Does It Matter if a Fetus Can Feel Pain?

Mike Pohlman:

A headline in The Guardian (London) this morning reads, “Human Foetus Feels No Pain Before 24 Weeks, Study Says.” Then this subtitle, “Finding in major review of scientific evidence strikes blow to those seeking to reduce upper time limit for abortion.”

There is a deeply tragic triumphalism to this headline/subtitle. A scientific study is being invoked to beat back any efforts to reduce the upper time limit in England for an abortion–one currently set at 24 weeks. It’s clear evidence of the fall of mankind into sin when there is celebration for the continued destruction of life in the womb without further limitations.

But this article also perpetuates the commonplace argument that the ethics of abortion are determined by the presence or absence of pain, as if to say, “It’s okay to destroy life in the womb within 24 weeks of conception because the child feels no pain.” (Of course, this argument is used in the physician-assisted suicide debate as well.) But why is degree of pain determinative of right or wrong? Something may be more or less immoral based on certain criteria (e.g., pain). But at the end of the day, it’s still immoral.