A Woman’s Body: Science vs Sentiment

The recent pro-choice rally in the USA has revived my concerns about public ignorance, even among the very educated, on the basics of what constitutes ‘a woman’s body’.

It is pardonable for the layperson, even if very educated, to believe and contend that the unborn is part of the pregnant woman’s body. When a reputable medical practitioner holds that belief and argues accordingly in public, the situation is grave.

Dr Errol Daley, gynaecologist and former President of the Medical Association of Jamaica seemingly believes and definitely argued on CVM’s Question Time (Wednesday, September 10, 2003) that the unborn is a part of the mother’s body. He was not speaking in a loose or non-scientific sense, because as one of the hosts of the show, I prodded him on technical grounds and repeatedly put the issue to him from the standpoint of the medical facts.

It is possible that you think the unborn is connected to the mother by the umbilical cord or by the placenta or in some other direct ‘blood vessel’ way. The facts will shock you.

Whether you are reading O’level, A’level or tertiary level books on the subject of human reproduction you will find no equivocation; (THE UNBORN IS NOT A PART OF THE MOTHER’S BODY, IN A MEDICAL, BIOLOGICAL OR SCIENTIFIC SENSE.) The basic scientific reality is that a body part is defined by the common genetic code it shares with the rest of the body to which it belongs. (THE GENETIC CODE OF THE UNBORN IS DIFFERENT FROM THE MOTHER’S.)

Professor AW Liley, is regarded as the “father of foetology (the study of the foetus, the unborn)” and performed the first ‘in the womb’ blood transfusion on an unborn. He says, “Biologically, at no stage can we subscribe to the view that the faetus is a mere appendage of the mother.it is the embryo who stops his mother’s periods and makes her womb habitable by developing a placenta and a protective capsule of fluid for himself. He regulates his own amniotic fluid volume and although women speak of their waters breaking or their membrane rupturing, these structures belong to the fetus.” (1970 speech)

By the way, the so-called ‘navel string’ or umbilical cord is produced by the unborn and is attached to, and at birth, cut from, the placenta (the ‘after birth’), which is also produced by the unborn. The ‘navel string’ is not attached to the mother at all!

Bernard Nathanson, once the leading abortionist in the USA, now opposed to abortion, says, “.the modern science of immunology has shown that the unborn child is not part of a woman’s body in the sense that her kidney or heart is.”

He continues about what happens, immunologically, after the unborn is implanted in the mother’s uterus, “. the defence mechanisms of the body, principally the white blood cells, sense that this creature now settling down. is an intruder, an alien and must be expelled. Therefore, an intense immunological attack is mounted on the pregnancy by the white blood cell elements, and through an ingenious and extraordinarily efficient defence system the unborn child succeeds in repelling the attack. even on the most microscopic scale the body has trained itself. how to recognise self from non-self.” (The Abortion Papers, 1983, 150-151).

Just think seriously about it and you soon see that the unborn could not, technically, be a part of the woman’s body. A pregnant woman is in an accident or in labour and she dies but the child lives on. Is the reality that a part of her body is living when she is dead?

A black woman has her egg fertilised in a petrie dish with her husband’s sperm then the zygote is placed in the womb of a white woman who carries the child to term and gives birth to a black baby. Was that black baby a part of the white woman’s body?

Why do gynaecologists treat a pregnant woman as if they are treating two patients, but do not treat a woman with fibroids the same way? Can the gender of one part of a person’s body be different from another part is the situation when the unborn is a male? When the unborn has a different blood type from the mother, can a woman have two different blood types in her one body?

If the unborn is a part of the mother’s body then one body can have two distinct and unique sets of fingerprints, two distinct and unique genetic codes, two noses, two hearts, two brains, two circulatory systems and so on.

We must remember that being within a thing does not necessarily mean being part of that thing -imagine yourself being within a building – nor is being connected to something proof positive that you are part of that thing – imagine yourself connected by a cable to a spaceship.

Let’s cut the politically correct and feminist claptrap and speak factually and sensibly.