When does human life start?
- Thread starter veganDreama
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You only say that because you disagree but how can you be so sure that life begins at birth and Foetuses DON'T feel pain? I know for a FACT that they feel pain AFTER viability (about 21 weeks) as extremely premature babies feel pain just as much as full term babies do. AND Babies ARE being killed AFTER viability without even aesthetic in some countries such as Canada where babies can be aborted up until birth and babies in UK who are considered 'abnormal' are also allowed to be aborted up until birth. These are FACTS. I also read on a website about pregnancy that foetuses can hear (it encourages women to talk to their foetuses) and dream and sometimes suck their thumb. That wasn't a pro life site it was a site for pregnant women who wanted to know more about their babies development.
And foetuses ARE being oppressed just as much as farm animals are. When groups of people are oppressed the first thing you do is dehumanise them just like saying it's all right to kill foetuses just because they aren't conscious. Well they ARE and they DO suffer when they are born alive and left to die slow and painful deaths!
And foetuses ARE being oppressed just as much as farm animals are. When groups of people are oppressed the first thing you do is dehumanise them just like saying it's all right to kill foetuses just because they aren't conscious. Well they ARE and they DO suffer when they are born alive and left to die slow and painful deaths!
Jamie in Chile
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Surely our brain (rather than heart beat or anything else) is what makes us alive. Brain activity in a foetus starts at 6 weeks. However, that doesn't mean that is any high level intelligence at that stage, or even consciousness at all. It may be that a 6-week foetus has the amount of brain activity of an insect and therefore perhaps a similar moral worth (although this is highly speculative). Read here for how the brain develops during pregnancy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/books/chapters/the-ethical-brain.html (The author of the article is Michael S. Gazzaniga. I googled his name and I assume he is the one for whom I find a wikipedia article "professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he heads the new SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind. He is one of the leading researchers in cognitive neuroscience, the study of the neural basis of mind.")
Quoting from above article: "not until the end of week 5 and into week 6 (usually around forty to forty-three days) does the first electrical brain activity begin to occur. This activity, however, is not coherent activity of the kind that underlies human consciousness, or even the coherent activity seen in a shrimp's nervous system. Just as neural activity is present in clinically brain-dead patients, early neural activity consists of unorganized neuron firing of a primitive kind. Neuronal activity by itself does not represent integrated behavior." (quoted from above).
At 13 weeks, the article claims that "the fetus is not a sentient, self-aware organism at this point; it is more like a sea slug, a writhing, reflex-bound hunk of sensory-motor processes that does not respond to anything in a directed, purposeful way."
The article further claims that at week 23 the foetus can can "respond to aversive stimuli" but that prior to that date it is not "viable".
The article further claims that if an adult had suffered massive brain damage, reducing their brain to the level of development of a 23-week foetus, the patient "would be considered brain dead and a candidate for organ donation".
According to Tomás Ryan, (assistant professor of neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin), quoted in https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/...ther-scientific-answers-on-abortion-1.3506968 :
"Crucially, the co-ordinated brain activity required for consciousness does not occur until 24-25 weeks of pregnancy. We cannot say when consciousness first emerges, but it cannot rationally be called before the end of the second trimester at 24 weeks of pregnancy." He also adds: "The thalamus (necessary for pain and conscious perception) does not appear until the end of the second trimester."
To all of the above, however, I think we should add that it is morally wrong to carry out an action that has say a 50% chance of causing moral bad, a 50% chance of causing nothing, and NO chance of causing moral good. To illustrate this point, if I gave you a gun with 6 chambers and 3 bullets and a dog, it would be morally wrong of you to point the gun at the dog's head and pull the trigger once, and couldn't be defended on the basis that there is a 50/50 chance that no bad will come of it.
Applying this logic to the abortion debate, if there is a foetus that has a 50/50 chance of being alive, conscious and able to feel pain, and a 50/50 chance of being entirely unconsciousness, not yet alive or able to feel pain, then it would be morally bad to carry out an abortion in such a case, all other things being equal, e.g say in a case where it would cause no problem to the woman or anyone else to have the baby, and would not make her life worse. Say she wanted a baby anyway, and the only reason to have an abortion was to delay for a year so she could save up more money first. So I think the benefit of the doubt should be applied, and I also think any vegan that would follow the benefit of the doubt principle in order to explain why they don't eat certain types of seafood would be caught in rather a contradiction if they wouldn't apply that same logic to human life.
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/19/books/chapters/the-ethical-brain.html (The author of the article is Michael S. Gazzaniga. I googled his name and I assume he is the one for whom I find a wikipedia article "professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he heads the new SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind. He is one of the leading researchers in cognitive neuroscience, the study of the neural basis of mind.")
Quoting from above article: "not until the end of week 5 and into week 6 (usually around forty to forty-three days) does the first electrical brain activity begin to occur. This activity, however, is not coherent activity of the kind that underlies human consciousness, or even the coherent activity seen in a shrimp's nervous system. Just as neural activity is present in clinically brain-dead patients, early neural activity consists of unorganized neuron firing of a primitive kind. Neuronal activity by itself does not represent integrated behavior." (quoted from above).
At 13 weeks, the article claims that "the fetus is not a sentient, self-aware organism at this point; it is more like a sea slug, a writhing, reflex-bound hunk of sensory-motor processes that does not respond to anything in a directed, purposeful way."
The article further claims that at week 23 the foetus can can "respond to aversive stimuli" but that prior to that date it is not "viable".
The article further claims that if an adult had suffered massive brain damage, reducing their brain to the level of development of a 23-week foetus, the patient "would be considered brain dead and a candidate for organ donation".
According to Tomás Ryan, (assistant professor of neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin), quoted in https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/...ther-scientific-answers-on-abortion-1.3506968 :
"Crucially, the co-ordinated brain activity required for consciousness does not occur until 24-25 weeks of pregnancy. We cannot say when consciousness first emerges, but it cannot rationally be called before the end of the second trimester at 24 weeks of pregnancy." He also adds: "The thalamus (necessary for pain and conscious perception) does not appear until the end of the second trimester."
To all of the above, however, I think we should add that it is morally wrong to carry out an action that has say a 50% chance of causing moral bad, a 50% chance of causing nothing, and NO chance of causing moral good. To illustrate this point, if I gave you a gun with 6 chambers and 3 bullets and a dog, it would be morally wrong of you to point the gun at the dog's head and pull the trigger once, and couldn't be defended on the basis that there is a 50/50 chance that no bad will come of it.
Applying this logic to the abortion debate, if there is a foetus that has a 50/50 chance of being alive, conscious and able to feel pain, and a 50/50 chance of being entirely unconsciousness, not yet alive or able to feel pain, then it would be morally bad to carry out an abortion in such a case, all other things being equal, e.g say in a case where it would cause no problem to the woman or anyone else to have the baby, and would not make her life worse. Say she wanted a baby anyway, and the only reason to have an abortion was to delay for a year so she could save up more money first. So I think the benefit of the doubt should be applied, and I also think any vegan that would follow the benefit of the doubt principle in order to explain why they don't eat certain types of seafood would be caught in rather a contradiction if they wouldn't apply that same logic to human life.
Jamie in Chile
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I think that:
At 0-5 weeks it makes clear sense to be pro choice, and the woman should feel confident and right to take a decision on her own.
At 6-20 weeks the moral case against abortion gets steadily stronger but is a very grey area. It is probably better to have the baby for at least part of this period, but probably not sensible or fair to tell someone they are wrong for making their choice to have an abortion. In this period, a decision should be jointly taken by both parents in most cases.
At 20-25 weeks, I think it is probably wrong to have an abortion given the benefit of the doubt principle.
Also, there is not much difference morally between killing a baby some minutes after birth, and having an abortion very late into the third trimester. This is clearly wrong and so it should, at some point in trimester 3, become illegal to have an abortion.
My opinions above are just a general guidline for what I might think of normal cases. I do not mean to apply them to all cases. So in the case of incest, rape, a 13-year old mother-to-be, substantial risks to mother's health, low chance of a successful healthy birth, a mother in very difficult life circumstances, and probably other exceptional cases that would be a different matter. So please don't take the above opinion to apply to those cases necessarily.
At 0-5 weeks it makes clear sense to be pro choice, and the woman should feel confident and right to take a decision on her own.
At 6-20 weeks the moral case against abortion gets steadily stronger but is a very grey area. It is probably better to have the baby for at least part of this period, but probably not sensible or fair to tell someone they are wrong for making their choice to have an abortion. In this period, a decision should be jointly taken by both parents in most cases.
At 20-25 weeks, I think it is probably wrong to have an abortion given the benefit of the doubt principle.
Also, there is not much difference morally between killing a baby some minutes after birth, and having an abortion very late into the third trimester. This is clearly wrong and so it should, at some point in trimester 3, become illegal to have an abortion.
My opinions above are just a general guidline for what I might think of normal cases. I do not mean to apply them to all cases. So in the case of incest, rape, a 13-year old mother-to-be, substantial risks to mother's health, low chance of a successful healthy birth, a mother in very difficult life circumstances, and probably other exceptional cases that would be a different matter. So please don't take the above opinion to apply to those cases necessarily.
My uncle was a prolife activist. He marched in front of abortion clinics. I also met some of his prolife activist friends. They were some of the kindest most soft spoken people I ever met. They were not judgmental or angry. They were just concerned.
I have another uncle who claimed to be prolife. He was more of the angry pro life type. Yet, he spread his seed far and wide. That same uncle would never donated time or money to support prolife organizations.
I have another uncle who claimed to be prolife. He was more of the angry pro life type. Yet, he spread his seed far and wide. That same uncle would never donated time or money to support prolife organizations.
Thanks for sharing. I have 3 points to make:
1. Viability needs changing to 21 weeks. That's the age of the world's youngest baby. There are actually 4 of them that I could find online. In the case of Amilla Taylor she wouldn't be alive today if her mother hadn't deceived the doctor into thinking Amilla was older then she was. So it's possible their would be more babies born at this age if doctor's were willing to resurrect them which they aren't. It seems wrong that a woman can get someone to kill her baby but she can't get a doctor to save her severely premature babies life if the baby is born before 24 weeks. It should be the other way round.
Read more about Amilla Taylor and other babies like her here:
https://www.health24.com/Parenting/...e-premature-baby-who-defied-all-odds-20171117
https://www.babygaga.com/15-stories-of-premature-babies-that-survived-against-the-odds/
https://www.newsweek.com/babies-born-22-weeks-can-survive-medical-care-new-study-finds-329518
2. Abortions are carried out after the 24 week viability and in some case up until birth.
Read more about it here:
https://www.thejournal.ie/abortion-up-to-birth-law-around-the-world-2905518-Aug2016/ (It's a bit out dated and it's a fact finder written to settle a debate between a pro lifer and someone pro abortion where the pro abortionist accuses the prolifer of lying because she mentioned that in some places abortion is permitted up until birth. I don't know about other countries but in England the exception for fatal abnormality includes spina bifida and downs syndrome. Most people with downs syndrome are happy and some have jobs while Spina bifida can sometimes be corrected so I don't believe either should be grounds for a late term abortion.)
3. That article wasn't written by a pro lifer. Us Pro lifers think that a fetus can experience pain a lot sooner.
