Oh, I forgot about this thread.
MAB: I can't find fault with anything you said really.
I’m with you on the pain. But don't play-down biology. Biology can be sexy. Touch, warmth, moisture, friction, energy, endurance, hot chemical romance, pleasure, pain,
sensation. It’s no longer a philosophical or moral question if you want to approach it your way, it‘s biological science. The only way you can conclude when a foetus feels pain is by deciding with scientific precision.
For the record, I don’t have to stretch my mind much to conclude that other animals feel pain in much the same way we do. They show us often enough.
Let me venture a question: Do you think a woman should be granted a termination if she decides ten seconds before delivery that she’s not so keen on having a baby afterall? Granted it would take a very curious kind of doctor who would perform such an operation, and of course most abortions (if any) never do reach that stage, but for the sake of argument should that ever comes to pass, do you support a termination at such a late hour of the day or does the baby (for that is unmistakably now what the living thing is) enjoy rights of protection it did not before?
It’s irrelevant. At that stage of prenatal development, a foetus can survive outside the womb without much complication at all.
If you mean purely as an ethical dilemma and to Hell with all of science and all other perfectly reasonable options, then: No. By that point it’s a full-term human baby, not a foetus. We are no longer questioning abortion at this point - it’s infanticide, with case-by-case options to take into account. All options must be exhausted. Regardless, that baby is coming out - whether the woman likes it or not, whether she wants to help it along or not.
Also, there is a point where we don’t need a scientist, or ethicist, or judge, or an expert of any field to tell us something so self-evident. We just need a reasonably developed brain, the capacity to ‘hazard a guess,' a pair of eyes in our head, and at least a superficial interest in human well-being. If we still need someone to instruct us on things like this we are not even evolving. If we cannot see the glaring obvious in such cases, we are not even fit to confront ethical issues, at all, and should probably consult a neurologist. Hell, at that point, we could almost ask the actual baby to contribute an opinion on what its fate ought to be.
Topic: Do some survival instincts conflict with Social Evolution of Humans