The abortion debate has devolved to the zygote version of a LOLCat. A lady got an ultrasound, and her unborn child looked like it was smiling. Thus, "a baby can experience feelings such as happiness" earlier than previously thought.
(I'm not putting a copy of the thing here. You can view it at the Gawker link or at the UK rag, Daily Mail, where it originally appeared.)
Professor Stuart Campbell, who took the picture at his London clinic with 3-D and 4-D scanning equipment, said it did not necessarily show the unborn child had feelings - but it was certainly displaying human behaviour.
Well, FFS, what other species' behaviour should it be displaying? That fetus fetishists' vehemently made argument -- abortion is wrong because a fetus is human -- infuriates me. We pro-choicers never contend that a fetus is non-human. Of course it's human. What it is is a non-person.
Let's hear some more from the good professor:
'This is a joyful expression of the humanity of the foetus. I have seen a foetus making a crying face at around 18 or 19 weeks, but not a nice smile.
'This is the earliest on record - it is just a delight.'
Oh, gag me.
Go have a look at the thing. It is not a delight. It's creepy and weird-looking and -- as one commenter at Gawker pointed out -- it appears to be making a peace-sign. Are fetuses capable of complex moral reasoning as well?
This would be merely weird and creepy, but it happened in the UK, where in 2008 there was a heated debate in Parliament about lowering the abortion limit of 24 weeks' gestation to 22 or even fewer. (The motion lost and the limit is still 24 weeks.)
This will surely rev up the Brit chapter of Fetus Fetishists International.
And it will no doubt have an impact in the gun-lovin'-abortion-hatin' Excited States, where lawmakers in Nebraska banned abortions after 20 weeks, based on faulty science that claimed fetuses can feel pain after that point. The ff'ing lawmakers ignored all kinds of sciencey-facty-neurologicky testimony to inflict yet another blow on women's rights for spurious reasons.
I can't wait to read what SUZY ALLCAPSLOCK makes of it. 'i'm in ur uterus, smiling for the camera?'
3 comments:
I looked at the shot on the Gawker link. I think that it's photographic manipulation in the sense that you can choose angles to make things look one way or another. It looks like that to me because if that were a real smile, why would it look so demented.
So who is the baby daddy? The Grinch?
http://www.laprensatoledo.com/Stories/2007/121207/Grinch.htm
The stupidest thing about all of this, is that it takes babies weeks after they are born to smile a real smile. It's the first milestone. FFS.
It doesn't look like a smile. it looks like a mouth in repose on a creature that has facial bones and some musculature forming, but no fat to round out the face. It's easy enough to see where the actual corners of the mouth are.
The shadows from the angle are amplifying the illusion of smiling. Like makeup makes Heath Ledger jolly looking.
The fact people are seeing a smile is because they want to see one. The fact we're reduced to forensic studies argument on an in-situ fetus is depressing.
Good grief, even grimacing would capture a momentary 'smile'. Or the ever popular 'gas', which is always something I hear about newborns when someone claims they're smiling.
If ever a believer of this crap has given the 'false smiling' gas reason to someone about a newborn? They got nothin' to stand on.
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