What are you?

[George]

For those who say that it is not a human life until it is safely out from the womb or at least in the third trimester, I call bullshit.

The mother is not filtering her entire nutritional system unto a fucking tumor, for goodness' sake. It's simple justification for a much more complicated process. The mother turns into a nurturing MACHINE. She enters a symbiosis that begins the moment an egg is fertilized.

[Calliander]

But seriously, I think the hypothetical situtation where the mother will die in birth is far less clear cut. You're saying that the mother would be killing the baby; but the other way, indirectly, wouldn't the baby also be killing the mother?

Does a bad heart literally kill someone? It's not something that is capable of making the actual cognitive turns to commit the act, it's just a little wriggly animal. And animals < us.

EDIT: Yes, that means, "Fuck you, vegans."

[AstroBlue]

She enters a symbiosis

I'm going to have to call bullshit there, it's not a mutualist symbiosis, and the baby is still biologically the mother, a bit of jizz doesn't change that.

[George]

I'm going to have to call bullshit there.

So where does this new life come from? Does it claw its way out of some sort of intergalactic wormhole and rent out the mother's womb? No, it grows and develops off the energy that the mother provides to it. Two entities sharing one body, I'd call that a symbiosis.

[AstroBlue]

Read TEH Edit.

[Calliander]

So where does this new life come from? Does it claw its way out of some sort of intergalactic wormhole and rent out the mother's womb? No, it grows and develops off the energy that the mother provides to it. Two entities sharing one body, I'd call that a symbiosis.

I don't know about Astro, but let me put my thoughts this way, aside from all other evidence:

Is it a choice to have a child? I mean, originally - you sit down and say to your (hopefully) husband/wife that you want to have a child and it is decided that a child will be had OR the child is an accident and you decide to go ahead with the birth. Is that a choice? If people can choose to bring a kid into the world, I think they ought to be able to choose NOT bring one into the world.

Children are not consequences. Abortion is a radical action to take, but necessary until we can get people to think this shit through more fully.

[George]

By definition a symbiosis may be exclusively beneficial to one of them, and regardless of the genetic makeup of the infant in its early stages, a developing infant is still far different from an egg, which the body will eventually reject if not fertilized.

[g0zen]

So where does this new life come from? Does it claw its way out of some sort of intergalactic wormhole and rent out the mother's womb? No, it grows and develops off the energy that the mother provides to it. Two entities sharing one body, I'd call that a symbiosis.

It's not mutualist symbiosis, but rather simply parasitism. The mother can live without the gestating newborn, but the newborn obviously cannot live without the mother. Ergo, if the mother decides she no longer wants to be host to the newborn she should have the right. It IS her body that is being used to foster the growth and development.

[Mman]

So where does this new life come from? Does it claw its way out of some sort of intergalactic wormhole and rent out the mother's womb? No, it grows and develops off the energy that the mother provides to it. Two entities sharing one body, I'd call that a symbiosis.

What about a tapeworm then?

[George]

What about a tapeworm then?

A tapeworm is a foreign body that was introduced to the body. Though tapeworms do grow and develop off of the hosts nutritional system, it's nothing compared to what a mother's body does in order to prepare for nurturing a child.