A Part of the Whole

I got into an argument with a friend over what constitutes a “part” of something. She claims that a pre-born baby is part of its mother, and she referred to it as a parasite. I vehemently disagreed, pointing out that if the child is a parasite (which it is) then it most certainly is not part of the mother, and furthermore, it can be nothing other than a human person.

The reason for this is that what defines a human, constitutionally, is the presence of human DNA in our cells. The human constitution has nothing to do with our abilities to reason, dance, or divide. Any “part” of a human (like the head, foot, or duodenum) has the same constitution as the whole (much like all the US states are under the same Constitution of 1787). Things like our clothes, the food in various stages of digestion inside of us, or an unborn baby inside its mother’s womb do not share the same genetic constitution. They have their own constitutions. In fact, that unborn baby is just as substantially human as it’s mother, and it is unique—a feature of each human.

The inability of most scientists to grasp this obvious fact is astounding. So astounding that I think it’s rather a case of the scientists not wanting to believe due to preconceptions (or paradigigms), a phenomenon that has plagued science from the beginning.