Toto

Vt - since you are asserting that the fetus can feel pain, you should provide some sources.

But thanks to google, I can cite these:

Fetal Pain - A Discussion

Summary of the report on fetal pain


In short, no brain, no pain.

Daleth

Damn, I hate arguing for the other team, but not long ago, many specialists believed (and a lot of people will still tell you, as this clip suggets) that a newborn infant can't feel pain. Nevermind the fact that children who had many blood draws when they were newborns tend to be very sensitive about having their feet touched for a long time after (blood is taken from the feet). They believed boys couldn't feel it when they were circumcised, regardless of how much they screamed, because this belief justified not using an anesthetic (which the newborn's body is too weak to handle). For some reason these little beasts who can't feel pain still scream bloody murder when hungry. How about the good old fashioned slap-a-neonate's-bottom thing... to get it crying, forcing breath... but of course it's not crying because it feels pain or anything.

It's bull. They can feel pain, and it has suited us to hide from it. They are cute and helpless and innocent, and we don't like to think we're doing things (even when necessary) that hurt them. Some have argued that the newborn doesn't actually feel pain when slapped... it's just surprised... but even if true, it assumes psychological pain (fear) is less real than physical pain.

It's obvious to anyone who spends time with newborns and who doesn't have a reason to actively hide from the truth that newborns can feel pain, pleasure, happiness, anger and fear, and since it seems rather silly to assume they develop that ability in the process of being born either naturally or by C-section, the only reasonable thing is to assume it's developed sometime before birth.

This is closer to the truth. Around the 24th week (if I recall correctly) the fetus will start to do things like suck its thumb... a comfort act. If it can feel comforting sensations, it can feel negative (painful) ones, or so it seems to me.

Sorry for not citing these, but I don't think I'm saying anything all that disputed, and I hope I'm clearly stating where's it's just my opinion.

That is obviously true. If the mechanism through which we feel pain (or anything else) does not yet exist, it's not possible for the fetus to experience it.

So yeah, I'm willing to accept that late term abortion is experienced as painful by the fetus, asuming the fetus is normal and healthy. That doesn't make me happy. It's awful. I also believe it's very rare, and that it is and should be performed only when absolutely necessary.

Serious psychological problems on the part of the woman can make it necessary. If unmedicated for her problems she is a danger both to herself and the fetus, and medicating her is going to be damaging to the still developing fetus, then it is better to sacrifice one than both of them and better to abort the fetus than to knowingly cause terrible birth defects. This sort of psychological problem isn't something a woman can fake one afternoon to get a 28th week abortion done and then say, Wow! I feel better!" and go skipping home. She's going to be treated for the mental health problem, and the abortion is making her treatment possible.

I've never seen anything that would lead me to believe that most late abortions are performed on healthy women and healthy fetuses because the woman is faking mental illness. That sounds like a lot of anger looking for a place to point the blame.

Dal

openeyes

What Daleth said.