"In their use of pain to make the fetus seem more fully human, anti-abortion forces draw on a deep tradition. Pain has long played a special role in how society determines who is like us or not like us (“us” being those with the power to make and enforce such distinctions). The capacity to feel pain has often been put forth as proof of a common humanity. Think of Shylock’s monologue in “The Merchant of Venice”: Are not Jews “hurt with the same weapons” as Christians, he demands. “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” Likewise, a presumed insensitivity to pain has been used to exclude some from humanity’s privileges and protections. Many 19th-century doctors believed blacks were indifferent to pain and performed surgery on them without even that era’s rudimentary anesthesia. Over time, the charmed circle of those considered alive to pain, and therefore fully human, has widened to include members of other religions and races, the poor, the criminal, the mentally ill — and, thanks to the work of Sunny Anand and others, the very young. Should the circle enlarge once more, to admit those not yet born? Should fetuses be added to what Martin Pernick, a historian of the use of anesthesia, has called “the great chain of feeling”? Anand maintains that they should."