Lobsters and Babies
A while ago my son e-mailed me an article about some research done by Norwegian scientists. The study indicates that lobsters don’t have sufficiently complex nervous systems to feel pain while they’re being cooked. I forwarded the article to a vegetarian friend of mine, just to rag her a bit. (We have that kind of relationship around this topic.) She responded, quite correctly, by pointing out that the study was funded by the Maine lobstering industry, which might cast a doubt on its impartiality. Nevertheless, I do not believe lobsters have very well developed pain receptors.
Anybody who knows me knows that I believe we have a God-imposed responsibility to treat animals, whom St. Francis of Assisi called "our little brothers and sisters", humanely. Even when we kill them for food it should be done with as little suffering as possible. It's axiomatic that those who would inflict needless suffering on animals are as likely to do so to humans. The time-honored practice of killing a lobster quickly before boiling was developed by good-hearted people to minimize potential suffering, “just in case”. Those who oppose boiling lobsters do so because they hate the idea of imposing suffering on a defenseless creature. It’s a laudable sentiment and I respect it.
As I thought about this it occurred to me to wonder why some people concern themselves with whatever suffering a lobster might experience when it's boiled, but give much less thought to the suffering a human fetus experiences as it's aborted from its mother's uterus. Many of the same people who loudly declaim "Fur is murder!" are comfortable with the term "partial birth abortion" (which I see as an intellectually dishonest term; I prefer “infanticide”. Please click here, http://www.abortioninfo.net/facts/pba.shtml, for a description of the procedure. While the site is anti-abortion, the information is nonetheless accurate.)
[I should also note that by “abortion” I mean elective abortion, to end an unplanned or inconvenient pregnancy. There are abortions performed when necessary to save the life of the mother. I have a friend who was recently faced with this painful choice; there is no easy way to resolve it.]
Plenty of scientific data exist to show that human fetuses' nervous systems develop early in the first trimester (http://www.wprc.org/trimester1.phtml), yet “pro-choice” advocates don’t seem to spend a lot of time discussing that. Why would they? They are people, too, and the idea of subjecting a human fetus to an agonizing death is too horrific to think about. I think many “pro-choice” people prefer to think of a fetus as a mass of inchoate tissue, especially in the first trimester; that denial of the facts makes the choice to abort easier.
I don't have any anti-abortion stickers on my car; I'm not going to try to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. If their hearts were hard enough to render that decision in the first place, they're not going to be dissuaded by me now. If the sea-change in our attitude toward abortion is to come, it must come from us, not the government. So I guess I'm just asking us to offer at least as much consideration to human fetuses as we do to lobsters.
God bless,
- Chad
Anybody who knows me knows that I believe we have a God-imposed responsibility to treat animals, whom St. Francis of Assisi called "our little brothers and sisters", humanely. Even when we kill them for food it should be done with as little suffering as possible. It's axiomatic that those who would inflict needless suffering on animals are as likely to do so to humans. The time-honored practice of killing a lobster quickly before boiling was developed by good-hearted people to minimize potential suffering, “just in case”. Those who oppose boiling lobsters do so because they hate the idea of imposing suffering on a defenseless creature. It’s a laudable sentiment and I respect it.
As I thought about this it occurred to me to wonder why some people concern themselves with whatever suffering a lobster might experience when it's boiled, but give much less thought to the suffering a human fetus experiences as it's aborted from its mother's uterus. Many of the same people who loudly declaim "Fur is murder!" are comfortable with the term "partial birth abortion" (which I see as an intellectually dishonest term; I prefer “infanticide”. Please click here, http://www.abortioninfo.net/facts/pba.shtml, for a description of the procedure. While the site is anti-abortion, the information is nonetheless accurate.)
[I should also note that by “abortion” I mean elective abortion, to end an unplanned or inconvenient pregnancy. There are abortions performed when necessary to save the life of the mother. I have a friend who was recently faced with this painful choice; there is no easy way to resolve it.]
Plenty of scientific data exist to show that human fetuses' nervous systems develop early in the first trimester (http://www.wprc.org/trimester1.phtml), yet “pro-choice” advocates don’t seem to spend a lot of time discussing that. Why would they? They are people, too, and the idea of subjecting a human fetus to an agonizing death is too horrific to think about. I think many “pro-choice” people prefer to think of a fetus as a mass of inchoate tissue, especially in the first trimester; that denial of the facts makes the choice to abort easier.
I don't have any anti-abortion stickers on my car; I'm not going to try to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. If their hearts were hard enough to render that decision in the first place, they're not going to be dissuaded by me now. If the sea-change in our attitude toward abortion is to come, it must come from us, not the government. So I guess I'm just asking us to offer at least as much consideration to human fetuses as we do to lobsters.
God bless,
- Chad
posted by cft3 | 9:01 AM
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