> les schaffer
"Smiling is an activity that has social connotations. To smile requires a degree of self-consciousness and experience of interacting with other people. You do not have to be a genius to work out that a fetus, or indeed a small baby, does not have this."
Babies only smile when they are conditioned to? Balls. My son smiled and laughed when he was 3 months old. Apart from me, his mother and his sister, he didn't hang with many people. So where did he learn this "electromagnetic" response? Might it be hardwired into our being? Much like the "language organ" that Chomsky spoke of when he engaged Skinner?
My point in this thread is not that women should be reproductive slaves. It's that the science in this area has progressed since the early-70s, when calling a fetus a "growth" or "tumor" was perfectly acceptable among pwogs. That is no longer the case. And those who cling to this outdated terminology cannot admit that science has altered the field. They close their eyes and stick fingers in their ears, shouting "It's not a person! It's not a person!" They are little different from the religious nuts who claim that dinosaurs never existed, and that the Earth is a few thousand years old. Don't like the science that proves you wrong? Deny it. Ignore it. Spin it in yr. favor. Subordinate it to fit yr. ideology. Slander those who confront you with it.
Not quite sure what's "progressive" about that.
DP