We Asked, You Answered: At what point do you think fetuses can feel pain?
The arguments for and against abortion are many. Among them is a simple question: does the fetus feel the pain of undergoing an abortion? While pain perception is debated, SPL turned to social media to ask followers: At what point do you think fetuses can feel pain? How could we tell?
People had a variety of responses, some claiming that pain perception is irrelevant, and others sharing scientific fact or research to defend a specific threshold. Below are some selected answers.
@henri_mourant: We don’t know for sure but it seems quite possible it starts at week 12. [Note: The study that this person linked to has been discussed here by a guest blogger, among other studies.]
Lisa @teamminney: Why would we need to know that? Babies in the womb are living.
The_BS_Hour: Women feel pain in pregnancy too. And you’re ok forcing that pain – taking away bodily ownership from women.
Chris McCue: The short answer is that it is irrelevant. There are certain adults with congenital insensitivity to pain. Is that a reason to treat them as lesser? If not towards them, then not towards anyone else, either.
The long answer is once they start responding to external stimuli. That’s at least a clue, and given that we can’t get inside of them for a first-person perspective, that should be enough.
The mere fact that even the remote possibility of pain could exist should caution us away from performing actions that inflict it.
Katie Allman: I saw a pro-life creator talking about how if you look at ultrasounds and such of abortions you can see the baby pulling away. Some people commenting were comparing that to squashing bugs, that they pull away but they are just bugs and don’t feel pain or fear. Made me sick and want to cry.
Missanthrope: The dispute about fetal pain is not really a scientific dispute. It’s about how pain is defined. Does pain hurt? Does pain feel bad? If pain *feels* bad, humans cannot feel pain without a functional thalamocortical pathways because that’s how humans feel anything at all.
Shannon Crone: Even an embryo in a dish in an IVF lab is effected by change. Even at just a few cells, that embryo can die if conditions aren’t just right. Abortion isn’t a question of whether or not a child feels themselves being ripped apart. It’s a question of are we doing everything possible to preserve this delicate life.
Michael Longarrow: I would suggest the fact that abortion doctors administer a pain killer to the unborn baby before they tear it limb by limb from their mother’s womb indicates they know the baby feels pain. [Note: not all abortionists will use pain killers, and protocol varies by nation and timing of procedure, which could be as early as 20 weeks. Right To Life UK discusses this discrepancy here.]
Kelly Frech: In high school biology I learned a worm has a nervous system but no brain. They sense danger when you put them on a hook.
That same year. I was taking a human science class. We learned the nervous system is created before the brain.
I figured an embryo feels danger. And that’s just as bad as physical pain.
I also quit using worms as bait.
@NoTerminationWR: An underlying problem here: We can’t really tell whether even an adult we know well is feeling pain. Pain is a subjective experience. Only you know for sure whether you are feeling pain.
Kate Jenkins: Well, this comment thread does prove one thing: fetal pain *does* matter. It’s important to how people feel about abortion.
Saving all the pro-lifers who refused to answer the question, there’s a clear discrepancy between pro-life and pro-choice responses. Pro-lifers are giving answers from 6 to 16 weeks, markedly earlier than pro-choice responses (22 to 25 weeks or later). It seems that people are less comfortable with abortion on a pain-capable fetus than on one who likely can’t feel pain.
This is interesting. And important to know.
Resources and Related Posts
- The Facts on Fetal Pain
- New peer-reviewed article: Fetal Pain in the First Trimester
- Three keys to fetal pain – Part 1: The Definition
- Three keys to fetal pain – Part 2: Ultrasound studies
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