@Ishina
The gestational moment at which one determines that a foetus evolves a brain capable of registering pain is a biological question true enough, but that would tell us nothing about whether to proceed with a termination is ethical. Science cannot adjudicate morality for morality is a question of competing interests. Otherwise there would be no ethical dilemma.
Both the pregnant woman and the foetus endure suffering. How can science decide whose interests should be accorded greater moral consideration? Such a task requires human empathy and compassion, a quality of which science is destitute. Glance at my rejoinder to Teapot on more about the suffering inherent in carrying a pregnancy to full term.
I thought the gist of what you were saying is that your view on abortion is essentially based on if an entity has the capacity to feel pain. How are you defining pain? The ability of an organism to react to outside stimulus, physical damage or physical system breakdown? Or the ability of an entity to interpret and
understand damage, and feel pain, and
suffer?
Just because an organism has the equipment to register sensation and the biological trigger mechanisms to react to outside stimulus, does not mean this equipment is developed enough, or wired up yet, connected, or that the trigger reaction is a conscious one. Some (all?) biological phenomenon are nothing more than algorithms. At what point does an algorithm become consciously willed or a mindful response?
Philisophy has conquered little ground on this, in all the days of its life. In stark contrast to modern science - revolutionary ways they treat burns victims, for example. The most painful thing for burns victims, apart from the initial trauma, is the daily changing of dressings and learning to move limbs again. I was watching a program a short while ago where they had this guy hooked up to a virtual reality unit, playing computer games, completely oblivious to the doctors changing his dressings, which on previous days was unbearable agony for him. They had reduced his apparant agony to an entirely emotional and psychological reaction based on the visual cues, the anxiety inspired by the daily ordeal, the foreknowledge of the trauma to come.
Modern ideas shed some interesting light on the differences between a premature baby and a full-term baby, and the difference to an adult, in the way we process and react to pain. There is everything to suggest pain reaction is a learned behaviour, and that it is essentially a psychological reaction, or more to the point, an over-reaction to extreme physical stimulus. A sense of pain is learned by piggybacking onto our developing pathways as we are fine-tuning tactile touch. This is why the physical and psychological response varies so much from person to person.
Nor do I think that terminating a late term abortion at the point at which a feotus is viable is technically infanticide. The distinction between abortion and infanticide is, like much else in life, completely arbitrary, but my understanding is that infanticide is terminating life outside the womb, no?
Well, they wouldn't be killing it in the womb at that late stage. So it becomes infanticide. Unless, resigned to it being unworthy of life, the doctor cuts corners and pulls it out, killing it in the process. Not that I'm an expert. I might be wrong. But it's such an extreme hypothetical circumstance and I doubt it has ever actually happened.
Topic: Do some survival instincts conflict with Social Evolution of Humans