I’d like to push back on this logically, with again the recognition that this is a very sensitive topic, and that emotional reactions are valid.
According to the sources on wikipedia, Brain synapses in foetuses do not form until week 17, and the first evidence of “minimal consciousness and ability to feel pain” does not occur until week 30.
Only 1% of abortions in the US occur after 21 weeks of pregnancy.
I think there’s a bit of motte and bailey going on here, where you use all abortions in your statistics about why this is a significant issue, but only late term abortions in your defence of foetus moral relevance.
Even if we grant some moral weight to a 15 week old foetus (which I’m dubious of), it’s hard to see a logical reason why it would approach the morally significance of an adult chicken. And tens of billions of those are killed every year, and many of them are tortured beforehand.
I see no way for abortion bans (ie: forcing women by threat of force to put their health and lives at risk to bear unwanted children) to compete morally or logically against animal welfare interventions.
Hi, thank you for your comment. To try and respond:
I did try to be clear in distinguishing late abortions from all abortions—sorry if I did not explain myself very clearly! The large majority of the post—including all the arguments and references in the section on the ethics of abortion—refers to abortion in general, and is applicable to all abortions. So I do not think it is true that I used only late term abortions in my defence of fetal moral status. I only introduced late-term abortion in one short paragraph, where (I think) I made it clear that I was offering this as a separate argument even for those who were unpersuaded by the main post, and clarified the (reduced, but still large) scale of the problem for people who fall into that camp: “Even if one has no problem with early abortion, 10% of abortions are after 13 weeks’ gestation, at which point fetuses are fully formed, and likely conscious and able to feel pain.[9] This would amount to at least 3 million relatively late abortions each year globally – and potentially many more if abortion were to become more normalised and permitted around the world.”
I’m aware that Wikipedia has a certain perspective on fetal pain—as it does on many things! - but I think that the evidence shows that perspective to be false. I linked to a recent paper from the world’s leading researcher on this topic (Stuart Derbyshire) who used to hold something like the Wikipedia view, but who has now changed his mind because of evidence of thalamo-cortical precursors developing much earlier in pregnancy—around 12 weeks—than previously thought. Derbyshire himself is pro-choice. In addition, the papers I linked to challenge the necessity of the cortex for pain experience.
Thanks again for your comment. I hope this clarifies things!
According to the sources on wikipedia, Brain synapses in foetuses do not form until week 17, and the first evidence of “minimal consciousness and ability to feel pain” does not occur until week 30.
This comment from a pro-choice author on my post on abortion discusses lines of evidence for the different views on when fetal pain arises. It seems to corroborate Calum’s perspective that Wikipedia editors are biased. From one of its linked studies (Derbyshire et al): “Overall, the evidence, and a balanced reading of that evidence, points towards an immediate and unreflective pain experience mediated by the developing function of the nervous system from as early as 12 weeks.”
Even if we grant some moral weight to a 15 week old foetus (which I’m dubious of), it’s hard to see a logical reason why it would approach the morally significance of an adult chicken.
A 15-week fetus has an order of magnitude more neurons than an adult chicken. (Red junglefowl, the wild relative of chickens, have 221 million neurons, while 13-week fetuses have 3 billion brain cells. Since humans have a near 1:1 neuron-glia ratio, a 13-week fetus’s neuron count should be an order of magnitude greater than a chicken’s.) A chicken also has an underdeveloped cortex relative to mammals, which somewhat corresponds to the fetus’s developing cortex.
If anything, I’d bet in favor of a 15 week fetus having more moral significance than an adult chicken rather than less.
It is bad scientific practice to cite a single study, rather than look for systematic reviews, because you can just cherry pick the one that matches your preferred outcome. It was relatively easy to find this systematic review, which sifts through hundreds of papers and concludes that:
the capacity for conscious perception of pain can arise only after thalamocortical pathways begin to function, which may occur in the third trimester around 29 to 30 weeks’ gestational age, based on the limited data available
Regardless, the relevant point is whether or not this pain, if it exists, is comparable in moral weight to the suffering of animals, which occur in greater numbers.
I could take issue with the 1:1 equating of neuron count with moral worth (which would imply that elephants are more important than humans), but it doesn’t matter, because even if I accept your reasoning and say that fetuses are 10 times as important as chickens, the ~70 billion chickens killed each year would still outweigh the 10 million human fetuses by three orders of magnitude. I could then point out that cows have much more neurons than chickens, and are killed at numbers of 300 million per year.
I didn’t cite a single study—I cited a comment which referenced several studies, and quoted one of them.
I agree with your caveat about neuron counts, though I still think people should update upon an order of magnitude difference in neuron count. Do you have a better proposal for comparing the moral worth of a human fetus and an adult chicken?
I think the argument that abortion reduction doesn’t measure up to animal welfare in importance is an isolated demand for rigor. I agree that the best animal welfare interventions are orders of magnitude more cost-effective than the best abortion reduction interventions. However, you could say the same for GiveWell top charities, Charity Entrepreneurship global health charities, or any other charity in global health.
A more precise reference class would be global health charities that reduce child mortality, like AMF.
When you are working with statistical trends, that can be true. But it is perfectly legitimate to highlight a single study with a very clear finding which is difficult to dispute—e.g. the existence of a certain kind of neuron. Moreover, the study we both cited was not a primary study, but was a review of sorts, from the world’s leading expert in this area—in turn, he cited multiple studies to develop his arguments. The systematic review you mention is, at the very least, outdated, and doesn’t really give any kind of convincing response to the arguments laid out in Derbyshire’s paper.
Put another way, I would take one well-argued paper over a million poorly argued papers. If a paper is well argued and cites relevant and convincing arguments/data, it really doesn’t matter if there are other papers which say the same thing or not. Unless another paper actually responds to those arguments and shows why they are bad—the conclusions remain perfectly valid. In short, I do not think there is any such general principle in science as ‘it is bad practice to cite a single study’ - that really depends on one’s purposes and one’s conclusions.
I’d like to push back on this logically, with again the recognition that this is a very sensitive topic, and that emotional reactions are valid.
According to the sources on wikipedia, Brain synapses in foetuses do not form until week 17, and the first evidence of “minimal consciousness and ability to feel pain” does not occur until week 30.
Only 1% of abortions in the US occur after 21 weeks of pregnancy.
I think there’s a bit of motte and bailey going on here, where you use all abortions in your statistics about why this is a significant issue, but only late term abortions in your defence of foetus moral relevance.
Even if we grant some moral weight to a 15 week old foetus (which I’m dubious of), it’s hard to see a logical reason why it would approach the morally significance of an adult chicken. And tens of billions of those are killed every year, and many of them are tortured beforehand.
I see no way for abortion bans (ie: forcing women by threat of force to put their health and lives at risk to bear unwanted children) to compete morally or logically against animal welfare interventions.
Hi, thank you for your comment. To try and respond:
I did try to be clear in distinguishing late abortions from all abortions—sorry if I did not explain myself very clearly! The large majority of the post—including all the arguments and references in the section on the ethics of abortion—refers to abortion in general, and is applicable to all abortions. So I do not think it is true that I used only late term abortions in my defence of fetal moral status. I only introduced late-term abortion in one short paragraph, where (I think) I made it clear that I was offering this as a separate argument even for those who were unpersuaded by the main post, and clarified the (reduced, but still large) scale of the problem for people who fall into that camp: “Even if one has no problem with early abortion, 10% of abortions are after 13 weeks’ gestation, at which point fetuses are fully formed, and likely conscious and able to feel pain.[9] This would amount to at least 3 million relatively late abortions each year globally – and potentially many more if abortion were to become more normalised and permitted around the world.”
I’m aware that Wikipedia has a certain perspective on fetal pain—as it does on many things! - but I think that the evidence shows that perspective to be false. I linked to a recent paper from the world’s leading researcher on this topic (Stuart Derbyshire) who used to hold something like the Wikipedia view, but who has now changed his mind because of evidence of thalamo-cortical precursors developing much earlier in pregnancy—around 12 weeks—than previously thought. Derbyshire himself is pro-choice. In addition, the papers I linked to challenge the necessity of the cortex for pain experience.
Thanks again for your comment. I hope this clarifies things!
This comment from a pro-choice author on my post on abortion discusses lines of evidence for the different views on when fetal pain arises. It seems to corroborate Calum’s perspective that Wikipedia editors are biased. From one of its linked studies (Derbyshire et al): “Overall, the evidence, and a balanced reading of that evidence, points towards an immediate and unreflective pain experience mediated by the developing function of the nervous system from as early as 12 weeks.”
A 15-week fetus has an order of magnitude more neurons than an adult chicken. (Red junglefowl, the wild relative of chickens, have 221 million neurons, while 13-week fetuses have 3 billion brain cells. Since humans have a near 1:1 neuron-glia ratio, a 13-week fetus’s neuron count should be an order of magnitude greater than a chicken’s.) A chicken also has an underdeveloped cortex relative to mammals, which somewhat corresponds to the fetus’s developing cortex.
If anything, I’d bet in favor of a 15 week fetus having more moral significance than an adult chicken rather than less.
It is bad scientific practice to cite a single study, rather than look for systematic reviews, because you can just cherry pick the one that matches your preferred outcome. It was relatively easy to find this systematic review, which sifts through hundreds of papers and concludes that:
Regardless, the relevant point is whether or not this pain, if it exists, is comparable in moral weight to the suffering of animals, which occur in greater numbers.
I could take issue with the 1:1 equating of neuron count with moral worth (which would imply that elephants are more important than humans), but it doesn’t matter, because even if I accept your reasoning and say that fetuses are 10 times as important as chickens, the ~70 billion chickens killed each year would still outweigh the 10 million human fetuses by three orders of magnitude. I could then point out that cows have much more neurons than chickens, and are killed at numbers of 300 million per year.
I didn’t cite a single study—I cited a comment which referenced several studies, and quoted one of them.
I agree with your caveat about neuron counts, though I still think people should update upon an order of magnitude difference in neuron count. Do you have a better proposal for comparing the moral worth of a human fetus and an adult chicken?
I think the argument that abortion reduction doesn’t measure up to animal welfare in importance is an isolated demand for rigor. I agree that the best animal welfare interventions are orders of magnitude more cost-effective than the best abortion reduction interventions. However, you could say the same for GiveWell top charities, Charity Entrepreneurship global health charities, or any other charity in global health.
A more precise reference class would be global health charities that reduce child mortality, like AMF.
When you are working with statistical trends, that can be true. But it is perfectly legitimate to highlight a single study with a very clear finding which is difficult to dispute—e.g. the existence of a certain kind of neuron. Moreover, the study we both cited was not a primary study, but was a review of sorts, from the world’s leading expert in this area—in turn, he cited multiple studies to develop his arguments. The systematic review you mention is, at the very least, outdated, and doesn’t really give any kind of convincing response to the arguments laid out in Derbyshire’s paper.
Put another way, I would take one well-argued paper over a million poorly argued papers. If a paper is well argued and cites relevant and convincing arguments/data, it really doesn’t matter if there are other papers which say the same thing or not. Unless another paper actually responds to those arguments and shows why they are bad—the conclusions remain perfectly valid. In short, I do not think there is any such general principle in science as ‘it is bad practice to cite a single study’ - that really depends on one’s purposes and one’s conclusions.