Compassion for crustaceans contrasts cruel treatment of preborn humans

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Recent headlines highlight a striking development: scientists are increasingly calling for bans on boiling lobsters alive because of mounting evidence that these animals experience pain.

A new study found that when lobsters were given analgesics like lidocaine or aspirin, their escape responses to harmful stimuli diminished—suggesting not mere reflex, but a neurologically mediated experience of pain. 

The ethical conclusion drawn by many researchers is clear: if lobsters can suffer, then longstanding culinary practices must be reexamined in the name of humane treatment.

Yet this growing sensitivity toward animal suffering exposes a deeper inconsistency within modern scientific and medical discourse.

A Deeper Inconsistency

While researchers increasingly advocate for protections for crustaceans, there remains a striking silence, or at least a lack of consensus, regarding the capacity for pain in the unborn human.

Major professional organizations such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) maintain that fetal pain is unlikely before a certain gestational threshold. However, this position is far from universally accepted, and the scientific literature reflects ongoing uncertainty rather than settled consensus.

Additionally, this argument seems less based in science and more based in an ideological desire to tolerate abortion on demand.

A 2023 scientific publication, “The fetal pain paradox,” highlights precisely this controversy: some medical authorities assert that pain perception is not possible before approximately 24 weeks, while others stand on data that the neurobiological foundations for pain may develop earlier, creating a “paradox” in how pain is acknowledged across different contexts. 

This inconsistency raises important questions about how scientific standards are applied, and whether cultural and political pressures shape conclusions as much as empirical evidence.

READ: Pro-abortion researcher admits: Preborn babies feel pain far earlier than we thought

A Contradictory Approach

In the context of in-utero corrective fetal surgery, surgeons routinely administer anesthesia, not just through the mother but also directly to the fetus/child, during in-utero manipulations. This is done to blunt stress responses, ensure stability, and, in many cases, to provide analgesia.

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While some medical organizations maintain that fetal pain perception is unlikely before a certain gestational age, the very practice of administering anesthesia to the unborn during surgery reflects a more cautious, if not contradictory, approach.

If there were truly no possibility of meaningful sensory experience, the rationale for fetal analgesia would be far less compelling.

The broader ethical dilemma becomes even more pronounced when viewed alongside discussions of animal pain in other domains.

More Compassion for Animals

Debates about insect suffering, sometimes framed in terms like the “beetle pain paradox,” similarly reveal a growing willingness to extend moral concern to increasingly simple organisms, even as disagreement persists about what constitutes meaningful pain perception.

The trend suggests a scientific culture that is highly attuned to the suffering of animals, sometimes even those with rudimentary nervous systems, while remaining hesitant, divided, or just silent when addressing the moral status of the developing human life in utero.

This asymmetry is difficult to ignore.

If the capacity for pain is sufficient to prompt sweeping ethical reforms in how society treats lobsters, crabs, or even insects, then consistency would seem to demand at least equal concern for the possibility of pain in the unborn child.

To dismiss that concern outright, or to frame it as conclusively resolved when the science remains contested, risks undermining public trust in medical institutions and blurring the line between science and ideology.

The Killing Must Stop

At minimum, these parallel debates should invite discussion as to the humane treatment of the pre-born child. Science, particularly on questions as complex as pain and consciousness, rarely speaks with a single voice. When it comes to both animal welfare and prenatal life, a consistent ethic would err on the side of caution and recognize that the stakes are not merely academic, but profoundly moral.

Even if abortion providers were to sedate a child in utero prior to elective abortion, which is not the current practice, that still would not justify the deliberate killing of that child.

In other words, fetal pain control before killing a preborn child might address the pain issue, but certainly doesn’t make it moral.