Foetal Pain

The above title is, I hope you realise, riddled with sardonic overtones.

There are a 'journalist' on Question Time on Thursday going on about the 'studies' that have went into 'foetal pain' and I couldn't decide whether to laugh or throw my TV out of the window. The option of both crossed my mind, too. A TV chucking lunatic I almost could've been.

These 'studies' are about as scientific as the usual would-be-emotive '3D' videos of foetuses sucking their thumbs. Foetuses apparently move away from an unpleasant stimulus, like pain. Newsflash? Hardly. Reacting to a threat does not a life make. Mice that scientists regularly experiment on react to, and indeed display such human concepts as fear when they come into contact with, pain. Why isn't Nadine Dorries standing up for their right to life, too, I wonder?

In fact, single celled bacteria respond to pleasant stimuli. Maybe we should address this issue of 'microbial pain', too?

The concept of pain is a tricky, abstract one. It's hard enough to apply to full grown humans, nevermind under developed organisms. Until these pro-lifers begin to campaign for everything that lives, they are illegitimate losers with no respect for women's rights. Dorries reckons she's pro-choice to a point. That's no choice at all. To paraphrase a wise American gent: She who gives up freedom for "safety" deserves neither.