Comment by washbrain | Hacker News Reader

Comment by washbrain | Hacker News Reader

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For me, personally, I believe that human pregnancy is unusual. Most mammalian mothers can self terminate pregnancy if desired, by cutting off the flow of resources to their fetus.

Humans are somewhat unique in that they can't. Our fetuses are parasitic, and attempt to force the mother to carry them to term through endocrinological trucks. Except... We can now disrupt that parasitism and join every other mammalian species in giving mothers the authority over whether their bodies supply resources to a developing clump of cells within them.

We choose, however, in some parts of the world to not give women control of the resources in their body and instead tell them, "this fetus could become a human, so you are required to use your resources to make it so."

Until the fetus is viable on its own, it's literally in a parasitic relationship with the mother. It might have human-like traits, but until it's capable of surviving outside of that parasitic relationship, I'm inclined to give the mother the authority to say whether they want to play host.

Setting aside that thinking of pregnancy as a "parasitic relationship" is a somewhat deranged perspective that very few people likely share, we have a rather robust toolkit for dealing with this problem that doesn't have to tread on moral gray areas: contraception, plan b, pregnancy tests.

I'm also not saying pregnancies shouldn't be terminable by choice, to be clear. I'm inquiring about how we justify placing the line where it is in the usual standard.

The parasitic placenta is not my thinking, it's a fairly widely understood, perhaps not anodyne, scientific description of the relationship. See:

https://www.reading.ac.uk/news-archive/press-releases/pr9938....

It's a topic of much, much discussion, and I don't believe that it's deranged to discuss how human pregnancy is particularly unique in the chemical and hormonal ways the placenta interacts with the uterine wall.

Edit: for instance, human embryos attack and digest the urine wall, paralyzing the cells there and pushing growth hormones to the blood vessels to increase the blood supply to the placenta. Other mammals don't operate this way, the mother controls access to nutrients. Human embryos are so aggressive in seeking blood they typically leave behind clumps of cells throughout the mother's body, making the mother a generic chimera.

In other mammals, the placental wall is not breached, so a failed or terminated pregnancy doesn't have the network of paralyzed and intertwined arteries that a human pregnancy does, making it much more dangerous for human mothers. The human embryo is nearly unique in it's aggression in seeking out arteries.

One effect of human gestation is that the fetus has direct access to the mother's bloodstream, and injects hormones to regulate the mother's behavior - again, this manipulation is fairly unique - increasing blood sugar and blood pressure to serve the fetus even at the expense of the mother. A fetus may spend up to 25% of its protein intake on hormonal regulation of the mother (which, by the way, the mother's body tried very, very hard to shut down.)

It's a complicated and hugely messy affair, and in humans represents a literal fight for resources.

Anyway you cut it, all options being discussed or proposed puts the burden on women.

I think this is the first issue to address.

Contraception is for the woman to learn about, pay for and take, same for plan b, pregnancy tests and even abortions.

Pregnancy costs are for the mother to pay, for the mother to learn what to do about it, how to handle. Raising a child is for the mother to do. Shame related to all this is for the woman to endure.

I think any argument for forcing a woman to X, Y or Z would be much stronger if some equivalent contribution was provided to them for the service which they would be obligated to provide.

If all this education was provided properly and for free, access to all these paid for and readily available, if society or father's had to provide adequate in-full financial compensations without lengthy court battles, if father's were forced to be there at various step of the pregnancy, donate their own blood or organs if needed due to medical complications, take care of the child fully if the mother doesn't want it, etc. If women were given full pregnancy work leaves at no reduced salary, etc.

If you had that, you could posture to make abortion illegal, maybe minus certain medical related complications and maybe a few other scenarios like incestual rapes and all that.

Minus all that, I think it's hard to have a discussion about forcing someone to do something against their will, which will incur health repercussions, lifestyle changes, lifelong time and money commitments, and physical and mental pain.

We don't force people to give a hungry man some food. We don't force people to share their property with others. We don't force people to care for the elderly. We don't force people to pay for others medical expenses.

That's all very reasonable and I agree with pretty much all of it, with the caveat that asking people participating in a society to give up some of their convenience in some situations is fairly routine, for both men and women. And also, as far as I'm aware, there is no state in the US in which mothers are absolutely forced to raise their offspring.

> asking people participating in a society to give up some of their convenience in some situations is fairly routine

Generally it's done with some sense of equality though. That's probably the issue here. If we all shared the burden of child birth and raising children equally, you'd have a much stronger case. Then when someone says we should ban abortion, everyone would feel the trade offs of doing so. If you don't have skin in the game, it seems disingenuous to argue for.

> Setting aside that thinking of pregnancy as a "parasitic relationship" is a somewhat deranged perspective that very few people

I doubt this is true, especially given the fact that many people refer to kids as parasites.

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