Does it hurt.................?

In the past few days, the MSM has been reporting on a new "study" that has been put out on whether or not a "fetus" before 29 months of growing within his or her mother can feel pain. The new report says -- probably not. Here's part of a report on this from "The Australian":

A HUMAN fetus is unlikely to feel pain before the third trimester, when consciousness begins to form, researchers said in a report that could fuel debate over proposed US abortion legislation.

Even if a fetus feels pain, doctors may not be able to anesthetise it without endangering the mother's health, including during an abortion, the researchers wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Legislation under consideration by the US Congress and some US states would require doctors to inform women seeking abortions after the 22nd week of gestation that their fetus feels pain and offer to anesthetise the fetus.

Supporters of the legislation say that when a fetus displays a withdrawal reflex or hormonal stress response, that is evidence of fetal pain. But the researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, questioned that view, saying the responses may be automatic and not signs of discomfort.

Drawing on findings from thousands of medical-journal articles on the subject of fetal pain and related topics, the report's author, Susan Lee, wrote that "pain is a subjective sensory and emotional experience that requires the presence of consciousness."

Consciousness is created by brain connections between the thalamus and the cerebral cortex, and those do not begin to develop before the 23rd week and possibly not before the 30th week of gestation. The human gestation period is 38 weeks from conception.

"Conscious perception of pain does not begin before the third trimester," Ms Lee wrote. In the US, only 1.4 percent of abortions are performed at or after 21 weeks gestational age, the report said.

Anesthesia is used in some surgeries where the fetus is operated on inside the womb, but it is not done to address fetal pain, Lee wrote. It is designed to relax the uterus, immobilize the fetus, or ease stress if surgical complications occur.

In addition, the dose needed to anesthetize a fetus might endanger the mother by slowing her breathing excessively, the report said, adding new anesthetizing techniques would have to be developed to address fetal pain, if it exists.

Wendy Chavkin of Physicians for Reproductive Choice, and Health, commenting on the report, said its conclusions affirmed what other experts have found, and denounced the proposed legislation concerning fetal pain.

"These laws have nothing to do with pain or pain reduction, but are clearly intended to stigmatize abortion, the women who have abortions and the doctors who provide them," Dr Chavkin said.

Here's the way this debate is being played out. With new legislation in place, based on the concerns and research of other persons in the scientific/medical community, that would require women to be counseled about the possibility of the "fetus" they are aborting feeling pain after 20 months of gestation, some other medical researchers have looked at documents from past research to assure us that abortion doesn't hurt. (Remember, gestation is the first part of everyone's life when living and growing in complete dependence upon one's mother's body in her womb. I say that because such scientific sounding terms often make abstract a very concrete human reality.) GLOBE AND MAIL.COM report the following about the timing of the report.

The report, in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association, is being published just as anti-abortion groups are pushing for fetal pain laws. The U.S. Congress and several states are considering legislation that would require doctors to tell women seeking abortions 20 or more weeks after conception that a fetus feels pain and to offer anesthesia for the fetus.

The politics of abortion are, of course, very precise and coordinated. So, it is not any surprise that this article in the Journal of American Medicine has come out now. But even if it is motivated by abortion politics (which I cannot prove), the debate about when a child in the womb is capable of feeling pain is a legitimate one to have.

However, this debate is really just a further development of the already existing debate about abortion. The pro-lifers such as me, of course, will be very glad if it can be proven that pain-awareness is much earlier than science once thought. Pro-choice advocates will rejoice if the pain-threshold age is later. The reason I call it a further developmen of the already existing debate is that the debate in America has always been cast (for the most part) in terms of:

1. Is a fetus a human person?
2. Which "right" if most fundamental -- the right to life or the right to self-determination.

If a fetus feels pain early during its life in the womb, then it will seem to the moral imagination of most people to be much more like a person. If the pain awareness is later, then persons can still contend that a fetus is just a highly organized organism, but not a person. And since a non-person highly organized organism is not a person, then the second of the two considerations vanishes (for many). The self-determination of the mother will be thought as most fundamental, since no other truly human consideration is under view.

But the whole question of pain and the fetus really misses the bigger picture; the picture that we ought to be asking. The question is not whether the fetus feels pain or has developed enough to be conscious or is a "person." The question is -- is a pre-born human being one of us or not? The answer to that question is a resounding YES! Philosophers and scientists and theologians and grandparents alike can tell you that a human fetus is, first and foremost, human. It is not somce species called "fetus." It is a human being at a particular stage of human life. Given time, care, and luck most of them will be born and join us in this traumatic, yet wondrous world that we share as the human species.

Every fetus, conscious or not, is the promise of a fully human life and the future of our race. Every unborn, growing human being is the promise of another one of us human creatures. Every gestating organism is the promise of a pain-feeling, joy-feeling, pain-giving, joy-giving human person. So, the real question if, then, what do we owe our fetal brethren, even if they don't feel pain.

The question of what we owe one another is one that is quite sublimated in American abortion politics and American politics in general. The radicalized individualism of the late 20th century left us with a hole in our collective soul as a culture. The predominant question for many, many of us is simply, what's in it for me. From Fortune 500 CEO's with their ridiculous salaries, while companies lose money and workers lose jobs, to drug dealers who sell drugs on elementary school and middle school campuses to father's who abandon their children and a culture that tells pregnant women to take care of themselves first of all: all our culture has forgotten to ask the question what do we owe one another.

If one considers that we do owe something to others who share our humanity, even if we do not ever see them -- and even if they do not feel pain -- the question of abortion takes on a different significance. But, if we keep pushing away the possibility that in this life we owe something as human beings to other human beings, then we will keep wondering about when it hurts to be aborted, rather than when do we begin to welcome the stranger into the fold.

George W. Bush. . . . a man with a mission?

After 9-11, President Bush was of singular resolve it seemed. We must declare war on the terrorist forces that promote or facilitate terror. The America people were with him.

Now, however, the President's resolve to fight terror seems to have been replaced with a new agenda -- begin to dismantle the source of terror by establishing democracy in the middle east, i.e. Iraq. That is a defensible strategy, most likely, and one that the American people have been willing to support. It seems, on the face, to be closely related to the idea of getting rid of terrorists ultimately.

The problem with the whole agenda is that all of the President's tough talk counts for nothing in the face of IRaq's attempts to write a constitution. Just consider the "support" that the U.S. administration is giving to the idea that "Islamic" law will have a sizeable influence in the new Iraqi constitution.

From the Washington Times Insider

BAGHDAD -- U.S. diplomats have conceded ground to Islamists on the role of religion in Iraq, negotiators said yesterday as they raced to meet a 48-hour deadline to draft a constitution under intense American pressure.

Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish negotiators all said there was accord on a bigger role for Islamic law than Iraq had before.
But a secular Kurdish politician said Kurds opposed making Islam "the" -- not "a" -- main source of law and subjecting all legislation to a religious test.

"We understand the Americans have sided with the Shi'ites," he said. "It's shocking. It doesn't fit American values. They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state. ... I can't believe that's what the Americans really want or what the American people want."

U.S. diplomats, who have insisted the constitution must enshrine ideals of equal rights and democracy, declined comment.

The Bush administration, with 140,000 troops still in Iraq, has insisted Iraqis are free to govern themselves. But Washington also has made clear it will not approve the kind of clerical rule seen in Shi'ite Iran.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has guided intensive meetings since the Iraqi parliament averted its own dissolution a week ago by giving constitution drafters another week to resolve crucial differences over regional autonomy and division of oil revenues.

Failing to finish by midnight tomorrow could provoke new elections and, effectively, a return to the drawing board for the entire constitutional process.

Another extension may be more likely, as Washington insists the charter is key to its strategy to undermine the Sunni revolt and leave a new Iraqi government largely to fend for itself after U.S. troops go home.

Why does the administration lack the resolve to stand against such an idea? Could it be that the impulse that guided the President after 9-11 has been weakened and now he is afraid of seeming a failure in Iraq. Is the administration that desperate for some sign of "success."

Andy McCarthy of National Review Online hits it on the head.

There is grave reason to doubt that Islam and democracy (at least the Western version based on liberty and equality) are compatible. But that is an argument for another day. The argument for today is: the American people were never asked whether they would commit their forces to overseas hostilities for the purpose of turning Iraq into a democracy (we committed them (a) to topple a terror-abetting tyrant who was credibly thought both to have and to covet weapons of mass destruction, and (b) to kill or capture jihadists who posed a danger to American national security). I doubt they would have agreed to wage war for the purpose of establishing democracy.

But even if I suspended disbelief for a moment and agreed that the democracy project is a worthy casus belli, I am as certain as I am that I am breathing that the American people would not put their brave young men and women in harm’s way for the purpose of establishing an Islamic government. Anyplace.

It is not our place to fix what ails Islam. But it is utter recklessness to avert our eyes from the fact that militant Islam thrives wherever Islam reigns. That is a fact. When and where militant Islam thrives, America and the West are endangered. That is also a fact. How can we possibly be urging people who wisely don’t want it to accept the government-institutionalized supremacy of Islam?

If this democracy establishment stuff is about our national security, as we have been told, then it is unconscionable for the President, his advisers, and the ambassadors who represent us to sit by and let this happen. George W. Bush is off his mission. We must call him back to it.

We did not invade Iraq for humanitarian purposes, that was a happy by-product (a tyrrant was over thrown and people freed.) We invaded to make the U.S. and the world safer. Unless a real Western style constitution is established in Iraq, soon the Iraqi's will have been traded an Islamic "constitutional" dictatorship for a secular one. Not a real bargain. And the U.S. -- as McCArthy points out -- will be less safe.

John Roberts and the Supreme Court

To hear folks on the Left talk, one would think that the fate of America's way of life hangs in the balance with the specter of a John Roberts appointment to SCOTUS. This is patently silly, of course. What might hang in the balance in a way of being governed that has allowed the Supreme Court to become the final word on legal matters -- a state of affairs it decidedly not what our constitution calls for, although most Americans don't know this. For instance, Article One of the constitution says:

Section 1. All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

Article Three tells us that the Congress sets the parameters of the Supreme Court's jurisdiction, at least that is what a straight-forward reading seems to say.

From Section 2. . . the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

If John Roberts is a so-called "strict constructionist" then we might be able to return to a time when we are more true to the concept envisioned in our constitution, i.e., that America is a Constitutional Republic.

The Left, however, is no alone in its rhetorical hyperactivity. Many on the Right are worried that Roberts is not clearly and staunchly enough committed to a anti-abortion agenda or that he is not clear enough on a resistance to expanding gay-rights.

The problem with the Right's thinking, however, is that they seem to buy into the very notion that the Left does. The idea of which I speak is that some how the Supreme Court of the United States should seek to make "moral" or political decisions in its rulings. This bias is precisely revealed in the Left's call for "balance" on the court, as though the role of the court is to take into account competing interests or perspectives, rather than apply the constitution.

But that is certainly not the role of the SCOTUS. (That is the task of the Congress.) Its task should be to apply legal and constitutional standards for any and all cases that come before it. (It is perfectly possible for a law to be constitutional and not moral. Consider slavery, for instance. Or not granting women the right to vote.)

The best we as Christians should hope for in Roberts as a judge or any other nominee is not a pro-life agenda (although I favor one) nor any other conservative agenda, but a commitment to carefully and disciplinedly read, understand, and apply the constitution to cases. Where the constitution does not speak, all Justices should say so, and throw back into the political and legislative dialogue the issue.

That kind of situation does not sit well with those who want particular outcomes, right now. It is, however, what our way of life calls for and it is the only way to come to moral consensus politically for the sake of passing legislation that can then be embraced by a clear and sizeable majority of the populace.

Such a public debate is sorely missing today, but it has not always been missing. The late Neil Postman reminded us in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, that in the eighteenth century and nineteenth century informed political discourse was common among all classes of people.

By 1772, Jacob Duche could write: "The poorest labourer upon the shore of the Delaware thinks himself [because so well-informed] entitled to deliver his sentiment in matters of religion or politics with as much freedom as the gentleman of scholar. . . . Such is the prevailing taste for books of every kind that almost every man is a reader."

The point is that America's greatness was built upon political discourse among its populace, not among the political elite only, and certainly not among Justices. It is this kind of ongoing civil, informed, and reflective debate that our constitution calls for.

What we should want is Justices that allow that to happen.

The Atomic Immorality

The past week has seen the anniversaries of two of the most regrettable acts ever carried out by the government and military of the United States of America: the detonation of the atomic bomb on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

Since then much debate has ensued over the actions of then President Truman. Given the circumsances he had to face, I not only cannot condemn him, I feel a tremendous sense of pity for this man, who was charged with defending America from all enemies foreign and domestic. However, the sorrow I feel for those Japanese who were killed far outweighs the sympathy I ocould ever feel for President Truman.

Most informed people know how the dabate is framed. A land war in Japan would have cost exponentially more lives than dropping the bomb. So, in the utilitarian moral calculus that accompanies war deciding to incinerate 100's of thousands of civilians was the better of the possible options.

It is an open question, however, whether or not that was true. For the options were not BOMB or land war. Were those the options, then maybe the decision was the best option among bad ones. Recently, documents have surfaced showing that the Japanese warlords of the time were far more determined to fight on to a bloody finish in the home islands than previously known.
Yet, there was a further option that ought to have been employed.

A protracted seige (blockade) of Japan would have probably been a better option. Pat Buchanan (someone I regularly disagree with) has noted.

But with Japan naked to our B-29s, her surface navy at the bottom of the Pacific, the home islands blockaded, what was the need to invade at all? On his island-hopping campaign back to the Philippines, MacArthur routinely bypassed Japanese strongholds like Rabaul, cut them off and left them to "rot on the vine."

What Japanese air power that existed could have been targeted and destroyed. On this senario only legitimate combatants would have been subjected intentionally to attack and death. the time of surrender would have been much later, but the legacy of shame, finger-pointing by the US and the legacy of sorrow and effects of radiation poisoning upon the Japanese would have been avoided.

Would more American soldiers' lives have been lost in a blockade stategy? Most assuredly, but that is the role of the soldier in every nation.

Perhaps the calculations by Truman were as political as they were military. Maybe his advisors suggested to him that a protracted blockade would not play well at home. Maybe they suggested that bombing Japan would be a lesson to other nations.

Whatever the case, Buchanan reports to us some haunting facts about the mindset of the administration.

in the Cabinet meeting of Aug. 10, as historian Ralph Raico relates, did [Truman] explained his reluctance to drop a third bomb thus: "The thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible," he said. He didn't like the idea of killing "all those kids."

Of Truman's decision, his own chief of staff, Adm. William Leahy, wrote: "This use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make wars in that fashion ..."

It is not enough for a nation to win a war, it must be won rightly. I would argue that America did not win the war with Japan rightly. Even if some good came from the bombing (the war ended), we cannot avoid the very probable conclusion that the decision to drop the atomic bomb does not stand up to the moral scrutiny of history.

This is especially true of the Christian tradition of Just War. In that view of war, efficiency is not the final part of the equation. Rather, the questions that must drive the deliberations are -- what will cause less unnecessary death, how will civilians be protected, and how does one stay the hand of the victor from indefensible action in the face of victory. Those considerations suggest that a failure of moral reflection led to a immoral decision. Civilians were intentionally targeted in order to break the power of the leaders of a nation, and without necessity.