The Placenta and the Abortion Question

A recent article in the New York Times underscores the very small amount of information doctors and researchers have about the mysterious placenta—the organ that grows out of a new embryo and immediately starts siphoning nutrients out of a new mother’s blood. The article is quite fascinating, but it brings up some very important questions concerning abortion.

The human placenta is apparently very aggressive—one researcher likened it to cancer. “Parasite” was also thrown out to describe it. It is not created by the woman’s body to nourish the new life. It grows from the embryonic tissue and actively seeks out nutrients. This has great interest in the abortion question, as a new embryo immediately starts to act. From the beginning, it exercises a will to live. Though this looks very much like an involuntary biological process, it is important to note that the woman’s body is a host for another organism. This is not a clump of the woman’s cells. Even the mechanism for the new organism’s survival is not created from the woman’s cells. The woman’s flesh isn’t active about taking care of the new organism—it is passive. The new organism takes immediate action to sustain its own new life.

The use of the words “cancer” and “parasite” indicate something else very interesting. Abortion is not the voluntary excision of an inconvenient outgrowth of one’s own body. The placenta makes it clear—abortion is the willful excision (and execution) of a foreign body. A full-term pregnancy certainly happens with a woman’s permission. If you view a new life as a blessing (and not a cancer), you will willingly share your nutrients and even take in more and better nutrients to benefit the new life. You will be a gracious host.

But let’s not kid ourselves anymore. Abortionists have been telling people for years that a woman can do what she wants with her body. But we’re not just talking about her body. If she drank contaminated water and got a tapeworm, I don’t think anyone would fault her for killing the tapeworm. But no one is going to say she can kill the tapeworm “because it’s just an extension of her own body.”

And that exposes the hidden logic of abortion. They have to say it’s about the woman’s own body, but in fact they know the embryo is another body. They just don’t care about that other body. They actually think it’s a cancer and a parasite. And they want it out.

But if they didn’t want it, they could have chosen not to invite it in—in the majority of cases. Just because someone is in your house, that doesn’t give you the right to kill him if he’s inconveniencing you—especially when you were the one who invited him there in the first place.

41 responses

    • So just because it’s the law it’s ok? I suppose slavery was ok at one point in time too huh?

    • Obviously the Supreme Court did not settle this issue, it is still hotly debated, and I have no intention of getting over it. (Oh, and are you still showing your IQ inside that puppet?)

    • Oh, please Mr. LaBobfromNYC.

      There is no one with any sound knowledge of logic, biology, or law who will stand by the Roe v. Wade determination as being either internally coherent or in accord with empirical evidence harvested from our latest sciences and technologies.

      Since when were any on the SCOTUS infallible?

      • I wish you religious kooks would look at a list of countries that allow abortion & compare it with the countries don’t. Then ask yourself a simple question… which side of the list should we be on!

    • So, the SCOTUS ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby last week. I heard you crying like a little sissy about that decision. Get over it, you little fruit!

    • No, they didn’t! Their decision was so poorly supported–they found a “penumbra of a shadow” of a hint that maybe the Constitution didn’t forbid it. Real judicial honesty. The Court even admitted that if it were ever proved that the baby was a “person” their decision would be null and void. That’s why the baby butchers fight so desperately to deny the obvious and try to characterize the baby as just a blob of tissue. Just look at a picture of the baby at 12 weeks of pregnancy and try to deny it is fully human. But selfish, immoral and God-hating people, and those who are getting rich off this business, characterize those who want to protect babies as conducting a “war on women.” No, it is a war on blood-thirsty, inhuman, immoral, baby murderers.

  1. Some people favor “evictionism” whereby a woman doesn’t kill the baby, she just has it removed, alive presumably. Actually, since half the placenta is the baby’s organ (the other half IS the mother’s organ, and the two halves are divided by a permeable membrane), then cutting the umbilical cord, which you would have to do to evict the baby, is tantamount to cutting someone’s carotid artery.

    Another thing people don’t realize about the placenta is that it is firmly rooted in the uterine wall. If someone does a surgical abortion, he must cut the placenta loose, and that can (and should) lead to massive hemorrhage. I can never figure out how anybody could justify doing that to a woman! It’s no wonder so many women suffer severe medical consequences.

    The baby sends stem cells into the mother’s blood during pregnancy, with a great quantity at the time of birth or abortion. Some of these will go to the mother’s brain. When a human being suffers pain, the body creates chemicals that indicate the presence of pain. Picture these chemicals in the baby’s stem cells, going into the mother’s body, and from there into the brain. The anguish a woman, ANY woman, feels after abortion is quite adequately explained by this fact alone. And don’t tell me women don’t universally feel anguish. Some women bury it, and some don’t talk about it, but it’s there.

  2. The battle against this atrocity begins with identifying it correctly. By calling it “abortion,” we’ve already acquiesced to the opposition’s terminology. Look up “abortion” and “miscarriage” in any dictionary. A miscarriage is an abortion. What doctors (and parents) do to infants in the womb is infanticide. Had Roe v. Wade been waged over infanticide rather than abortion, it would have never made it to the court room. In fact, by employing the word “abortion,” Roe v. Wade was won before it ever got to court.

    The Greek word “brephos” employed in the New Testament for infants already born is the same word used for infants in the womb (Luke 2:12 and Luke 1:41), without specifying the precise moment they became a “brephos.” Therefore, our only option is to then accept that they became such at conception. Thus, intentionally killing a brephos at any point is “brephocide” or, more properly, infanticide.

    The point being, we Christians need to stop using the non-Christians’ watered-down, politically correct terms such as “abortion” and “gay.” It’s infanticide and sodomy. There is no power in the former terms against evil and our first mistake is in acquiescing to the ungodly’s terminology.

    Listen to Part 1 of “Word Wars & Captive Thoughts” at http://www.missiontoisrael.org/tapelist.php#T849.

    • Thank you for that explaination in full. The only reason your type of terminology is not used is because most people would not understand it. Especial;ly the liberals.

  3. You kill something every time you eat anything, and it appears to me that men have a role here as well, yet I don’t see the anti-choice men (or women) volunteering at childcare centers, adoptions centers and consistently oppose any aid whatsoever to Families with Dependent Children (one of those “big govt” programs you love to demolish, so the fat cats can have their tax breaks).

    And I also note with interest and humor that no one seems to be concerned at the pointless death of so many sperm!!!! Surely, that holy sperm would be of concern? After all, Viagra, Cialis & penis pumps are covered under insurance (as are vasectomies, by the way), and yet, when it comes to the women in the pregnancy partnership, only SHE has restrictions.

    Blatantly sexist, woman-hating propaganda. We are adult women and we can make our own decisions about our bodies and our families. Thanks for caring.?

    • Conservatives want the fetus to come through the birth canal but health care for the mother and fetus are expendable. They believe that God decides which women die giving birth. God decided which Republicans could deny the working poor Medicaid. God decides death based one’s ability to pay for everything on his or her own.

      In a conservative’s mind, they’re on the right side of God -the very “right” side.

    • Your reading ability apparently is as poor as your morality. You aren’t making decisions about YOUR body, you are executing SOMEONE ELSE’S body, another human being. But you are so blood thirsty you are perfectly fine with butchers using medieval torture methods to murder another human being, tearing him or her apart limb from limb and fishing out the pieces, or burning them with salts. How progressive, we’re back in the 15th Century! I wonder how eager you’d be to murder your baby if someone used exactly the same methods on you?

  4. It would appear that there will always be those “for” and those “against” abortion. To kill an innocent child is a crime, and that’s that. No bloody “ifs” and/or “buts”about it. enough said.

      • Someone that doesn’t need government help, but many people more than willing to give freely through charity and churches. No government needed.

  5. While these medical discussions are somewhat useful, the core of the abortion issue is that there are two individuals involved, the pregnant woman and an EHB (Embryonic Human Being). The woman has her life to consider and the EHB cannot yet make such lifestyle decisions. If the pregnant woman does not want a child in her life at this time, the law says that she can have an abortion. And btw, someone posted a blog here that said infanticide could be used to describe an abortion. I just checked my Random House College Dictionary and infanticide describes the killing of an infant which is a very young child that has been naturally ejected from the womb. So please don’t call an abortion infanticide. Interestingly enough, that dictionary defines abortion as taking place within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. I favor legislation making abortion after 20 weeks murder (perhaps you could call that infanticide although it would not be 100% accurate). Twenty weeks is enough time for a woman to make up her mind.

  6. “Parasite” was also thrown out to describe…” – so they are just like money lenders and stock traders.

  7. I once went thru an abortion for my cat – it was horrible. A few months ago some evil person abandoned a pregnant cat on our property. We took loving care of her and let her have her kittens. After they were old enough they went out for adoption, and so did mommy. I would have gladly kept her but we already have three cats. abortion is really, really bad. We have to take care of each other and especially those who can’t.

  8. It’s also called a fetus. We can all play with words to suit our position. Such as a miscarriage vs. infanticide? When its done by nature/God it’s unfortunate and God’s will. When it is a willing decision of the mother, it’s murder? There are few women who really wants to have an abortions. They have them because they do not believe they can humanely raise a child. If you look at how many children are suffering in our world today, it makes it an even tougher decision for many women. Add in the “your going to jail and hell because you’re a sinner” fascist mentality, and we might as well go back to the Salem Witches, Christian Crusades or Spanish Inquisition. I am not in favor of abortions, but I do not wish to allow her overly self righteous neighbors or community decide a women fate and life and prefer to, with this issue, let God be their Judge.

    • So you cast a vote in favor of it? Then answer to God it’s okay for someone else to do it, but I wouldn’t do it. That makes you part of the problem. God says you’re either for me or against me you can’t have it both ways. So then where do stand?

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