From the BBC:
There is no new evidence to show foetuses feel pain in the womb before 24 weeks, and so no reason to challenge the abortion limit, doctors say.
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ review said foetuses are “undeveloped and sedated”.
Brain connections are not fully formed, and the environment of the womb creates a state of induced sleep, like unconsciousness, they add.
Anti-abortion campaigners are likely to challenge the reports.
The issue of whether a foetus of 24 weeks or below can feel pain had been raised in the debate over whether the current time limit for abortion should be reduced.
In the absence of an objective moral arbiter, pain seems to have become the contemporary yardstick for determining what is good and what is evil: pain is evil, but nothing much else. This allows for not only the disposal of inconvenient unborn babies, but just about anyone else too – providing it doesn’t hurt.
The aged are eased comfortably into meeting their maker prematurely; Richard Dawkins nods cheerfully as utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer advocates infanticide for babies whose future may not be entirely pain free; Singer, following his logic to its conclusion, speculates that non-existence for everyone might be preferable to existence because not to exist is not to feel pain.
The comedy in all this is that atheists such as Hitchens and Dawkins appear to think that atheism is capable of producing a coherent moral framework: the sum total of what it actually has come up with is the clodhopping “pain is bad” – a concept whose sophistication could be surpassed by a fraternity of socialised chimpanzees.
Don’t we live in an evil, vile world? – Where the bad people and ideas seem to win 99% of the time. Will it always be like this? How will it end? Well, I suppose it will end when God finally brings it all to an end, and re-establishes the way things should be. that’s all you can say.
May i cross-post this one David?
Hi Stuart – yes, certainly.
John Thomas: Don’t we live in an evil, vile world?
Has it not always been thus?
“All that is required for evil to flourish in the world is for good men to do nothing.” (Edmund Burke).
God in Israel started doing it – Jesus came and did it – and we are to continue to stand up against it – one square inch at a time.
We should continue to stand up against evil. We should also give support where-ever we find good.
Let me preface this by saying that I am not asking anyone to blindly support a particular political party…
Recently the Harper Government took some heat over refusing to fund abortions in developing (3rd world) countries. On this specific issue I would ask everyone to call their MP and express their support for this couragous stand.
If we do not tell our politicians that we support those things that they do that are good, than what chance is there that the politicians will do anything else that is good?
AMP,
Excellent post. We do live in a representative democracy and if we fail to participate in it, we will be at its mercy.
Consider it another form of Christian witness.
Peace,
Jim