Abortion and animal rights
The pain is more substantial and lasts longer, the later the abortion is performed.
Animal Rights
In the modern western world, there has been a growing consciousness of the need for more humane policies in animal husbandry. Battery farming and confining pigs in small pens are increasingly unpopular as the general public learn of the alleged suffering the animals endure.
In New Zealand, animals are killed instantly in freezing works with a "captive bolt gun." The Animal Welfare Act of 1999 (Section 80, 2a) requires that in research, teaching or testing, any pain or distress to the animal is "reduced to the minimum possible in the circumstances."
People are attracted to the animal-rights movement through empathy for the alleged suffering endured by farm animals and those used for laboratory testing. They believe that the animals' sentience of fear and distress, outweighs any claimed social benefits.
They also believe that animals are victims of discrimination. As sentient beings they have rights too. "Animals are autonomous beings," writes Vasu Mirti, "possessing levels of conscious awareness comparable to those of small children (or at least the mentally handicapped)."
"Full-grown animals are highly complex creatures, possessing a brain, a central nervous system and a sophisticated mental life. Animals suffer at the hands of their human tormentors and exhibit 'such human' behaviours and feelings as fear and physical pain, defense of their children, pair bonding, group and tribal loyalty, grief at the loss of young ones, joy, jealousy, competition, territoriality, and cooperation."
"The question is not, 'Can they reason?,' nor 'Can they talk?,' but 'Can they suffer?'" |
Mirti quotes Jeremy Bentham: "A full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, 'Can they reason?,' nor 'Can they talk?,' but 'Can they suffer?'"
"The animal-rights thus rejects belonging to the human race as the criterion for 'personhood,' membership in our moral community, as a form of discrimination, comparable to racism or sexism. Sentience, or the ability to experience pleasure and pain, is recognized as the only morally relevant criteria (Mirti)."
While the animal rights movement has no official position on the issue of abortion, some abortion advocates are concerned that recognition of animal rights will pave the way toward recognition of foetal rights. Anti-abortionists, on the other hand, argue that failing to apply the same rights and protection to a human foetus is unreasonable.
If sentience is to be the argument for giving moral consideration to non-humans, then abortion opponents say that it is a logical step to give that same moral consideration to the human foetus, which is sentient through most of its development.