Here's the latest "science" spoonfed to the liberal media, with so many holes in it that JAMA can't seem to keep a straight face:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166555,00.html


The real trend in research shows that infant consciousness is being pushed further and further back. Check out the August 15th edition of Newsweek for a summary on brain development in babies, including their capacity for empathy very early on, and how adept they are re: learning from others. Basically what the authors conclude is that a mother's intuition has always been correct, and that science is usually the last to know. It seems getting our pediatricians to think with their heart is the real turf battle, as it threatens to border on psuedo-science, at least for researchers who fear taking the step toward real clinical relevance. The authors do a spot on Stanley Greenspan's work, which is a real encouragement.

That's so ridiculous! Snakes feel pain, as do insects. Any creature that has its nervous system stressed feels some kind of pain. Unless you can show that fetuses don't have nervous systems, then I don't see how you can deny that they feel pain.

You can kill an adult so suddenly and violently that they don�t feel pain. So what�s the point if an unborn baby can or can not feel itself being killed?

It�s interesting how a cult of death coincides with this cult of sex that we�re living with these days. And don�t mistake me for a prude. One doesn�t have to be a prude to recognize the obvious, how sex is being pushed and promoted in super-charged abundance in all forms in this culture. But I think a culture of death and sex go together because, as nice as sex can be, to push the concept that sex can be as recreationally and nonchalantly enjoyed with no more thought than a good massage, one has to kill the concept of human bonding and some other higher moral considerations. Slippery slope, especially when one tries to deny the dubiousness of one�s sexual proclivities and tries to compensate by shoehorning in from the other side the notion that fetuses are as disposable as diapers.

Well, that�s one possible dynamic.

"But I think a culture of death and sex go together because, as nice as sex can be, to push the concept that sex can be as recreationally and nonchalantly enjoyed with no more thought than a good massage, one has to kill the concept of human bonding and some other higher moral considerations."


This suggests why the battle is fought on the left with such irrational ferocity.

It's still all about trying to demonstrate that a fetus ought not to be considered human and so its "rights" don't matter. And even if it is a "human," then if it feels no pain, what's the big deal. As Brad has noted, that kind of scenario is possible for adults as well.

Of course, if a fetus is a human genome with a future as a human being (given the right developmental environment), then that changes everything. For that definition applies to the reader, myself and even a human zygote. . . and we haven't even talked about God or a soul!

Along with what Brad is saying, the rationalization is also an attempt to escape enormous guilt, which of itself strongly admits of the destructive nature of the act.

Genome Phil said: It's still all about trying to demonstrate that a fetus ought not to be considered human and so its "rights" don't matter.

Agreed.

Genome WC said: �the rationalization is also an attempt to escape enormous guilt

Agreed. I think it was Grant or Sherman (I'm not sure which, if either) who said of General Lee something like, "Never has so much talent been so misused for such a bad cause." It's just not a good thing to use fetuses as a birth control device. No matter what stage it's in, or whether it can or cannot feel pain, it's something that is always in a stage toward adulthood and full growth. Part of that time is spent in the womb. Part of it out. It's just common sense that it is inherently bad to destroy it, let alone devalue it. And oh how so much time and talent has gone into trying to devalue the unborn baby.

It looks like the authors of the JAMA article forgot to take a look at the work of Professor Stuart Campbell.

Professor Campbell is part of the Clinic Create Health.

Here is a video link to Professor Campbell's work.

Professor Campbell's work IMHO shows just how cognitive the "fetus" is as early as the 10th week.

The best part of this whole story is the reaction of one of the editor's of JAMA defending the article. She claims the article was based on sound scientific data. I guess real time video of actual "fetuses" at every stage of development is not considered scientific data.

Hey, Rico.

Modern liberalism and feminism have promoted the idea that it is emancipation for the woman if she is freed from entrapment and enslavement by the male due to pregnancy (apparently the idea that women are truly equal is not really believed, even by feminists, or they would not need to portray themselves as both equal in ability and as victims). And who can doubt that a nine month pregnancy and at least a sixteen year commitment to raising a child is no small thing? But even while holding the male of the species feet to the fire in terms of sexual responsibility, must liberal and feminine meanness extend to the unborn baby as well? Must constant efforts be made to degrade the unborn in order to justify a mean sort of emancipation?

Apparently so.

The Inhumane Society
By George Neumayr

quote:

The left spent much of the week feeling Hugo Chavez's pain. But it was in no mood to feel the pain of unborn children. A bogus study's claim that unborn children don't feel any pain at all generated a flurry of tendentiously hopeful media reports. "Researchers: Fetal Pain Not An Abortion Issue; Review of 2,000 Studies Concludes Fetus Feels Nothing Up to 29 Weeks," read one headline.

Who are these "researchers"? Abortion activists, it has come out. A San Francisco abortion clinic doctor and a former NARAL employee spearheaded the article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), an article which asserts unbelievably that doctors can dismember a child up to 29 weeks without the child feeling a thing.