Foetuses 'cannot experience pain'

[Viking]

I cannot feel light pain while asleep, but don`t kill me, please!

[Rodion Romanovich]

lol some really good remarks about why fetus not feeling pain isn't the main argument in the abortion debate, and that it's other principles that matter

[Proletariat]

It's a bilateral strawman.

[BigTex]

It's understandable that something without a fully developed brain wouldn't feel pain. Sure they might react to stimuli but thats just ingrained, pain is usually all psychological. If you don't know what pain is and your brain doesnt understand either you wouldn't feel the "alarm". I don't even understand the point of this study, why should it wiegh on the judgement to get rid of a fetus or not. Someone who is getting an abortion is probably more concerned about damage to their own bodies or if they could provide for that baby if it were to be born. Gotta love biased "sceintific" tudies done to advance politics points though, their kinda a good read.

[Soulforged]

If the foetus can feel pain or not is totally irrelevant for abortion cases. The point is that the human since it's conception should have the right to develop into a sentient who can feel pain, love, joy, etc... That's the point against abortion, it nullifies the freedoms of the people who cannot defend by themselves.

But she agreed that the issue of whether foetuses felt pain was irrelevant to the abortion debate.

"A human person is a human person, and as such has the right to life, which is quite literally fundamental to all other rights."

[A.Saturnus]

It's important to distinguish between 'pain' and 'suffering'. I'm certain that foetuses can feel pain, but I doubt that they can suffer. There are pathological conditions that render people inable to suffer from physical violations. The same people can still feel pain, their pain receptors are working normally and they know that these violations happen.They just don't consider them aversive. Obviously suffering involves higher brain functions that simply receiving pain does. Brain functions foetuses probably don't have because they have no operational cortex yet.
Thus foetuses can respond to physical stimuli inculding pain, but that's just a basal stimulus-response mechanism, they don't experience it.

This is as stupid as people who declare that animals don't have feelings, because they can't tell you about them. At the pre-verbal phase, all you have is feelings.

Higher animals certainly have feelings, but do you think invertebrate have feelings? They certainly can respond to pain.