Wow, thanks for drawing my attention to this (hadn’t really considered it at all before).
My gut pessimistic instinct is that this’d be intractable to implement — at least in the US — because administering anaesthesia could perhaps be seen as an implicit admission of moral personhood. I also doubt anaesthesia would get much support from pro-life advocates, since they oppose abortions altogether.
I hope that I could be proven wrong about that, though. Maybe a good next step could be for someone to talk to some doctors who administer abortions & get a few reactions?
I can imagine a first step would be it being offered as an option to mothers. Many late term abortions happen with wanted babies after a serious diagnosis.
Yep I was going to write something similar before I saw this comment. I think you may have nailed the main reason why anesthesia doesn’t happen. Pro-life people won’t support it, and pro-choice people would be uncomfortable with admitting the possibility of pain and the implications of that.
For what it’s worth, my impression is that the reason it’s not regularly administered is because doctors think it slightly increases the risk of complications for the mother (e.g. bleeding) and would make the procedure slightly more expensive and time-consuming. That, plus the assumption that the drugs given to the mother during the procedure are sufficient. Also, there have been efforts by pro-life lawmakers to draw attention to fetal pain, though this is probably a tactic to increase anti-abortion sentiment in general.
”Fetuses are routinely sedated during surgery, for reasons beyond the fear that the operation might cause them pain. Anesthetics stop a fetus from kicking around, making the operation safer. And though a fetus might not be conscious of pain, its body can respond to pain and stress in ways that interfere with its recovery. Painkillers alleviate that problem. That can happen directly or indirectly. During fetal surgery, women typically receive general anesthesia or sedation, making them unconscious or semi-conscious and pain-free. These drugs pass through the placenta to affect the fetus. For more involved operations, doctors inject extra painkillers directly into the fetus...
For as long as the fetus is alive during the abortion, it will experience some anesthetic effects depending on what drugs the mother receives. But would indirect anesthesia suffice to provide the “adequate relief” from pain that HB 479 demands? Just to make sure, Olszewski would prefer that fetuses are anesthetized directly during an abortion. He says that doctors can readily learn how to use an ultrasound-guided needle to deliver a cheap dose of painkillers to the fetus.”
My weak intuition is that pro-life people would support anesthesia. For one reason, they may support it precisely because of the reason you give that pro-choice people do not support it (that is, the implications of moral personhood some people may infer). On the other hand, one counterexample to my intuition is the analogy to how some animal rights activists oppose welfare reforms or at least discuss them with a negative tone, due to a more absolutist or anti-incrementalist position.
But perhaps more importantly, if it’s true that pro-life people generally would support it, I would expect that to make it less tractable, because there’s a risk pro-choice people would react and be polarised against it if it was seen as a pro-life political weapon.
Wow, thanks for drawing my attention to this (hadn’t really considered it at all before).
My gut pessimistic instinct is that this’d be intractable to implement — at least in the US — because administering anaesthesia could perhaps be seen as an implicit admission of moral personhood. I also doubt anaesthesia would get much support from pro-life advocates, since they oppose abortions altogether.
I hope that I could be proven wrong about that, though. Maybe a good next step could be for someone to talk to some doctors who administer abortions & get a few reactions?
I can imagine a first step would be it being offered as an option to mothers. Many late term abortions happen with wanted babies after a serious diagnosis.
However this post doesn’t seem to talk about the main drug used for late abortions in the UK? So I’m sceptical. https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng140/chapter/Recommendations#medical-abortion-after-236-weeks
Yep I was going to write something similar before I saw this comment. I think you may have nailed the main reason why anesthesia doesn’t happen. Pro-life people won’t support it, and pro-choice people would be uncomfortable with admitting the possibility of pain and the implications of that.
For what it’s worth, my impression is that the reason it’s not regularly administered is because doctors think it slightly increases the risk of complications for the mother (e.g. bleeding) and would make the procedure slightly more expensive and time-consuming. That, plus the assumption that the drugs given to the mother during the procedure are sufficient. Also, there have been efforts by pro-life lawmakers to draw attention to fetal pain, though this is probably a tactic to increase anti-abortion sentiment in general.
From this 2015 Washington Post article:
”Fetuses are routinely sedated during surgery, for reasons beyond the fear that the operation might cause them pain. Anesthetics stop a fetus from kicking around, making the operation safer. And though a fetus might not be conscious of pain, its body can respond to pain and stress in ways that interfere with its recovery. Painkillers alleviate that problem. That can happen directly or indirectly. During fetal surgery, women typically receive general anesthesia or sedation, making them unconscious or semi-conscious and pain-free. These drugs pass through the placenta to affect the fetus. For more involved operations, doctors inject extra painkillers directly into the fetus...
For as long as the fetus is alive during the abortion, it will experience some anesthetic effects depending on what drugs the mother receives. But would indirect anesthesia suffice to provide the “adequate relief” from pain that HB 479 demands? Just to make sure, Olszewski would prefer that fetuses are anesthetized directly during an abortion. He says that doctors can readily learn how to use an ultrasound-guided needle to deliver a cheap dose of painkillers to the fetus.”
My weak intuition is that pro-life people would support anesthesia. For one reason, they may support it precisely because of the reason you give that pro-choice people do not support it (that is, the implications of moral personhood some people may infer). On the other hand, one counterexample to my intuition is the analogy to how some animal rights activists oppose welfare reforms or at least discuss them with a negative tone, due to a more absolutist or anti-incrementalist position.
But perhaps more importantly, if it’s true that pro-life people generally would support it, I would expect that to make it less tractable, because there’s a risk pro-choice people would react and be polarised against it if it was seen as a pro-life political weapon.