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> Given that we are actively attempting to deny the fact that fetuses feel pain, are we really that much more civilized? I don’t believe the discussion has bee

> Given that we are actively attempting to deny the fact that fetuses feel pain, are we really that much more civilized? I don’t believe the discussion has been around whether a fetus feels pain or not, but around whether the fetus takes priority over the woman it is in.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mbg721 4y ago
- oneoff786 4y ago
  You’re acting as if the post you responded to denied fetuses feel pain. They did not. It just doesn’t matter.
anon291 4y ago
- oblio 4y ago
  Is this a real cause for concern? I don't really know how abortions are performed, but doesn't the fetus die quickly? I imagine that once it's "unplugged", depending on its age, it's seconds to a minute from death.
  - seibelj 4y ago
  - prometheus76 4y ago
    You should look into the details of how abortions are performed and what the process entails.
    - oblio 4y ago
      I couldn't find anything relevant regarding my question. If you have a source, please post it.
      - prometheus76 4y ago
        whatisabortion.com
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - anon291 4y ago
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      You're really letting your partisanship shine through. Late term abortions are so exceedingly rare that they don't warrant serious discussion. They are exclusively happening when the risk to the mother is extreme, or the fetus is already dead (or has something like Trisomy 18, which is painful and 100% fatal within moments after birth, should the fetus survive long enough to see the outside of the womb).
      - bpodgursky 4y ago
        They are mostly happening for those reasons, but in many states it is legal through 3rd trimester with no restrictions [1]. If this argument was obvious partisanship, there would simply be a national ban on elective 3rd trimester abortion (as you argue, it's a no-brainer). Yet that is not a bill which can pass congress today, suggesting there is considerable support for elective 3rd trimester abortion. Congress has come together to pass sweeping bills to prevent far fewer deaths than those abortions (think Patriot Act). [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/what-states-allow-late-term-abortion https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/what-states...
      - anon291 4y ago
        > Late term abortions are so exceedingly rare that they don't warrant serious discussion. Executions are exceedingly rare, yet they do warrant discussion. School shootings are also incredibly rare, yet they warrant discussion. Terrorist attacks are incredibly rare, yet they warrant discussion. All these discussions are warranted. You're showing your partisanship by refusing to discuss something simply because it's rare. How many abortions of the kind I described would you be willing to tolerate? Why? The CDC (hhttps://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/ss/ss6907a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/ss/ss6907a1.htm) says that about 5000 abortions occured in 2018 after 21 weeks. This is more than the total killed in 9/11, the total killed by school shootings (169 killed since 1999), etc. So again, how many? EDIT; downvoted for citing data. Sad that we can't have productive discussions on hacker news. My partisanship used to lie solely with the democrats until they became intolerant of any view other than abortion anytime, anywhere; now I'm a political outsider. When one sees engagement like this, these sorts of stories become unsurprising.
- thatfrenchguy 4y ago
  https://www.ucsfhealth.org/treatments/surgical-abortion-second-trimester https://www.ucsfhealth.org/treatments/surgical-abortion-seco... Five seconds on Google to find the answer to your question. Embryos don't have a human brain when you use an abortion pills as well, and second/third-trimester abortions that are not "the mother's life is in danger" are incredibly rare, even in the United States where people are incredibly uneducated on the subject because of antiscientific religious pressure ( https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/fact-sheet/abortions-later-in-pregnancy/ https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/fact-sheet/abortion... ).
  - anon291 4y ago
    Here is planned parenthood's opinion: https://www.guttmacher.org/evidence-you-can-use/later-abortion https://www.guttmacher.org/evidence-you-can-use/later-aborti... First you'll note they dispute the fact fetuses can feel pain at all, because fetuses are not conscious. One questions at what point in the vagina consciousness develops. Inquiring minds want to know. And my point is that even when the mother's life is in danger is no excuse to not anesthesize the child. Anesthesia for the child has nothing to do with the woman's body. Anesthetic does not cross the placenta from child to mother. The only explanation is we don't want to consider the fact that the child feels pain, whether the mother's life is in danger or not.
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    > antiscientific religious pressure I find it really weird that this phrase is used when talking about things like abortion, but never gets used when talking about infant circumcision. Isn't the only reason that infants are allowed to be permanently mutilated along with lifelong loss of sensation due to intense lobbying by antiscientific religious pressure?
    - thatfrenchguy 4y ago
      Yes, we should abolish circumcision as well
  - cato_the_elder 4y ago
epgui 4y ago
There's that, and also the fact that "pain" means something very different (ie.: just a nervous reflex, no more) to an undeveloped brain.
- troupe 4y ago
  Is that any different than the argument that was being made about infants? Would you test for it in the same way?
  - epgui 4y ago
    It may or may not be different, because there are many places you could arbitrarily draw a line along the development continuum, but drawing the line after the "infant" stage was rather ridiculous. Just to be clear, the fetal stage is defined arbitrarily as being between week 9 and week 40. The ability to feel pain, along with minimal consciousness, starts around week 30. There is very literally a continuum from "two single cells" to "a bag of cells" to "a mass of undifferentiated tissue" to "functional but not fully organized tissue" to "a minimally viable human". There is no stage at which the thing suddenly becomes a human. It would be a lot simpler if there was, but that's not how it is. In the context of abortion, I stand by my previous comment: abortions are done as early as possible, and this is usually much earlier than week 30. Less than 1% of abortions happen after week 20 in the US, and these are exceptional cases.
    - anon291 4y ago
      > these are exceptional cases The question wasn't about whether they're exceptional or not. It was... do we anesthesize these exceptional fetuses before killing them? The CDC says there are about 5000 exceptional fetuses every year. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/ss/ss6907a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/ss/ss6907a1.htm
      - epgui 4y ago
        I would think that would be an excellent idea, and with a very large margin for error on gestational age.
dudul 4y ago
Really? I'm not very active in these conversations, but I was always under the impressions that a predominant argument in favor of abortion is that the fetus is just a bunch of cells that has no consciousness and can't feel anything anyway so who cares?
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  I've met damn few people on the pro-choice side who were pro-abortion, no matter how you'd like to frame it. We just don't trust the government to be involved in this very personal decision.
  - troupe 4y ago
    I shared that view I thought Obama, while supporting the right to abortion said, “we already have agreement, we both respect life, we both view abortion as a moral tragedy.” This seemed to recognize that no one should really be "pro-abortion" even if they have different views as to what role the government should be involved. My view changed when I heard Ilyse Hogue give a speech where people applauded and cheered when she said she had an abortion. It was at that moment that I realized that some people are indeed pro-abortion and do not see it as a tragedy.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      I expect there are outliers, of course. Or people who've become so deeply attached to their tribal identity that their support for various wedge issues is extreme. My wife and I are very much pro-choice. At the same time, before we started our family, we had a deep discussion on the topic of abortion and how we felt about it. We decided we would only be able to abort the pregnancy if the child had trisomy 18, or was already dead. We had no other exceptions in mind. But we don't think that this is a good policy decision the government should make on behalf of its citizens. In my wider circle of friends, I don't know a single person who thinks that abortion is anything other than a tragedy. I don't know any real whack jobs, though.
      - 4y ago
swat535 4y ago
> around whether the fetus takes priority over the woman it is in. My understanding is that the question that is posed is: "When does a fetus becomes a living child?" Since at _some point_, there is clearly a living human shaped and abortion can no longer be performed AFAIK. For example in Canada it's ~23 weeks, other countries have different limits. Just wanted to clarify, though this is not the right place to discuss it..
- anon291 4y ago
  In the United States, unless Roe is stricken down, then there is no point at which a fetus becomes a living child. States can regulate, but cannot restrict abortion up until birth.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mbg721 4y ago

oneoff786 4y ago
You’re acting as if the post you responded to denied fetuses feel pain. They did not. It just doesn’t matter.

anon291 4y ago

oblio 4y ago
Is this a real cause for concern? I don't really know how abortions are performed, but doesn't the fetus die quickly? I imagine that once it's "unplugged", depending on its age, it's seconds to a minute from death.
- seibelj 4y ago
- prometheus76 4y ago
  You should look into the details of how abortions are performed and what the process entails.
  - oblio 4y ago
    I couldn't find anything relevant regarding my question. If you have a source, please post it.
    - prometheus76 4y ago
      whatisabortion.com
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- anon291 4y ago
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    You're really letting your partisanship shine through. Late term abortions are so exceedingly rare that they don't warrant serious discussion. They are exclusively happening when the risk to the mother is extreme, or the fetus is already dead (or has something like Trisomy 18, which is painful and 100% fatal within moments after birth, should the fetus survive long enough to see the outside of the womb).
    - bpodgursky 4y ago
      They are mostly happening for those reasons, but in many states it is legal through 3rd trimester with no restrictions [1]. If this argument was obvious partisanship, there would simply be a national ban on elective 3rd trimester abortion (as you argue, it's a no-brainer). Yet that is not a bill which can pass congress today, suggesting there is considerable support for elective 3rd trimester abortion. Congress has come together to pass sweeping bills to prevent far fewer deaths than those abortions (think Patriot Act). [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/what-states-allow-late-term-abortion https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/what-states...
    - anon291 4y ago
      > Late term abortions are so exceedingly rare that they don't warrant serious discussion. Executions are exceedingly rare, yet they do warrant discussion. School shootings are also incredibly rare, yet they warrant discussion. Terrorist attacks are incredibly rare, yet they warrant discussion. All these discussions are warranted. You're showing your partisanship by refusing to discuss something simply because it's rare. How many abortions of the kind I described would you be willing to tolerate? Why? The CDC (hhttps://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/ss/ss6907a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/ss/ss6907a1.htm) says that about 5000 abortions occured in 2018 after 21 weeks. This is more than the total killed in 9/11, the total killed by school shootings (169 killed since 1999), etc. So again, how many? EDIT; downvoted for citing data. Sad that we can't have productive discussions on hacker news. My partisanship used to lie solely with the democrats until they became intolerant of any view other than abortion anytime, anywhere; now I'm a political outsider. When one sees engagement like this, these sorts of stories become unsurprising.
thatfrenchguy 4y ago
https://www.ucsfhealth.org/treatments/surgical-abortion-second-trimester https://www.ucsfhealth.org/treatments/surgical-abortion-seco... Five seconds on Google to find the answer to your question. Embryos don't have a human brain when you use an abortion pills as well, and second/third-trimester abortions that are not "the mother's life is in danger" are incredibly rare, even in the United States where people are incredibly uneducated on the subject because of antiscientific religious pressure ( https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/fact-sheet/abortions-later-in-pregnancy/ https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/fact-sheet/abortion... ).
- anon291 4y ago
  Here is planned parenthood's opinion: https://www.guttmacher.org/evidence-you-can-use/later-abortion https://www.guttmacher.org/evidence-you-can-use/later-aborti... First you'll note they dispute the fact fetuses can feel pain at all, because fetuses are not conscious. One questions at what point in the vagina consciousness develops. Inquiring minds want to know. And my point is that even when the mother's life is in danger is no excuse to not anesthesize the child. Anesthesia for the child has nothing to do with the woman's body. Anesthetic does not cross the placenta from child to mother. The only explanation is we don't want to consider the fact that the child feels pain, whether the mother's life is in danger or not.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > antiscientific religious pressure I find it really weird that this phrase is used when talking about things like abortion, but never gets used when talking about infant circumcision. Isn't the only reason that infants are allowed to be permanently mutilated along with lifelong loss of sensation due to intense lobbying by antiscientific religious pressure?
  - thatfrenchguy 4y ago
    Yes, we should abolish circumcision as well
- cato_the_elder 4y ago

epgui 4y ago

There's that, and also the fact that "pain" means something very different (ie.: just a nervous reflex, no more) to an undeveloped brain.

troupe 4y ago
Is that any different than the argument that was being made about infants? Would you test for it in the same way?
- epgui 4y ago
  It may or may not be different, because there are many places you could arbitrarily draw a line along the development continuum, but drawing the line after the "infant" stage was rather ridiculous. Just to be clear, the fetal stage is defined arbitrarily as being between week 9 and week 40. The ability to feel pain, along with minimal consciousness, starts around week 30. There is very literally a continuum from "two single cells" to "a bag of cells" to "a mass of undifferentiated tissue" to "functional but not fully organized tissue" to "a minimally viable human". There is no stage at which the thing suddenly becomes a human. It would be a lot simpler if there was, but that's not how it is. In the context of abortion, I stand by my previous comment: abortions are done as early as possible, and this is usually much earlier than week 30. Less than 1% of abortions happen after week 20 in the US, and these are exceptional cases.
  - anon291 4y ago
    > these are exceptional cases The question wasn't about whether they're exceptional or not. It was... do we anesthesize these exceptional fetuses before killing them? The CDC says there are about 5000 exceptional fetuses every year. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/ss/ss6907a1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/ss/ss6907a1.htm
    - epgui 4y ago
      I would think that would be an excellent idea, and with a very large margin for error on gestational age.

dudul 4y ago

Really? I'm not very active in these conversations, but I was always under the impressions that a predominant argument in favor of abortion is that the fetus is just a bunch of cells that has no consciousness and can't feel anything anyway so who cares?

rootusrootus 4y ago
I've met damn few people on the pro-choice side who were pro-abortion, no matter how you'd like to frame it. We just don't trust the government to be involved in this very personal decision.
- troupe 4y ago
  I shared that view I thought Obama, while supporting the right to abortion said, “we already have agreement, we both respect life, we both view abortion as a moral tragedy.” This seemed to recognize that no one should really be "pro-abortion" even if they have different views as to what role the government should be involved. My view changed when I heard Ilyse Hogue give a speech where people applauded and cheered when she said she had an abortion. It was at that moment that I realized that some people are indeed pro-abortion and do not see it as a tragedy.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    I expect there are outliers, of course. Or people who've become so deeply attached to their tribal identity that their support for various wedge issues is extreme. My wife and I are very much pro-choice. At the same time, before we started our family, we had a deep discussion on the topic of abortion and how we felt about it. We decided we would only be able to abort the pregnancy if the child had trisomy 18, or was already dead. We had no other exceptions in mind. But we don't think that this is a good policy decision the government should make on behalf of its citizens. In my wider circle of friends, I don't know a single person who thinks that abortion is anything other than a tragedy. I don't know any real whack jobs, though.
    - 4y ago

swat535 4y ago

> around whether the fetus takes priority over the woman it is in. My understanding is that the question that is posed is: "When does a fetus becomes a living child?" Since at _some point_, there is clearly a living human shaped and abortion can no longer be performed AFAIK. For example in Canada it's ~23 weeks, other countries have different limits. Just wanted to clarify, though this is not the right place to discuss it..

anon291 4y ago
In the United States, unless Roe is stricken down, then there is no point at which a fetus becomes a living child. States can regulate, but cannot restrict abortion up until birth.