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Dr. Bellieni urges us to stop treating little preborn, newborn, and infirm people like second-class citizens, denying their personhood and their basic human rights.
Dr. Carlo Bellieni, a neonatal doctor in Siena, Italy has spent twenty years studying preborn and newborn babies, with a particular focus on their senses and ability to feel pain. Despite numerous scientific findings pointing to the unborn/newborn child's heightened sense of pain, Dr. Bellieni explains, research is still minimal because these little people are treated like second-class citizens by many in society and denied the dignity of personhood.
"In sum," he said, "they deny that someone who does not have self-awareness can feel pain." Dr. Bellieni warns of the expansion of this mentality to the mentally handicapped and those suffering dementia. He urges that regardless of a fetus or disabled person's state of self-awareness, these persons are a member of the human race and should be afforded their basic rights.
