I am not against abortion, but I do think Skeptic Magazine article Personhood and Abortion Rights article is very interesting.
With the best of technology, a 20-week-old fetus may occasionally be kept alive, but without it even a 36-week-old fetus may perish. In the future it will probably become possible to sustain a human organism in a special artificial incubator from fertilization for a period of nine months, making viability a moot point.
The best estimate for the onset of consciousness in the fetus (especially the beginning of pain perception) is at 27 weeks gestational age, which is roughly 25 weeks from conception.
Again, focusing on pain perception in their 2005 article in the Journal of the American medical association, Lee, Ralston, and Drey concluded: "Pain is an emotional and psychological experience that requires conscious recognition of a noxious stimulus. Consequently, 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"
Christof Koch, one of the world's leading neuroscientists who worked for many years with the Francis Crick, has said " But when does the magical journey of consciousness begin? Consciousness requires a sophisticated network of highly interconnected components, nerve cells. Its physical substrate, the thalamo-cortical complex that provides consciousness with its highly elaborate content, begins to be in place between the 24th and 28th week of gestation.
The best estimate for the onset of consciousness in the fetus (especially the beginning of pain perception) is at 27 weeks gestational age, which is roughly 25 weeks from conception.
How the Hell can gestation begin two weeks prior to conception??
Christof Koch, one of the world's leading neuroscientists who worked for many years with the Francis Crick, . . .
Yep, the Francis Crick was great to work for.
"Finally, for your rather strange idea that miracles are somehow linked to the amount of gay sexual gratification that is taking place would require that primitive Christianity was launched by gay sex, would it not?"
DoubtingThomas wrote:So it seems an unborn child is not just a body organ.
And a lot of non-human critters feel pain.
Now what?
Where it gets real tricky is that consciousness in a way that starts to distinguish humans from non-human critters doesn't come on-line until well after birth. If this is your criterion for personhood, and it does have the most to recommend it, either we are far to squeamish about killing babies or not squeamish enough about killing non-human critters.
DoubtingThomas wrote:So it seems an unborn child is not just a body organ.
And a lot of non-human critters feel pain.
Now what?
now you become a vegetarian? (until you read secret life of plants)
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
DoubtingThomas wrote:So it seems an unborn child is not just a body organ.
And a lot of non-human critters feel pain.
Now what?
now you prove that anything other than you feels pain?
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
With the best of technology, a 20-week-old fetus may occasionally be kept alive, but without it even a 36-week-old fetus may perish. In the future it will probably become possible to sustain a human organism in a special artificial incubator from fertilization for a period of nine months, making viability a moot point.
This is really silly...It is already possible to sustain a fetus at any age in the whom. To a person that does not want to keep their child, they we terminate it's life or potential for life if they want to.
Don't take life so seriously in that " sooner or later we are just old men in funny clothes" "Tom 'T-Bone' Wolk"