I am highlighting the passage because I am not a fan of misleading representations of the scientific evidence, which is what you have done in the initial post.
It appears you do know the contents of the papers you have referred to, and knew it at the time of making the post as well. This makes it significantly worse that you misleadingly summarized it as saying that a 13 week old fetus is “fully formed”, “likely conscious”, and “likely capable of feeling pain”, when the study you cited disagreed on first two points and expressed great uncertainty about the third. This gives the impression that the fetus at 13 weeks is as formed, as conscious, and as capable of pain as a typical full-grown baby, which from this analysis appears to false.
I focused on this passage, because as far as I can tell it’s the main secular argument you made for abortion being bad. Otherwise you kind of just state that we should assume 4 week old fetuses have full human rights until proven otherwise, a position that seems unpopular even among the religious. If you had included the relevant disclaimers, or dropped the secular pretense entirely, I would not have been so harsh, and merely expressed my belief that forcing women to give birth when they don’t want to is unacceptable and immoral.
Highlighting the passage is perfectly fine—I wrote it, and it is part of the post. What is not fine is continually suggesting that it is the primary argument I have given for abortion being wrong, when that is manifestly not the case, and I have made that explicit. I’m happy to respond to criticisms of that particular point—but not for people to misrepresent my post by pretending that it is the main argument given, especially when I have clarified that it is not.
Yes, I am familiar with the evidence. If I had deliberately misrepresented any of the papers I cited, then again, you would be right. But you have failed to show that. Bockmann does think the fetus is likely conscious and able to feel pain by that point, even if they phrased it more hesitantly in the paper, presumably because it is difficult to be certain. Of course, we can never be certain—but they have shown that the main arguments for placing fetal consciousness later in pregnancy fail. I see no good reason to suppose it is later than 12 weeks.
Again, no, I did not ‘just state’ that we should ‘assume’ 4 week old fetuses have full human rights. I said, for example, “Denial of fetal personhood typically leads to implausible conclusions regarding how we may treat infants and severely disabled humans, and arguably to a denial of human equality even among non-disabled adults.” These arguments apply to all embryos/fetuses, regardless of whether they can feel pain, and more detail is available in the references linked.
I am highlighting the passage because I am not a fan of misleading representations of the scientific evidence, which is what you have done in the initial post.
It appears you do know the contents of the papers you have referred to, and knew it at the time of making the post as well. This makes it significantly worse that you misleadingly summarized it as saying that a 13 week old fetus is “fully formed”, “likely conscious”, and “likely capable of feeling pain”, when the study you cited disagreed on first two points and expressed great uncertainty about the third. This gives the impression that the fetus at 13 weeks is as formed, as conscious, and as capable of pain as a typical full-grown baby, which from this analysis appears to false.
I focused on this passage, because as far as I can tell it’s the main secular argument you made for abortion being bad. Otherwise you kind of just state that we should assume 4 week old fetuses have full human rights until proven otherwise, a position that seems unpopular even among the religious. If you had included the relevant disclaimers, or dropped the secular pretense entirely, I would not have been so harsh, and merely expressed my belief that forcing women to give birth when they don’t want to is unacceptable and immoral.
Highlighting the passage is perfectly fine—I wrote it, and it is part of the post. What is not fine is continually suggesting that it is the primary argument I have given for abortion being wrong, when that is manifestly not the case, and I have made that explicit. I’m happy to respond to criticisms of that particular point—but not for people to misrepresent my post by pretending that it is the main argument given, especially when I have clarified that it is not.
Yes, I am familiar with the evidence. If I had deliberately misrepresented any of the papers I cited, then again, you would be right. But you have failed to show that. Bockmann does think the fetus is likely conscious and able to feel pain by that point, even if they phrased it more hesitantly in the paper, presumably because it is difficult to be certain. Of course, we can never be certain—but they have shown that the main arguments for placing fetal consciousness later in pregnancy fail. I see no good reason to suppose it is later than 12 weeks.
Again, no, I did not ‘just state’ that we should ‘assume’ 4 week old fetuses have full human rights. I said, for example, “Denial of fetal personhood typically leads to implausible conclusions regarding how we may treat infants and severely disabled humans, and arguably to a denial of human equality even among non-disabled adults.” These arguments apply to all embryos/fetuses, regardless of whether they can feel pain, and more detail is available in the references linked.