural wiring for sustaining experiences. Rights are not assigned retroactively. Suppose you learn that some tree in your garden will develop mental states within three weeks if you don’t cut it down. Does that imply that the plant has a ‘right to life’ now? Surely not.
There are of course other ways than the rights-based one to argue for a ban on abortion. I believe they fail too; but that is for another day.
No comments yet. Interesting. I actually question this scientific work.
For decades, doctors have said that they can circumcize baby boys because they can’t feel the pain. Bullshit.
And, the more that science learns about more “primitive” creatures such as fish, the more we find out that these “primitive” creatures ALSO feel pain.
in other words, I think the jury is out on pain perception in utero and in “primitive” creatures.
The claim that baby boys can’t feel pain is transparently false. But even if some physicians made it, I don’t think you can generalize from that to the conclusion that these findings are ill-founded.
That is not my understanding; quite the contrary.
http://www.smh.com.au
Fish lack the brains to feel pain, says the latest school of thought
By Rajeev Syal in London
February 10 2003
Anglers rest easy. Fish cannot feel pain, the largest study into piscine neurology has concluded.
An academic study comparing the nervous systems and responses of fish and mammals has found that fishes’ brains are not sufficiently developed to allow them to sense pain or fear.
The study is the work of James D Rose, a professor of zoology and physiology at the University of Wyoming, who has been working on questions of neurology for almost 30 years. He has examined data on the responses of animals to pain and stimulus from scores of studies collected over the past 15 years.
His report, published in the American journal Reviews of Fisheries Science, has concluded that awareness of pain depends on functions of specific regions of the cerebral cortex which fish do not possess.
I was relieved when that research came out – it enabled me to end my self-imposed moratorium on angling.
can’t experience fear, what compels them into avoidance behavior?
Actually, I wondered about that too. Perhaps sub-conscious reflexes, as e.g. with various arthropods?
Since you mention it, there is also a common sense argument against fish experiencing pain. If they did, how could they be capable of fighting the hook and line as fiercely as some species do?
Because they know if they don’t they’re going to be served up for dinner, obviously.
This is getting off-topic, but my point is of course that swimming with all your force in the contrary direction of a line hooked onto your jaw, lip, or eye is very heroic indeed, for whatever reason. Me, I’d just swim along.
Besides, the fish have no such knowledge. But perhaps you’re kidding? I’m slow on the uptake sometimes.
Sorry, I should have included a snark alert. I thought that my response was ludicrous enough in the current discussion context to be immediately recognizable as such 🙂
I was actually trying to help make your point through false counter-example, but apparently failed.
Since they are mammals with huge brains they must feel pain even more than their main predator, human whalers.
You don’t mind eating whale steak at the expense of these magnificent creatures. Whales are endangered by global warming, increasing ship traffic, navy war games, sonar, and pollution. Give them a break, eh.
I invited to have that discussion, by e-mail even. You never showed up. This diary entry is surely not the place to have it.
By now you, have read my email explaining why “I never showed up.”
You just reminded me of your Whale article so I supplied a link for it because I am nice.
Hope you repost the article because it was very comprehensive and must have taken some work to put it together.
Yeah, thanks – for some reason I did not become aware of your e-mails before an hour or so ago. G-mail has its drawbacks (or perhaps I’m going extremely prematurely dement…).
I’ll see tomorrow if I can repost the story as a diary entry over on Eurotrib. See you then!
Whether fish or fairly late human prenate, we must be careful not to anthropomorphise the evidence.
As fully-fledged, post-natal humans we feel pain; better, we are conscious or aware of pain. To project that knowledge on other living things because they are “like” or “living” is a grave error of reason.
That is not to say that skepticism may not be called for.
There is the following problem in this discussion taken from “The Impact of “Scientific Misinformation” on Other Fields: Philosophy, Theology, Biomedical Ethics, Public Policy” by Dianne Nutwell Irving:
That is to say that while areas of brain differentiation may exist at 14 weeks, evidence of sentience or conscious awareness of that pain (or anything else) can not be demonstrated.
Sirocco, I just wanted to let you know that I did just read your diary and find it very interesting, but at this time I am just tired out from all the wrangling on the ‘other’ diary, so will limit my comments for now and go take a long break and visit my garden…perhaps I will revisit later.
Thank you Diane. 🙂
about prenatal research unless I know the author and the journal from previous research. My understading is that the fetus responds to auditory stimulus around the 20th week, which may suggest that it is not reasonable to infer that pain perception indicates conscience experience in general. The brain is modular, and therefore it makes sense that functions will develop at different rates. It may be that pain develops late becauase it is not essential for other development to occur, whereas auditory stimiulation may help with the ordering of the nuerons and networks that will be used in post-birth auditory perception.
I am not a specialist on prenatal development, and cannot evaluate most claims without really researching it. I didn’t do that for either the pain claim or the auditory claim.
In general, it bothers me with science is conducted to prove a point. That is directed not at this diary, becuase it makes sense for us to use science to help understand the world around us. It is, instead, directed at all of the garbage that comes up on a Google search that is meant to confuse those who may be interested in learning about prenatal cognitive development. What they will find instead is a bunch of puesdoscience that (for the most part) seems to be pushing the anti-abortion agenda. We are not served by this. (Like I said, this is not directed at this diary, since I didn’t check the report myself and I trust that the diary was intended to shed light on the issue.)
While my stance on abortion is not related to scientific understanding of fetal development, I do find the science on fetal development very interesting and appreciate this diary for bring this into the discussion.
What you write about modal brain development is food for thought.
I suppose, though, that even if your speculation proves out – a big ‘if’ – one could still argue that the early foetus, its cerebral cortex unconnected to the thalamus, would still be unable to feel ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – hence, would still not have any interests.
On a side note, everyone seems to be spelling it ‘fetus.’ Is that the US English spelling? I used English spelling until a year ago, and is constantly learning how incomplete is my conversion to the American way…
Edit: British spelling.
fetus is the American spelling.
I think I referenced it above when the point was specifically on pain. But it was written especially to address ” The Impact of “Scientific Misinformation” on Other Fields: Philosophy, Theology, Biomedical Ethics, Public Policy.” which is, as you see, the title.
The purpose of the article is to investigate
Not quite your stance, but perhaps the other side of the coin of propagandizing science. Something the current administration has a penchant for.
The article also possesses 77 references (enough?), and is devoted to exploring the complex scientific, ethical, and legal parameters of the quoted issue.
and the ability of the fetus to feel pain, from New Zealand physiologist David Mellor.
Not conclusive, of course, but fascinating nonetheless.
I just can’t take your leap on banning retroactive rights.
I’m trying to be generous here so let me throw something out to test your waters…
Let’s say that I suffer some trauma and am in a deep comatose state. You test me to see if I react to pain, or other stimuli. I don’t.
But the doctor tells you that people suffering such injuries frequently recover and regain their faculties.
Based on your reasoning, it is okay to just kill me as long as I remain in my comatose state.
To overcome this, you must resort to my prior experiences, effectively stating that I have had experiences in the past, that my memory is not permanently erased, that I have felt pain in the past.
But that upsets that whole rationale you have laid out.
Another way of looking at this is to look at the law as it pertains to conspiracy. If I indulge in behaviors that a reasonable person can anticipate will result in a crime (like hiring a hit-man), I am guilty whether the crime ever occurs or not.
When we talk about ending a pregnancy prior to the neural pathways connecting to produce consciousness, experience and fear, we know that a reasonable person can expect those things to be produced naturally in a short period of time. If it turns out that those things don’t happen for some tragic reason, that doesn’t change the fact that I could have reasonably expected them to.
In other words, I cannot escape culpability for taking away someone’s rights just because they don’t have those rights today, if I can reasonably expect them to have those rights tomorrow.
This is a poor example but:
If you had a teenager who was a month shy of getting his driving license (his right to drive), and you blinded him to make sure he never drove, you would be culpable not only for causing bodily injury, but of denying him his right to drive.
See, this is why philosophers tend to crave each other’s company about as much a roosters crave each other’s… How about forming a guild? 😉
Now, the question of retroactive rights is indeed, as far as I can see, the only point where this argument is vulnerable to attack (assuming its empirical basis is sound). I do not think the attacks succeed, though.
To take your last example, the teenager is already a person whose consciousness has enabled it to value life, spawned a general interest: namely, that things turn out well for it in life. The interest of being physically capable of driving at some later point is derivative of that interest. Thus, when blinding the person before driving age, one actually harms his/her interests in a way the least retroactive.
By contrast, the pre-conscious foetus is still just an advanced biological machine, existing in a ‘vegetative’ state.
Which brings us to the coma question. As you suggest, I would indeed argue that a comatose person’s interest in not being killed derives from his/her general interest in having a good life, established in virtue of valuing life at a prior time. I don’t see how this upsets my argument at all!
Sorry – I might as well do a 2nd edition of this para:
argument if you don’t have to defend it? 🙂
Okay, so we are clarifying here that once someone has awareness, or an interest, that their rights can not be taken away, even future rights that they can reasonably expect to attain. Those rights are not contingent, however, on the person having a continual awareness or interest. This is the problem.
It appears that you created a magic spark argument that is contingent on nothing except the onset of awareness or an interest.
Let my thrust at you from another angle. Let’s say that you are my son and we grew up in the wilderness and had never seen a car or television. You have no idea what a car is. But I know what a car is and I know that you are almost old enough to drive one. So, even though you are ignorant of your rights, and do not yet have possession of this particular right, I am aware of your rights. So, is it okay morally for me to blind you (aside from the bodily harm) to keep you from exercising a right you are unaware of and do not yet have. I know that if I leave you alone you will attain that right, and yet I take it from you. What is my moral culpability?
– I’m not saying you have to know about an interest in order to have it. And note that interests are the salient matter here – rights, AFAIC, are mere social rules protecting interests (or choices, if you take that tack).
In your scenario, you would for no legitimate reason be thwarting the interest of a conscious being, who has developed the capacity to value life, in being able enjoy life to the full. That is how your action would be wrong.
By way of counter-attack: if I invented a machine which, when the parts were suitably connected, would give rise to conscious states, would the machine then have an interest in being so connected, before the fact?
I would argue that I blinded you because I saw an article that said auto accidents are the number one cause of death for young men. But that’s beside the point.
Here is an ax to the machine argument. The machine does not know that it has choices until it is connected, and it cannot connect itself.
The pre-sentient fetus is in a somewhat different position. In one sense, it is dependent on the mother to help it connect itself. On the other hand, it will play a large and active role in the connecting.
Here we run into the issue of the mother/child symbiosis, which greatly complicates matters, but is also where we eventually should be.
Now, I cannot endorse your reasoning as you stated it for the reasons I have laid out, but I can make a different argument that is related to dependency.
If our machine depends on me to connect it, how am I obliged to take the time and effort and suffer the inconvenience of connecting it? I’m not.
Can we take this road back to your argument? Can we say that the woman is under no obligation to help the fetus achieve its connectivity, but once that connectivity is accomplished, she is obligated to protect the interests of fetus?
Perhaps.
Judith Jarvis Thompson has made a famous argument along those lines. However, she grants for the sake of argument that the fetus has personhood.
Among the problems with her argument are that it ignores the active contribution of the pregnant woman (rape cases excepted, obviously) to engendering the fetus, and that it seems to license the killing of any person dependent upon us who curtails our personal liberty.
But while we’ll have to agree to disagree about retroaction – at least for this round – it could well be that some hybrid of Thompson’s and the argument presented above could be persuasive to both of us, and maybe even to others. I’ll think about this.
If I understand you right, in short, the difference between the comatose individual and the foetus is simple. The comatose individual is a human that is currently in an unfortunate state. The foetus has not yet become a human, and whether it will or not (and when it does) is unknown. Thus, I’d say that the question of whether or not it is a person cannot be resolved – it’s not a person in the traditional sense, obviously, but it might be one. This is why the issue cannot be legislated, and must be left up to the choice of the pregnant woman.
What intrigues me is the question of say, a mother falls or is in a car accident and in that accident they check the fetus and find it has a fracture or broken leg, that fetus will not feel pain? I am not being a smart ass…I really want to know.
Great diary Sirocco!
Thanks. Well, if these findings hold up – and they are merely corroborating long-established results – then a fetus younger than 23 weeks, and possibly as old as 30, would not feel any pain.
I say we do away with childbirth entirely. I’ve done it. It’s excruciating. I had the joy of both a prolonged labor and an emergency C-section. You haven’t lived until you fully experienced the disabling pain of recovering from having your pelvis sliced from side to side. And, my sister could tell you a thing or two about tearing and episiotomies. Oy!
But, seriously I take your over-all point. The “Silent Scream” was a crock of shit.
Well the story is now all over cable TV here Sirocco, just wanted to let you know that.
is the way I prefer to look at it.
I’d rather not get into all this can a foetus feel pain/no pain stuff which just seems to accept the foetus as a seperate entity devoid of the mother.
It is always a question of value, isn’t it? What do we value, quality of life, or quantity of life? I think the Catholic church, in its opposition to birth control, has it wrong, and, has its priorites wrong, but this may be purposeful. What better way to control a population than to have a population overburdened with its own young?
What better way to control women than to have them have children that they don’t want and can’t afford?
What is more valuable, the numbers of babies born into the world, or their quality of life once they are here?
There is very little talk among fundamentalists about the quality of the lives of children in this country. There is much talk among fundamentalists as to what women should and shouldn’t do with their bodies.
Mission control, the issue is control. I want to hear all men who oppose abortion talking about how to care for the unwanted, neglected and abused children in this country. Otherwise, you hold no credibility, not one ounce.