University of Alabama Professor Michael J. New writes an excellent article on how the media, particularly the New York Times, parse abortion statistics. He notes that the Times and other outlets referenced dubious statistics claiming an increase in abortions during the George W. Bush presidency, but have not referenced the statistics of the Alan Guttmacher Institute (an arm of Planned Parenthood) detailing a decrease in abortions during the first two years of the Bush Administration. "Interestingly," New observes, "the only occasions where the Times referenced declining abortion figures were during sympathetic articles about the approval of RU-486 and the increased amenities that abortion clinics were offering to increase business." It's with Professor New's point in mind that I view with skepticism the highly-touted report by an abortion clinic administrator and several University of California-San Francisco researchers that fetuses don't feel pain until the final months of pregnancy. I don't have a scientific background akin to this report's authors, but I could just as easily issue my own study refuting the UCSF study. It would involve me pinching a prematurely-born baby and watching the infant respond. I could do this in the name of advancing human discovery, but I'm not a sadist so I'll leave it to some other enterprising man of science who has no such qualms about making babies cry.
Michael New and John Derbyshire are the only reasons to ever visit National Review Online. And it was a terrible thing what the Army did to Michael after he refused to serve under UN command.
Perhaps I should have thought of saying this in the main post: the University of Alabama Michael New is not the same as the Army Michael New who refused to serve under UN command.
Summer of '97. The Young America's Foundation cookout in Pat Buchanan's back yard. The University of Alabama Michael New introduces himself to Buchanan with Pat responding, "Well, hey there, welcome back. It's a shame what they did to you over Macedonia."
It was funny.
Both Michael New's are great Americans.
Trust me, they're the same.
I watched a little of that CBS report of the purported study that fetuses don't feel pain until pretty late in term. I could only stand watching a bit of it b/c even if it were true (I doubt it, it didn't seem terribly convincing) it was besides the point. Maybe utilitarians or other hedonists think that pleasure and pain are all that ultimately matter when determining the rectitude of actions but I think they are hardly factors at all, and not in the way the report seemed to indicate.
If I was paralyzed from the waist down and someone came up to me and stuck a fork in my calf would they be justified in doing so? Of course not, irregardless of whether or not I could feel it. The action itself would be objectionable. Also, taking icky medicine is a good thing despite the displeasure it causes.
If you break into a guy's house, whom you hate, and shoot him while he is in bed in the dark, then find out that he had already died in his sleep of cardiac arrest, we may have an interesting legal question of whether to prosecute for attempted murder or not, but I think it would be easy to agree that the action taken was a bad one.
Likewise, abortion doesn't become either licit or illicit based on whether or not the fetus "feels" it occur. Since, then, the issue of the justice of abortion is unrelated to the tactile sensitivity of embryos and fetuses the only purpose served by such reports is to attempt to drive home the view of babies in utero as in- or subhuman. But human nature is not essentially sensitive but only accidentally so, as a "proper" accident, but still not our essence itself.
One philosophical question about this pro-abort argumentative strategy; is it an attempt to form an ana-logical argument which proves the lack of "personhood" or "human nature" of the fetus?
