What will this report do to the ethics of abortion after 30 weeks and to personhood theory as it relates to fetuses? From the story:
The unborn have memories, according to medical researchers who used sound and vibration stimulation, combined with sonography, to reveal that the human fetus displays short-term memory from at least 30 weeks gestation - or about two months before they are born. “In addition, results indicated that 34-week-old fetuses are able to store information and retrieve it four weeks later,” said the research, which was released Wednesday.
Scientists from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Maastricht University Medical Centre and the University Medical Centre St. Radboud, both in the Netherlands, based their findings on a study of 100 healthy pregnant women and their fetuses with the help of some gentle but precise sensory stimulation. On five occasions during the last eight weeks of their pregnancies, the women received a series of one-second buzzes on their bellies with a “fetal vibroacoustic stimulator,” a hand-held diagnostic device used to gauge an unborn baby’s heart rate and general well-being.
Many people support abortion on the scientifically ridiculous belief that unborn life isn’t yet “human.” Biologically, that’s nonsense. But what they mean is that the unborn don’t exhibit human capacities. This study seems to bely that, and also the idea that fetuses at a certain stage aren’t “persons,” in the sense used by many bioethicists.
This issue deserves to be discussed since, for those who reject human exceptionalism, it has a great bearing on ethics. However:
A call to NARAL Pro-Choice America for comment on the implications of the research were not returned.
Of course not. To answer the question I posed at the top of this post: Will people of certain beliefs permit new scientific understandings get in the way of ideology, utilitarian desires, or expediency? Not a chance.
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