There is a hidden and disturbing aspect to the national obsession with owning guns. Three percent of the people own half of the guns, which means that a few people have a large number of firearms each. These unusual people are overwhelmingly white, mostly male, and usually rural. The most disturbing part is the connection between the character of these gun owners and their obsession with stockpiling arms. The possession of a firearm makes a white male feel more powerful and assuages his fear of being robbed of what is “rightfully” his… even though his net worth is rather small. He feels that brown invaders are going to come and steal his precious possessions, although he owns little other than ammunition.
They’ll probably rape his wife too, and then kill them all. The movie “In Cold Blood” had a powerful effect on elderly rural whites, but long before that, during the Civil War, there were many episodes of that kind involving soldiers and civilians alike in pillage and rapine, sometimes simply because of starvation. “Racial memory” of atrocities haunts those who dwell in rural houses far from their neighbors.
Modern insecurity is different: poorly educated white males often lose their livelihoods and have nothing but time to brood over their ill fate. This has occurred more and more over the last forty or fifty years, in waves with factory and retail closures and the disappearance of entire industries. Employment in the US steel industry collapsed between 1975 and 1999, from 521,000 to 153,000. The coal mining industry employed roughly 175,000 men in 1986 and 52,000 in 2016 (this compares to an all-time high of 883,000 in 1923.) (Wikipedia)
The problem is that the system in this country has both created the insecure white man and provided him with a means to relieve his anxiety: the immediate presence of a loaded firearm. The insecure white man is motivated by racism and poverty: he doesn’t have enough stuff and he is afraid that brown people are coming to take it from him.
This is the situation that obtains and there is nothing that can be done to change it, unless we relieve the victims of perceived persecution: the white male. Nonwhite, mostly nonmale, nongunowners will congregate in cities where the police will be forced to protect them from the depredations of gun owning thugs (including some of the policemen themselves.) Of course, the gun collectors will probably stay in their compounds out in the country and avoid venturing into the city where they might meet their imagined enemy.
The key to real relief of this situation is to provide real security for the people: jobs, money, and protection from thieves and assault. A nationwide jobs program that gives everyone who can work (especially poor white men without educations) a job with a living wage– coupled with a welfare program that gives everyone who cannot work basic security: food, housing, medical care. The cost of this program will be large, but if successful will be rewarded with dramatic growth in gross domestic product, median household income, and lifespan– sufficient to support dramatic improvement in the economy. Unfortunately, this program will not increase the incomes of those who are already wealthy– it will cost them money, in taxes. But it will be worth it to reduce the death rate from firearms and to reduce the number of mass shootings (besides making many people happy by easing their poverty.)
A comprehensive program includes mental health evaluation and treatment, starting in grade school with emphasis on identifying those who might become isolated enough and vengeful enough to precipitate violence. All this costs money, and money means taxes. It won’t be good enough to protect our country from military invasion with a huge army and modern nuclear missiles if society is falling apart from the inside.
(By the way, I oppose a national gun-confiscation campaign because it will play directly to the fears of the alt-right. It is inefficient to attack this problem with weapons that simply provoke more paranoia.)
Therefore, the national obsession with low taxes will have to be changed. I suggest an intensive propaganda campaign that emphasizes the duty of the wealthy to protect civil society and prevent internecine violence. Yes, it’s a liberal idea that is anathema to the conservatives who control the national conversation. This means the propaganda of the extreme right wing will have to be drowned out. Intensive propaganda efforts are needed to speak louder than the NRA and the National Enterprise Institute, among others. Propaganda costs money: Tom Steyer, are you listening?
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and jabbacake)
“Trump is methodically destroying the moderate camp in his Administration and moving steadily crazy-hard right,” Joseph Cirincione, the president of Ploughshares Fund, an N.G.O. dedicated to containing the spread of nuclear weapons, told me. “Today’s firing and the crude, insulting way that he did it weakens the traditional conservative camp, the State Department, and American credibility. It’s almost as if someone is paying Trump to do it.”
From an article in the New Yorker about Trump’s selection of Mike Pompeo to be his new Secretary of State. Just keep repeating that in your mind: “It’s almost as if someone is paying Trump to do it.” What does that imply to you?
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and hansbenn)
Stephen Hawking: ‘It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.’
Stephen Hawking died last night at the age of 76.
This morning (California time) the Guardian reported that Russian exile Nikolai Glushkov had been found dead in his London home. Mr. Glushkov had been imprisoned in Russia on a probably trumped up fraud charge and gave evidence in the UK for Boris Berezovsky when he sued Roman Abramovich (another oligarch who is still “on friendly terms with the Kremlin”) in British court for an alleged five billion pounds fraud in 2011. That didn’t go over too well, and was on appeal. Then Boris died in 2013, found hanged in his bathroom; apparently the coroner was not convinced it was suicide, but had no better ideas.
On March 4 of this year, another Russian exile, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia, were found critically ill in a park in Salisbury, UK. Yesterday PM May denounced the Russian government, saying that her chemists (in the US sense, not pharmacists) had found definite evidence of a Russian nerve agent known as a Novichok (“newbie”) as the cause of their poisoning and the concomitant critical illness of a British first responder, as well as the contamination of as many as 500 British subjects in the vicinity. She gave the Russians twenty-four hours to explain; instead, today they demanded access to samples of the purported nerve agent– samples which probably do not exist, as the lethal dose of this agent is said to be 10 milligrams (less than a thirtieth of an aspirin tablet.)
Today Rex Tillerson was out at the State Department. Apparently he was fired without warning or explanation. According to CBS News, his statement read, in part: “The Secretary did not speak to the President and is unaware of the reason, but he is grateful for the opportunity to serve”… The operative word here is serve; in this sense anyone who works in US government is serving his master, Don the Con. Tillerson is trying to say that he has been serving “the public”, as in “public service”, but that is just a weasel word for being close to Mr. Trump and doing his bidding. Apparently, accusing the Russian tyrant of poisoning refugees from his domain and standing by countries that accept such refugees is not doing Mr. Trump’s bidding. Once again, we see that Mr. Trump is unable to criticize Mr. Putin in any way, shape, or form– why is that? Just what does Putin have on Trump? Given the Stormy Daniels story, it seems petty that a tape of Russian prostitutes performing “golden showers” for the golden boy could constitute “kompromat”– it is impossible to shame someone who is shameless. What Putin must have on Trump is documentary evidence that Trump collaborated (not just colluded) and conspired with Putin to “rig” the 2016 election so that Trump could become President. That’s the only kompromat that is serious enough to keep Trump dancing to Putin’s tune this long.
(cartoon courtesy of pixabay.com and dutchpirates)
Here’s the abstract of a case report published February 27, 2018 in the British Medical Journal:
An 84-year-old man presented to the emergency department following recurrent falls over several weeks and onset of new left-sided weakness. CT of the brain revealed a large air cavity (pneumatocoele) in the right frontal lobe thought to be secondary to an ethmoidal osteoma communicating through the cribriform plate allowing air to be forced into the skull under pressure. Subsequent MRI confirmed these findings and also revealed a small focal area of acute infarction in the adjacent corpus callosum. The patient had a prolonged hospital stay, declined neurosurgical intervention and was discharged home on secondary stroke prevention.
This man suffered a “lower respiratory infection” (bronchitis, probably) in the hospital but was thoroughly evaluated and informed of his condition and the proposed treatment. Major surgery would have been needed to correct this problem, in part because the osteoma was quite large and probably had been present for years. The follow-up report (in the complete text of the case study, available free at the above link) stated that the man had survived twelve weeks post-hospitalization and felt well, with improvement in his left-sided weakness, which was caused by a small stroke (shown in the man’s corpus callosum– the band that connects the two halves of the brain– on his MRI scan.) Apparently, he had a small benign bone tumor in his ethmoidal sinuses (these are behind the bridge of the nose) that broke through the cribriform plate (a bony plate with many tiny holes that pass nerves from the smell sensory nerves in the nose) and allowed air to enter a space that developed in the right side of the front of his brain. The air space apparently had developed gradually, and was/is pressing on his brain, so far without causing damage… but eventually this will cause a serious problem. The man, who at 84, apparently felt comfortable with the end of his life, declined surgery with its attendant risks and is still alive and ambulatory (walking around.)
If this sort of thing interests you, use the link to go to the report and peruse the MRI scan images– they are impressive.
(illustration courtesy of pixabay.com and OpenClipArt-Vectors)
Our president appears to depend on rallies to shore up his psychological well-being: he has been having big rallies (5,000 people or more) an average of twice a month since he was inaugurated. This is not purely because he announced his candidacy for re-election in 2020. He also gets a personal boost from the adulation of crowds and delivers some of his most obnoxious statements at rallies as applause lines. For example, he recently introduced publicly his imaginary solution to the drug problem: the death penalty for drug dealers. If you think Mexico had violence problems when it cracked down on drug trafficking, “you ain’t seen nothing yet” like what would happen if drug dealers were dealt with in such a crude, counterproductive, and unconstitutional way (remember there is a prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishments” and what could be crueler than the death penalty?)
What is particularly repellent about this psychological dependency on the love of the crowd is that he responds at rallies with rambling, hour-and-a-half long “speeches” in which he repeats his talking points, lies, exaggerations, insults, and one-liners. He may use a speechwriter but a large proportion of his speeches depends on things he has dreamt up on his own, often on the spot, and hones according to the level of crowd reaction.
He obtains what little information he gets from Fox “News” and there is a positive feedback relationship between the two: he often suggests topics, then feeds off the resulting “news” segments that bear the hyper-conservative stamp, the half-truths, and the outright lies that for which Fox’s commentators are specialists in response to his expressions of interest.
This president is far gone into being a demagogue and this signals a terrible danger to the US public: his point of view is reinforced, the hypnotic attachment of his core supporters is strengthened, and the anti-democratic pitch of his policies is further exaggerated. A minority of one-third of the public could exert control over the majority by removing the controls that democracy was supposed to have to prevent tyranny.
Let us take tariffs for example: for thirty years, he has been an outspoken protectionist with little or no understanding of the real meaning of trade balances. He thinks that, somehow, when we buy something from another country without selling them an equal amount of stuff we are the losers. Never mind that we are richer by the value of the items that we have bought. Never mind that the raw figures in a balance of trade sheet leave out intangibles like the exchange of services such as intellectual expertise. Never mind that the money we spend in another country is spent by the other country in ways that usually enrich us (tourism, for example, or the hiring of American providers who pay taxes on their salaries.) Despite having graduated from the Wharton school of business, he appears to have learned nothing about business.
The tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum show how backward-thinking this president’s behavior is. Forward-thinking “futurologists” have predicted that the production of cars will be reduced more than 90% as a result of the introduction of autonomous vehicles because cars will not have to sit in parking lots all day waiting for their owners to get out of work. The cars will be available to transport other people who will need them for the short term: errands, shopping, and the like. Wives (sorry, feminists) will no longer need to drive their breadwinners to the railroad station or the office in order to drive home, then leave again to run errands. Cars will be able to drive themselves home after dropping off their passengers.
Because of this drop in the sales of new cars, the need for steel and aluminum to build them will be drastically reduced as well. Since we already produce 75% of the steel that we consume domestically, it is likely that our entire steel needs will be satisfied by domestic production and new producing plants will not be needed.
It is likely that production will shift to batteries and solar panels as a result of technological advances in these devices and increases in the use of battery-powered cars with increasing range, capacity, and speed. Has Mr. Trump even seen this coming? Are there any plans in hand with members of his administration? No? Mr. Trump’s entire vision is focused on self-aggrandizement and re-election and he cannot see the FBI slowly gathering evidence of his money-laundering and acceptance of enormous financial assistance (in addition to assistance with cyber-sabotage) from the Russian government. He is already obstructing justice in every way he knows how and violating the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution every day with his Trump Washington DC hotel.
The only check on Mr. Trump’s autocratic power that is available is a massive surge of Democratic votes that will re-establish Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. If this does not happen, we will be in for a very rough time, as America becomes more and more of a dictatorship. Oligarchy is bad enough (it at least gives room to rational voices in favor of our survival on Earth) but dictatorship is inherently unstable and inefficient. We are facing an opponent (Russia) that has established a relatively stable oligarchy, albeit one dependent on the sale and consumption of fossil fuels for the monetary support of its government. If we totally sink into a dictatorship, we will be at a serious competitive disadvantage.
Our other “opponent”, China, has been an oligarchy for some time; its endorsement of a dictatorial leader recently makes a confusing picture. It would appear that China will continue to be an oligarchy and that Xi Jinping will exercise his dictatorial powers with discretion; Xi will be a figurehead, a Chinese “God” whose every pronouncement is law but is subject to endless interpretations and obfuscation by practical translations. That leaves the United States, where its “God” speaks plainly and clearly, needing no interpretation, in a condition like Nazi Germany in 1933: trembling on the edge of tyranny.
(image courtesy of pixabay.com and johnhain)
Trump said that allowing prosecutors to seek the death penalty for drug dealers — an idea he said he got from Chinese President Xi Jinping — is “a discussion we have to start thinking about. I don’t know if this country’s ready for it.”
“Do you think the drug dealers who kill thousands of people during their lifetime, do you think they care who’s on a blue-ribbon committee?” Trump asked. “The only way to solve the drug problem is through toughness. When you catch a drug dealer, you’ve got to put him away for a long time.”
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It was not the first time Trump had suggested executing drug dealers. Earlier this month, he described it as a way to fight the opioid epidemic. And on Friday, The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration was considering policy changes to allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty.
(This quote comes from the newsfeed that is built into Microsoft Windows 10 and is labelled “Washington Post”… by the way, the newsfeed aggregates stories from numerous outlets, starting with New York Times, Washington Post, Reuters, NBC, CBS, and so on; it also includes such fringe franchises such as Fox “News”, Buzzfeed, The Hill, )
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and Bru-nO)
Nationalist “Presidential Adviser” Stephen Bannon Plays Up to French Right-Wing National Front
The Washington Post reported on Saturday morning that Stephen Bannon had travelled to France to address the National Front in France and give his support to Marine Le Pen, its new leader. Mr. Bannon is well-known in this country for his nationalism, xenophobia, “populism”, and racism, and perhaps for an incipient fascist streak. Ms. Le Pen has long been estranged from the National Front’s original leader, her father Jean-Marie Le Pen. Ms. Le Pen lost badly in last May’s presidential elections in France, gaining only a third of the country’s votes against Emmanuel Macron. The National Front did even worse in legislative elections, losing all but eight seats in the 577-seat Assembly.
Italy’s nationalists did much better in their recent elections; a divided government, with nationalists in key positions, appears to be under organization. Italy’s membership and/or participation in the European Union may be in danger as a result. Cynics would attribute the success of nationalists in Italy to their poor defenses against cyber-sabotage and payoffs directed by Vladimir Putin and the Russian government. The French, on the other hand, were able to suppress cyber-propaganda of foreign origin very effectively.
Nonetheless, Mr. Bannon claimed that nationalists were winning and the republican parties were losing; he was quoted as claiming, “The tide of history is with us, and it will compel us to victory after victory after victory.” Note the words “tide of history”– Mr. Bannon has described himself as a Leninist, but he is thought to refer to Lenin’s tactic of completely destroying the government he was taking over and remaking it in his own image. He is not thought to be a Marxist; if he were, his reference to the “tide of history” would be understandable as referring to Marx’s “historical” theory of the development of feudalism followed by capitalism followed by communism. Instead, his reference is more likely to be part of a delusional, popular rant for the ears of his nationalist supporters in which nationalists are winning control of the world.
Assuming he were serious, we can readily argue that historical trends appear to be leaving nationalism behind. The twentieth century saw the rise of multinational corporations who were able to “sit out” the second world war and maintain their viability and profits by dealing with all sides in the world-wide conflict. In this century, multinationals are becoming larger than many countries; one or two US states is already larger than all but four or five of the largest nations. Nationalism as a force (for good or ill) appears to be waning as corporations win control over larger asset sets and are gaining partial immunity against sanctions and depredations of most countries.
The persistence of nationalism as a force is of course championed by almost all nations, most demagogues, and many national leaders. The most powerful proponents of nationalism are the leaders of China, Russia, and the US.
The concept of nationalism is inimical to the best interests of the Earth as a whole as well as to the well-being of the humans on it (the interests of Earth and of humans are not identical.) Nations are artificial constructs and they depend on the ideas of race, culture, and national identity. Race is an extremely superficial concept, as modern genetics has shown us: it is determined by skin and hair color and texture and facial characteristics, which do not assort genetically with intelligence or any of the many determinants of personality. Culture is a powerful and subtle concept, but it is mutable and evolves over time– what is more, it is not distinct between nations. National identity as a construct is useful only to national governments that wish to motivate their young men to die for their country and their young women to raise “good Americans” or “good Russians” (allowing that nationalism and sexism are equally obsolete concepts.)
The top ten multinational corporations, by annual revenue, according to the Telegraph (UK), are :
- Sinopec (China) – $267.5bn.
- China Natural Petroleum (China) – $262.6bn.
- Toyota Motor (Japan) – $254.7bn.
- Volkswagen (Germany) – $240.2bn.
- Royal Dutch Shell (Netherlands) – $240bn.
- Berkshire Hathaway (US) – $223.6bn.
- Apple (US) – $215.6bn.
- Exxon Mobil (US) – $205bn.
All of these companies have smaller total revenues than the GDP of Egypt (40th in the world.) However, tax revenues show that South Korea, fourteenth in the world, has similar receipts as the total revenue of the largest corporation. This may be a more accurate measure of a country’s power compared to a company’s power. These numbers show that large corporations are capable of buying immunity from prosecution in most countries in the world.
I am not trying to say that nationalism is bad or that corporatism or globalism are good, merely that their relative strength as concepts has undergone changes over the past two hundred years. Proponents of nationalism, in this day and age, tend to have ulterior motives like personal power.
Quoting from the last part of the article presented by Microsoft’s News application (part of Windows 10) (these articles usually are word-for-word extracts of articles that appear in their respective sources):
Le Pen has long sought to “de-demonize” her party by distancing it from its origins.
The National Front was co-founded in 1972 by her father, the convicted Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen, who continues to refer to Nazi gas chambers as a “detail” in the history of World War II. Last week, he published the first volume of his memoirs, “Son of the Nation,” which feature an empathic defense of Philippe Pétain, the leader of France’s Vichy government, a body that willingly collaborated with Nazi Germany during the war.
Although several of Marine Le Pen’s aides were also accused of Holocaust denial during the recent election campaign, she claims to be estranged from her father. The party conference in Lille will also feature a vote as to whether the elder Le Pen can keep his title as the party’s honorary president. His daughter officially expelled him in 2015, for repeating the gas chamber remark.
Bannon had some advice for those who might be embarrassed by such a history. “Let them call you racists. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists,” he said. “Wear it as a badge of honor. Because every day, we get stronger and they get weaker.”
In French media, Jean-Marie Le Pen — noting that Bannon was widely perceived as the “most radical” of Trump’s advisers — cast doubt on the value of his daughter’s American guest.
“I think this is not exactly the definition of ‘de-demonization,’” he said.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and Alexas_Fotos)
One subject that Steele is believed to have discussed with Mueller’s investigators is a memo that he wrote in late November, 2016, after his contract with Fusion had ended. This memo, which did not surface publicly with the others, is shorter than the rest, and is based on one source, described as “a senior Russian official.” The official said that he was merely relaying talk circulating in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but what he’d heard was astonishing: people were saying that the Kremlin had intervened to block Trump’s initial choice for Secretary of State, Mitt Romney. (During Romney’s run for the White House in 2012, he was notably hawkish on Russia, calling it the single greatest threat to the U.S.) The memo said that the Kremlin, through unspecified channels, had asked Trump to appoint someone who would be prepared to lift Ukraine-related sanctions, and who would coöperate on security issues of interest to Russia, such as the conflict in Syria. If what the source heard was true, then a foreign power was exercising pivotal influence over U.S. foreign policy—and an incoming President.
(This quote comes from a New Yorker article about Christopher Steele and his investigation)
Whether Mr. Trump really would have offered Mr. Romney a post as Secretary of State, or any other post, and whether Mr. Romney would have accepted are unknown factors. The Russians would like to think that they influenced the decision to hire Mr. Tillerson, a great friend of Russia and sponsor of a grand partnership between Rosneft and Exxon, for State. Subsequent events have confirmed their happiness with the choice of Tillerson.
(photo of St. Basile’s church in Red Square courtesy of pixabay.com and opsa)
A Rant About the “Just Facts” Website: It is Right Wing Propaganda Cleverly Disguised As Facts
I can conclude that “Just Facts” is a right-wing think tank that is only going to present “Facts” that it thinks refute the left-wing positions it abhors. It is not going to present facts that suggest that any of its right-wing positions are wrong.
The biases of “Just Facts” are obvious. While everyone has biases, it is clear to me that what is presented on the “Just Facts” website is propaganda, right-wing propaganda, and not just facts. If you have any problems with that statement, try reading a selection of “Just Facts” articles and you will see that not one of the articles presents important facts that would tend to suggest that right-wing positions are actually wrong.
Let us take an example: “Just Facts” top article: “Income, Wealth, and Poverty”…
1. the definitions of income omit inheritances. Inheritance is an important source of wealth and income for a certain proportion of the population.
2. Income is presented first as a numerical average, then as median figures, without explaining the difference– although there is an obvious difference, which is explained by skewing of the numerical average with small numbers of people who have very high incomes.
3. In the section on sources of income, inheritances are omitted from the “sources of income” and the following statement appears:
“In 1979, roughly 40% of U.S. households received more in federal, state, and local government benefits than they paid in federal taxes…”
State and local taxes, like sales taxes, are completely omitted from the “paid” column and are not further discussed… such taxes are regressive, as opposed to the federal income tax, which is progressive.
3a. In the same section, the following statement is presented:
” Government benefits can suppress market income by:
providing the means and incentive not to work.[56] [57]
reducing the incentive to work by cutting take-home pay (if taxes are raised to pay for the benefits).[58] [59] [60]
depressing wages by decreasing productivity-enhancing investments (if governments borrow the money to pay for the benefits).[61] [62]”
Notice that “government benefits suppress market income” is a statement of opinion, which is followed by “reasons” that are given references (which I did not peruse)… “reasons” that include conclusions such as “produce the means [obvious] and incentive [not so obvious] not to work” and “reducing the incentive to work” and finally “decreasing productivity-enhancing investments”… these are all conclusions that right-wing ideologues swear by, namely that government benefits make poor people lazy (“reduced incentive to work”) and the money would be better spent on “productivity-enhancing investments” (in what way investments enhance productivity is not described, but this could be debated for a long time and is certainly not obvious.)
The observation that poor people want to work and would work if given the opportunity is never revealed nor discussed; this is perhaps the most important aspect of the entire “welfare” controversy. Right-wing ideologues insist that welfare benefits make people lazy (especially black people– this is a common canard that is presented in movies from the thirties and forties from the mouths of black actors.) They ignore the obvious statements from the mouths of the poor people themselves, who say “Just give me a job! I need work to be able to respect myself.”
[What is more, and never mentioned, is that government benefits are immediately spent by their recipients. This actually stimulates the economy rather than “suppress[ing] market income”… and what does “suppress market income” actually mean? Does it mean that “market income” is reduced when a person receives a government benefit? That is obvious and irrelevant to the individual, who perceives only total income and the potential for purchasing. So in fact, government benefits enhance the individual’s total income and purchasing power, which is positive for the economy. Such benefits may mean the difference between having to choose between homelessness and starvation, and being able to avoid both homelessness and starvation.]
- I could continue if I had time, but in summary, the long series of statements and tables presented by “Just Facts” has the appearance of presenting all of the objective facts when it in reality omits or distorts certain important facts that tend to change the import of the overall picture in a “left-wing” direction. This is right wing propaganda disguised as objective facts.
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com and aitoff)
(this rant was submitted as a comment to the Retraction Watch site discussing pro-lifer’s demand that an article in JAMA about whether the fetus can feel pain be retracted, because some of the authors had associations with institutions that performed abortions, or had performed abortions themselves. The demanders referenced the “Just Facts” website, which presented a slanted review of recent research on the subject.)
A further rant about abortion in relation to the controversy over whether the fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks (or whenever):
I would like to point out that the issue of whether the fetus can (and probably does) feel pain (it does have nerve endings that, in the adult, transmit pain) is entirely separate from the issue of whether the mother has the right to have an abortion performed and thereby kill the human fetus. The mother has an absolute right to kill a human invader who has parasitized her womb, whether or not that uninvited presence can feel pain. The fetus has no ethical right to take over a mother’s body and life for its own nourishment without her consent.
The fact that the fetus is developing the apparatus for feeling pain is undeniable, whatever stage that apparatus is at and whether or not it is hooked up to the brain regions that perceive and react to pain (which is an open question, currently under investigation.) That is entirely beside the point of whether the mother has a right to abort.
