WOW! What a great straw man!!!
There is a lot of solemn and indignant nonsense written on both sides of the abortion issue, but for mind-numbing muddle-headedness, Salon’s Katie McDonough deserves some kind of prize. In a jaw-dropping essay titled “Fetal Pain Is A Lie: How Phony Science Took Over The Abortion Debate,” she makes such a throbbing-neon straw man argument that it should be used in textbooks as an example of the technique, beginning with the very first statement under the headline,—“New laws banning abortion after 20 weeks are based on pseudoscience — and real research proves it conclusively.”
Real research “proves” nothing of the kind. The various laws banning late term abortions are based on the argument that there has to be a line where the fetus stops being treated by the law like a mass of cells with no rights or status as an individual, unless we’re ready to proceed down the slippery slope to the point where a woman gives birth, looks the kid over to see if she likes him, and bashes his brains out against the wall, legally of course, if she doesn’t. But McDonough asserts that the laws only “rest on the stated premise that a fetus can experience pain at 20 weeks, and that this is a sufficient justification to ban all abortions after this gestational stage.” This is exactly as disingenuous as arguing that the argument for gun control is based entirely on the assumption that young children are at risk of slaughter in proliferating Sandy Hooks, so if one can prove, as anyone easily can, that the actual threat of grade school shootings is minimal, the a valid argument for more stringent gun control doesn’t exist.The fact that advocates sometimes use emotion-based arguments rather than the tougher, more substantive ones doesn’t mean, as McDonough would have us believe, that disproving one eliminates the other.
Those who want to prohibit late term abortions believe that the gestating child at that stage is a human life, and that allowing it to be killed is the state sanctioning murder. Using the alleged pain the aborted baby suffers as a means to arouse the emotions of the public is a tactic and a cheap one (like making the deaths of children the focus of gun control), but it is hardly the actual basis of the proposed prohibition. Does McDonough really think that advocates of the legislation would immediately agree that it was unnecessary if they could be shown that the process of abortion is painless to the aborted? Would a similar offering eliminate the objections of opponents of capital punishment? Would animal rights advocates shrug off cruelty to dogs if it could be shown that dogs could be starved, neglected, beaten and bloodied painlessly?
To be blunt: Is McDonough really this dumb, or does she just think everyone else is?
What is she arguing…that pain is the basis of humanity? That if it doesn’t hurt, it isn’t violence? That objections to abortion are based on a crazy obsession with protecting non-human masses of cells from pain? Boy, I’m really confused: all these years of observing the debate over abortion, and I thought it was about saving innocent unborn lives, not making sure that their deaths were painless. How did I miss that?
If a fetus is a human life, whether or not it feels pain while it is being killed doesn’t make the fact that it is being killed more or less morally objectionable. If it isn’t a human life, whether or not it feels pain is of academic importance only. This is a cynical side issue, not the central issue. Any legislator who pretends that the existence of fetal pain is the main reason to stop abortions after 20 weeks is a con artist, and any legislator (and any voter) who believes it is a fool. The issue is life, not pain. It has always been life.
That Katie McDonough and her editors really think that disposing of the fetal pain question eliminates the ethical objections to late-term abortion shows their complete, callous, calculated and convenient lack of concern about what a late-term gestating child is…but we already knew that.
It’s so much easier to pretend that irrelevancies are the only issues, so they can duck the difficult one. For a human being is a human being whether he or she feels pain or not. The question in all abortions, and not just the late term variety, is when a fetus becomes a human being and an individual with the right to life, not how much it hurts when you kill it.
______________________________
Pointer: WSJ (Taranto)
Source: Pop Science
Ethics Alarms 
“To be blunt: Is McDonough really this dumb, or does she just think everyone else is?”
Possibly both. Most likely the latter. And, in the case of so many of us who lack critical thinking skills, she’s probably right.
Good essay, Jack.
Well, they are Salon readers…
There are two important points to consider here. The first point is if it is OK to kill living things as long as they don’t suffer pain. If it IS OK, then I propose that unhappy marriages should be ended with an overdose of morphine rather than divorce because it is less painful. It is obvious that Katie McDonough just wants abortions no matter what, and is scrambling for any excuse to justify them. Similar behavior can be found in teenager trying to justify illegal drug use, sex at 14, staying out late, etc.
The second point to consider is the source of her information. The medical community refused to admit that infants felt pain until the late 1980’s/ early 1990’s. Only after parents became outraged that major surgeries were being done with only a paralytic, but no anesthesia did they relent. Of course, physicians also felt it was perfectly fine to withold fluids from newborns and allow them to dehydrate if they had birth defects, so I wouldn’t go looking to the medical community if you want to find someone with the best interests of children in mind.
Haven’t there been a lot of arguments recently, about extending the point in time when human life begins to sometime after birth? Something like, “when a conscience forms,” or something like that? That would be a genocidal performance artist’s wet dream: Just presume that you, the artist, have a conscience, but also, that since so many others around you don’t agree with you, they do not have a conscience, thereby justifying a “solution.”
I’m sorry; I avoided commenting about the ethics of inflicting “pain.”
“The various laws banning late term abortions are based on the argument that there has to be a line where the fetus stops being treated by the law like a mass of cells with no rights or status as an individual.”
Yes, and don’t fetal pain laws draw that line on the premise that it’s when the fetus begins feeling pain? I recognize of course, as McDonough should recognize, that such laws are abstractally grounded in large moral beliefs, but isn’t fetal pain the peg they hang it on, so to speak? If it were bogus science it would be a bogus peg.
If we had an epidemic of four foot babies,the rational argument would be that we better come up with another way of screening who can ride on roller coasters, not that there was no longer any valid reason to limit who could ride. Measurements and bench marks are tools to draw needed lines; they don’t define the need for lines. Go ahead, prove that some 15 year-old are more mature than some 18-year olds—the reason behind making 18 the age of consent has to do with protecting vulnerable children from the power and influence of adults, not magic ages.
The essay doesn’t acknowledge the ethically, morally and logically obvious—that a human life the feels no pain has as many rights as one that does.
No, it doesn’t, but it’s not an essay on the morals and ethics of abortion. It’s an essay purporting that fetal pain is basically a political invention. Adding the sentence “Of course, fetal pain is completely irrelevant to the moral horror of abortion” would neither strengthen nor weaken the essay.
I always thought “taller than this line” on roller coasters referred to the minimum height someone had to be to be contained by the safety belts and such. Dwarves can’t ride them; four-foot babies could. Of course, any essay on this issue would need to acknowledge the ethically, morally and logically obvious point of “FOUR FOOT BABIES WTF???” – or would it?
Read the post. She says explicitly that the absence of fetal pain removes the rational for legislation banning late term abortions, and that is untrue. It doesn’t change a thing, except for people like the author, who have a vested interest in the myth that unborn babies have no rights.
I have read the essay and the post. I admittedly haven’t read the documents of such legislation, but it’s my understanding that fetal pain laws base themselves in claims of fetal pain. If I pass the Blindfolds Make You Drunk law for motorists, an enterprising scientist might be able to prove that blindfolds actually don’t make you drunk. It doesn’t mean you should drive blinfolded, but the scientist is not under obligation to include that view in his report.
You are being intentionally obtuse. The use of fetal pain is a device; the objective of the laws is not to reduce fetal pain, but to reduce the cause of fetal pain, which is killing the fetus. Roe v Wade is not about the right to inflict fetal pain. Right to life protesters are not saying “prove there is no fetal pain, and then abortion is jake with us.” As used by McDonough, it is a straw man argument—proving that fetal pain is a myth destroys the underpinning of anti-abortion laws. It doesn’t. If fetal pain doesn’t exist, the legislation will simply use something else. The author says that the fetal pain is the basis for late term abortion legislation. It is not. Obviously. Stop quibbling.
It is precisely the gap between such laws’ moral underpinnings and their supposed sourcings that is the cause of so much teeth-gnashing over this issue. Legislators could propose straightforward laws ending abortion. Instead, they take the long way around, and end up with concepts like “fetal pain” (or even “late term”) that become flashpoints for arguments – arguments that are, as you point out, irrelevant to the actual issue at hand, but crucial to the legislation being debated (or challenged in an essay). The right to life deserves a much less murky arena.
I’d appreciate your assuming that any obtuseness on my part is unintentional, as I do with you. I prefer an honest argument.
Really? I would think intentional obtuseness is just a sign of orneriness and playing devil’s advocate, while unintentional obtuseness is more of a problem.
I’m not playing devil’s advocate and wouldn’t divert myself on a slow day typing things I didn’t believe to a total stranger. Your arguments have failed to convince me. Fetal pain laws hinge upon fetal pain. If there’s no fetal pain the law is based upon something bogus, even if its true intentions have sound moral footing, and one is not obliged to mention such footing in an article.
“McDonough asserts that the laws only “rest on the stated premise that a fetus can experience pain at 20 weeks, and that this is a sufficient justification to ban all abortions after this gestational stage.”
This is a deceitful misrepresentation of the anti-abortion argument, or a dumb one…in either case, it muddles the issue, and is wrong. The justification for banning abortions is, again, that they involve the unjust death of a unique human being with rights, not that the process causes pain. One is ethically obligated to mention facts that are necessary to comprehend the context of the issue being discussed. Not doing so is deceptive and misleading. The Texas Bill, for example, specifically states,
(3) the compelling state interest in protecting the
lives of unborn children from the stage at which substantial
medical evidence indicates that an unborn child is capable of
feeling pain is intended to be separate from and independent of the
compelling state interest in protecting the lives of unborn
children from the stage of viability, and neither state interest is
intended to replace the other;
Trranslation: “proving” that fetuses don’t feel pain does NOT eliminate “sufficient justification” for banning abortions, but only this isolated, tactical definition allowing the law to determine when a fetus may not be aborted. The justification for banning abortion remains, and the text of the law says so specifically.
I stand corrected on the law’s basis, in Texas anyway. I’m pleasantly surprised that such a distinction would be made.
I will stand, however, on my objections to such laws, as they provoke precisely the sort of useless argument that McDonough presents. Fetal pain is not a platform anyone stands on. Pro-choicers don’t say “If abortion were painful to the fetus, I’d change my mind” any more than Pro-lifers say “If abortion weren’t painful to the fetus, I’d change mine.” And yet, like “late term,” “partial birth” etc. etc., fetal pain becomes the argument, due to odd strategic lawmakers and – you’ve convinced me – ethically challenged journalists.
Jack,
1) There is overwhelming evidence that pain is not felt by babies at this time. It’s not “proved”, but it is convincing.
2) The fetal pain chunk of the law is an attempt to sway public opinion based on lies. It’s an attempt to legislate reality.
3) The use of fetal pain is a device; the objective of the laws is not to reduce fetal pain, but to reduce the cause of fetal pain, which is killing the fetus.
And you’re complaining about the response to these unethical legislators?
I sure am, because it argues against the device as if there is nothing but the device. Is this just a “they deserve it ” or “The opposition is just as bad or worse” argument from you? Conceded: the bill itself is idiotic, as all maneuvers to exploit loopholes in Roe have been. The bottom line still is that objection to partial birth, late term abortion isn’t that it’s painful, and you could not read the essay without getting the impression that it is.
Jack,
The article doesn’t pretend there aren’t other arguments against abortion. You’re reading that into the article. This article is attacking one specific bad type of law that’s coming into favor recently. It doesn’t pass judgment on other abortion laws or rationales. It doesn’t even mention partial birth abortions or late term abortions.
Your complaints about this article are comparable to someone coming here and saying “How could you give Obama/Bush/Kang/Kodos an ethics hero award!”
Nope. Her meaning and intent were clear. There’s no fetal pain, so the latest trumped up reason not to abort babies has been disproved, leaving, in her opinion, nothing. She ended the article by talking about abortion generally. Katie: “And, at least superficially, their framing seems to be working. According to recent survey, a narrow majority of Americans claim to support these bans…”
Americans support “these bans.” if they do, not because they worry about the pain the unborn suffer while being torn to bits. They don’t like them being torn to bits. This is the “sharpshooter” trick—disproving the objections to abortions by focusing on a completely tangential and tactical argument, saying that “it’s working,” as if this alone explains public opinion, and then debunking it as if it settles the issue.
Jack,
“These bans” refers to fetal pain based laws. You’re ignoring the antecedent that’s there. Here’s the 2 paragraphs with that term, with 2 comments of mine in brackets:
And yet, despite ample research debunking claims about fetal pain, the political narrative arguing otherwise [that there is fetal pain] continues to dominate. Facts about embryology and the science of gestational development are often ignored outright or framed as somehow extraneous to the debates taking place, and reproductive rights opponents have been wildly successful in selling these bans as emotional issues — that support for them should come from the gut, not from thick tomes of medical facts.
And, at least superficially, their framing [from the previous paragraph, that the facts of no fetal pain are extraneous] seems to be working. According to recent survey, a narrow majority of Americans claim to support these bans, and, troublingly, the pseudoscience behind fetal pain has also begun to crop up in the examination room among women seeking abortions.
There’s language surrounding the usages of “these bans” that clearly shows what “these bans” refer to.
I think the problem is that the claim of fetal pain is materially different when it is used by someone who believes that a fetus is a human life and its killing is unethical/immoral, and the claim to someone who doesn’t think a fetus has human rights at all. The anti-abortion advocate says: “This is the taking of an innocent human life, and is horribly painful and cruel as well!” The abortion advocate says: “It’s not cruel: end of argument. I win” because the main tenet that the pain argument merely bolsters for the “pro-life” advocate isn’t even a consideration to the “pro-choice” side. And that’s how I read this essay.
If only there were a way to prevent these unwanted pregnancies in the first place. @@
Well, they could, you know, stop fucking…
You mean like the birth control that is opposed by the same activists that oppose abortion?
Opposed? The activists generally oppose state subsidized birth controls.
Nice try though. Failure as usual.
I was referring to the “abstinence only” education, uproars over condom giveaways, and attempts to close down planned parenthood. State subsidized seems like a red herring to me.
Hm. So taking a small percentage of activists, which in turn is a percentage of people who hold anti-abortion attitudes, and then generalizing that small group’s ideas to the whole.
Up to your old tricks I see.
Of course if you really were only meaning to discuss a small group of people’s ideas only, then I think it thoroughly immaterial and definitely non-sequitur.
So, I stand by the “Nice try through. Failure as usual” comment.
I greatly dislike it when people like McDonough mess up what little clarity there is in an issue such as abortion. As it happens, she appears to have inspired people to talk about two different phenomena when they refer to “pain,” rehashing the obsolete question of whether the tree which falls in the forest makes a sound if no people are present to observe. If “sound” is defined to mean a physical phenomenon, then yes. If “sound” is the quale that a conscious entity experiences when they encounter the aforesaid phenomenon, then no, because there are no conscious entities in the vicinity. It seems simple to me.
If you define “pain” to be a neurological or physiological response to damage, then jellyfish feel pain, and even trees can be argued to do so. That doesn’t stop people from destroying them, though, because we don’t consider them conscious. If “pain” is the experience a conscious being has resulting from damage, then jellyfish don’t feel it, because they’re not conscious (as far as I can tell.) As Jack says, the primary concern is not pain, but whether what is destroyed is a conscious entity.
The entire abortion issue has been about consciousness from the beginning, and I’m disappointed that people aren’t pushing that perspective. Conscious entities (people) are really the only measure of what’s important, because we’re the aspect of existence that gives anything meaning or intent (some people would assert the existence of a deity as some higher form of consciousness which has unquestioned authority over the rest of us; I perceive that scenario as an ontological paradox). In any case, the ethics of when, if ever, it is acceptable to destroy a conscious entity is a relevant question, as is the question of how consciousness develops in humans. I wish people would actually ask those questions in mainstream discussion.