Fetuses Have Memories

[estesbob]

You forget that humans are animals. My point about specism was not focused on non-human animals on earth but on hypothetical sentient aliens. We would respect them and their right to life as we do with any other sentient being even though they are not human. So, being human has nought to do with what moral attitude we should adopt. It is sentience that counts. Humans are no more privileged in creation than any other sentient species that may exist in the universe.

Im sorry-but i am not about to get sucked into a discussion about the right to life of space aliens. have a nice day.

 

[Ridgerunner]

As I mentioned cognitive psychologists have already proved that it is not until several years after birth that a conception of the mind is formulated in the brain. If you set a candy bar on a table and ask a 3 year old, “While you are away at pre-school, if I move this candy bar from the table to under the bed, where will you look for it when you come back?” Most 3 year olds will answer “Under the bed.” They do not yet have a conception of the mind and beliefs of the mind. That is not to trivialize the value of born fetuses or even unborn fetuses. Many people risk their lives to save their pet or even someone else’s pet from a fire. If the “pro-life” movement is about protecting the most vulnerable, kindness to the most vulnerable animals among us should be embedded in the movement’s ideology. That it is often not, leads some to think that the anti-choice movement is more about sin than it is about life.

Interesting post, and you have obviously put some time and thought into this, and I’m sorry that I was unable to quote it all and still have room. I would quibble a bit about some of it. I do realize much is known about, e.g., the demonstrated thought patterns of 3 year olds. Nevertheless, what are being observed are demonstrations, not necessarily the processes. Having raised some of them, it is clear to me that very young children vary a great deal in not only what they think but what they demonstrate; and the two are not the same in any event. This can be dramatically demonstrated with autistic people of whom it can often be said that they are “trapped within their own heads”. What they comprehend and what they can express are sometimes widely divergent. I saw that most dramatically demonstrated in watching an autistic three year old take the “Lighter Test”. Previously diagnosed as profoundly retarded, she nevertheless demonstrated conceptual abilities at what I recall as about a sixth grade level, and she did it unerringly and at lightning speed. She was able to do it because the “Lighter Test” is non-verbal. When the tester attempted to switch to verbal testing, she received a pinch for her trouble, the non-verbal message being “I can’t show you anything with language. Don’t try it. Here’s your negative message concerning that”.

A further quibble. Although some publications show that persons with damage to this portion of the brain cannot do this, and those with damage to that portion cannot do that, there are also cases in which people, most of whose brains were damaged or “dead” were nevertheless seemingly able to think about as well as anyone else. I recognize that connections are important and that (name removed by moderator)ut is said to affect their development; sometimes very rapidly. Still, I don’t think we really know what “X” number of human brain cells are capable of doing, and “cell count” doesn’t necessarily tell us very much.

In the womb, there is little to learn, because the environment is limited. There is little to observe; little experience. Little that’s “new”. Little to contemplate if, in fact, unborn children are able to contemplate. There are no words with which to form mental formulations or to “invent”. We can imagine that, e.g., music might cause a substantial amount of conscious brain activity. But we can’t learn what it might be, or how it relates to anything else. Unborn children are “trapped” in the womb in a way not entirely dissimilar to the way some autistic people are “trapped” in their own skulls.

I agree to an extent that reverence for human life versus that of animals is religiously based, though I would dispute that it is entirely so. I can’t prove the following, and it’s difficult to express it, but here goes.

In his “Gulag” series, Solzhenitsyn traces the descent into inhumanity that affected so many during the Stalinist years (and earlier and later). While he expressed it artistically rather than scientifically, to me it was persuasive. The descent into an inhuman mindset is not necessarily a dramatic thing or an ideological thing. Its fabric is composed of many, often subtle, inhumanities that tend to grow like a snowball rolling downhill. Each departure from a respect for human life makes further departures not only easier, but logical, in a twisted sort of way. Each “dehumanizing” decision we make allows us to constrict the circle of our humanity toward our fellow human beings. Ultimately, cruelty comes easy, as Lenin demonstrated in himself in his famous dictum to “rid the land of all harmful insects”, meaning all who might imaginably frustrate the ambitions of the regime. A man who is capable of really regarding others as “harmful insects” is capable of any atrocity, and that pattern of thought and action so permeated the society he so profoundly influenced, that it has not recovered to this day.

So, when we regard with equanimity the prospect of an unborn child being disembowled, or being placed live in a dirty linen receptacle to die of neglect because, well, they’re not “fully human, you know”, we have to ask ourselves whether we are going down the road toward “harmful insects”. I think we are, and, while I am a religious person, I don’t think one has to be religious to see the current disregard for unborn children as a serious fault line in the human heart; one that can have serious consequences for a society, never mind whether an unborn child can formulate the name “Mozart” when he hears music by Mozart in the womb.