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!
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!