Abortion: can a mother hurt the embryo?

[PearlSeeker]

Actually your source refuted your claims. The fetus does not develop those senses into very late into the pregnancy. Long past the time that over 99% of abortions are done. Abortions done at that time in a pregnancy are almost always due to a medical need and are not done as birth control.

"Touch is the first sense your baby develops before the senses of smell, taste, eyesight and hearing. Parts of the somatosensory system start to form only a few weeks after conception. By week 8 of pregnancy, your baby has developed touch receptors in his face — mostly on his lips and nose — that connect to his growing brain." (same source)

 

[Valjean]

I just picked a random source. It seemed reliable enough... Different sources claim that fetus developes senses (not all at once). So fetus is sentient.

Sensory response doesn't = sentience.

 

[Valjean]

Really?

"While it has already been established that personality is partly linked to genetics, recent genome-wide association studies like this will allow researchers to take a closer look at which parts of our DNA code affect certain aspects of our character."

Source:
Scientists Have Found Genetic Links Between Personality Traits And Psychiatric Diseases

What does personhood have to do with personality?
The link doesn't address personhood.

 

[PearlSeeker]

Sensory response doesn't = sentience.

What does personhood have to do with personality?
The link doesn't address personhood.

"Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations." (Wiki)

Personhood or personality is the status of being a person. (Wiki)

Did you mean any other meaning?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Really?

"While it has already been established that personality is partly linked to genetics, recent genome-wide association studies like this will allow researchers to take a closer look at which parts of our DNA code affect certain aspects of our character."

Source:
Scientists Have Found Genetic Links Between Personality Traits And Psychiatric Diseases

Equivocation fallacy. Personality traits are not personhood.

 

[Subduction Zone]

"Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations." (Wiki)

Personhood or personality is the status of being a person. (Wiki)

Did you mean any other meaning?

Now you are just abusing dictionaries

 

[Subduction Zone]

"Touch is the first sense your baby develops before the senses of smell, taste, eyesight and hearing. Parts of the somatosensory system start to form only a few weeks after conception. By week 8 of pregnancy, your baby has developed touch receptors in his face — mostly on his lips and nose — that connect to his growing brain." (same source)

Touch is not pain. The article that you linked pointed out that the brain is not even well enough developed to feel pain early on. You need to read the whole article and understand it if you want to use it. Please quit cherry picking.

A flatworm has a sense of touch so an embryo or fetus having one is not a sign of personhood.

 

[Valjean]

Sentience is self awareness, the conscious awareness of self as a discrete being, existing in time.

 

[Sheldon]

I just picked a random source. It seemed reliable enough... Different sources claim that fetus developes senses (not all at once). So fetus is sentient.

Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists

"After 24 weeks there is continuing development and elaboration of intracortical networks such that noxious stimuli in newborn preterm infants produce cortical responses. Such connections to the cortex are necessary for pain experience but not sufficient, as experience of external stimuli requires consciousness.

Furthermore, there is increasing evidence that the fetus never experiences a state of true wakefulness in utero and is kept, by the presence of its chemical environment, in a continuous sleep-like unconsciousness or sedation. This state can suppress higher cortical activation in the presence of intrusive external stimuli. This observation highlights the important differences between fetal and neonatal life and the difficulties of extrapolating from observations made in newborn preterm infants to the fetus."

Now be a dear, and quote exactly where your source disagrees with that, and why? Only earlier you seem to have not read it fully.

 

[Sheldon]

If you put someone to "sleep" without feeling any pain then it's no harm? The harm is that someone cannot live anymore.

Really, another straw man fallacy, read my post again?

 

[Sheldon]

Really?

"While it has already been established that personality is partly linked to genetics, recent genome-wide association studies like this will allow researchers to take a closer look at which parts of our DNA code affect certain aspects of our character."

Source:
Scientists Have Found Genetic Links Between Personality Traits And Psychiatric Diseases

You seem happy to cherry pick evidence you think supports your position, while ignoring others. This is either deliberately disingenuous or facile reasoning. If genes ALONE were responsible for personality then we'd likely be coming out the womb with it all in place, you've seen new born babies right, seen the DEVELOP personalities slowly.

 

[PearlSeeker]

Now you are just abusing dictionaries

I depend on dictionaries as English is not my first language.

 

[Sheldon]

"Touch is the first sense your baby develops before the senses of smell, taste, eyesight and hearing. Parts of the somatosensory system start to form only a few weeks after conception. By week 8 of pregnancy, your baby has developed touch receptors in his face — mostly on his lips and nose — that connect to his growing brain." (same source)

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE YOU LINKED... it does not support your position a foetus is sentient or feels pain. I even quoted the relevant text from it for you, dear oh dear.

 

[Sheldon]

"Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations." (Wiki)

Which a foetus can't, prior to 24 weeks the neural connections to their brains haven't formed, and they are kept in a sedated state in utero. READ THE FULL ARTICLE YOU LINKED.

Personhood or personality is the status of being a person. (Wiki)

A particularly vapid tautology.

 

[PearlSeeker]

Touch is not pain. The article that you linked pointed out that the brain is not even well enough developed to feel pain early on. You need to read the whole article and understand it if you want to use it. Please quit cherry picking.

A flatworm has a sense of touch so an embryo or fetus having one is not a sign of personhood.

@Sheldon

I've read it. I have just picked the earliest minimum requirement when a human becomes a sentient being (is able to sense something).

 

[PearlSeeker]

If genes ALONE were responsible...

Strawman. My quote: "personality is partly linked to genetics".

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Why is it moral to prevent/deprive someone from sentient experience before it even begins and not moral to end sentient experience of the same being?

To use the language of the anti-choice crowd, the fetus isn't a "person." Unlike your next door neighbor, for example, it's just mindless tissue. It has no personality, no memories. That difference doesn't matter to many, but it does to many more. As the Allman Brothers said, you can't lose what you never had.

I just picked a random source. It seemed reliable enough... Different sources claim that fetus developes senses (not all at once). So fetus is sentient.

Probably not. From When does a human fetus become self-aware i.e, . Become a Sentient being? - Quora (note the author's title, "Lead researcher, consciousness theory")

"Fetuses are not conscious, so they can’t be sentient. Fetuses cannot be conscious for the simple reason that there isn’t enough oxygen. Half of the mother’s respiratory effort goes to nourishing the fetus, and 70% of the fetus’ respiratory effort goes to sustaining the brain. If the fetal brain operated at a conscious level they would sustain brain damage. Instead, the fetus remains unconscious much like a medically induced coma to to keep the brain’s requirements as low as possible. When the baby is born and begins breathing on its own, oxygen is no longer a problem. The brain kicks into high gear. The baby becomes conscious and starts making eye contact after a few days. Any mother of a newborn can confirm this; babies do not make eye contact at birth."

experience of external stimuli requires consciousness.

Yes. Anybody that has ever fallen asleep with a headache and awakened with it can attest to that. Just as with surgery and general anesthesia, pain stops with the loss of consciousness.

 

[Subduction Zone]

@Sheldon

I've read it. I have just picked the earliest minimum requirement when a human becomes a sentient being (is able to sense something).

How can a fetus be sentient without a functioning brain? It takes a lot more than a sense of touch to be human.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Strawman. My quote: "personality is partly linked to genetics".

And another post that can be refuted by a "So what?"

 

[Subduction Zone]

I depend on dictionaries as English is not my first language.

That might explain why you do not understand the concept of what a "person" is.