Analysis

Women are incubators?

“A fetus is not a baby! Abortion is not murder! Women are not incubators!”
~ The pro-choice demonstration

The first time I watched the video of pro-choice demonstrators protesting San Francisco’s Walk for Life, I saw a group of men and boys holding up a sign saying, “Break the chains.” I was not surprised when they shouted that a fetus is not a baby and that abortion is not murder…because if an unborn child is just a blob of cells, then abortion cannot possibly be murder!

However, science and technology prove that fetuses are indeed human beings. The argument that women are not incubators confused me for I did not know what an incubator was. I had a sense that the men were saying women are not “baby-making machines”.

When I looked up the meaning of an “incubator” in the dictionary, I found the following definition:

  • n, an enclosed apparatus (device) providing a controlled environment for the care and protection of premature or unusually small, sick babies.

pregnant2My question is, how in the world can women be incubators if the fetus they carry inside them is not a baby?! After all, incubators provide life support to weak babies, not fetuses. To claim that a fetus is not a baby while saying women are not incubators is irrational and illogical. Who ever said women are incubators?

Growing up, I have never heard anyone refer to women as incubators. What I do not understand is this: if a woman is dealing with an unplanned pregnancy, then she is an incubator. What about women who choose to stay pregnant? Are they incubators, too? What is the difference if a pregnancy is “unwanted” or not? A pregnancy is a pregnancy no matter how unplanned or unwanted it is.

I recently read an argument online by a woman stating, “We are not walking incubators! We are human beings.” Of course women are human beings, and so are the unborn children they carry inside. Women facing unwanted pregnancies and complaining that they feel like incubators only degrade themselves. Continuing with an unwanted pregnancy to keep an unborn child alive is not dehumanizing; calling pregnant women incubators is. It is the use of demeaning terms that degrades people.

If you call one woman with an unwanted pregnancy an incubator, then you are calling all pregnant women, including your birth mother, incubators. If women are incubators, then what does that statement make the rest of us human beings? Feces-producing machines? To use terms of objectification against reproductive and other human functions is offensive towards women and human beings as a whole.

I am appalled that some people use the incubator argument to defend abortion. Not only do they insult women choosing to stay pregnant, but they insult pregnant women in general. Those for abortion do not speak for women facing unplanned pregnancies, nor are they helping them in any way. Is it possible that those for abortion are in fact using pregnant women for their own pro-abortion agenda by labeling them as incubators? They would not call their pregnant friends or family members “incubators,” would they? Are women incubators only if they do not want to remain pregnant? And if a woman changes her mind about her pregnancy and decides to keep the unborn child alive, is she suddenly no longer an incubator once she embraces her pregnant body? The incubator argument does not make any sense whatsoever.

As long as we keep living in a sexist society and in a world where women and girls are degraded for being pregnant in general, the issue of abortion will still be around. I do not hear men being called “sperm donors” to degrade them. And if men are just “sperm donors,” does that make women just “incubators”? Think about it.

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  • ldwendy

    “Continuing with an unwanted pregnancy to keep an unborn child alive is not dehumanizing;”

    Not everyone thinks the way you do. There are people who would not equate a 1-week zygote with a full-term baby. A zygote represents potential life; a pregnant woman is an ACTUAL human being with her own feelings, hopes and dreams. Not everyone thinks the rights of a 1-week zygote, or a 6 week fetus supercedes the right of a pregnant woman to control how she wants handle an unexpected pregnancy.

    “calling pregnant women incubators is. It is the use of demeaning terms that degrades people. Women facing unwanted pregnancies and complaining that they feel like incubators only degrade themselves”

    Pregnant women who don’t want remain pregnant, but are harassed by individuals pressuring them to continue the pregnancy may feel they are incubators because their wishes and views toward the pregnancy aren’t taken into account or considered to be relevant. Being pregnant for 9 long months is not something every woman wants. Being pregnant is not a blissful event for some women. We have to respect their viewpoints too.

    I don’t think my mother was an incubator. She loved children and choose to continue her pregnancy. The point is, she had a choice.

    Broad generalizations by both sides in the abortion debate is never a good thing.
    Anti-abortion folks like to say a mother choosing to abort is selfish; pro-choice folks who scream that a woman choosing to continue her pregnancy has been duped into becoming an incubator. The fact is, each pregnant woman’s situation is unique and only she can decide for herself whether continuing the pregnancy is worth the risks to her. She is the one who has the carry the fetus/baby for 9 months, not to mention being the primary caregiver for the next 18 years or so.

    • Stormii

      Your right, not everyone equates a fetus to a new born baby mainly because it’s not
      as developed as a new born (Depending on how early or late the pregnancy is)
      however you cannot say a 7-week fetus isn’t human. In many ways that’s twisting
      science to your own agenda – you can’t make a different definition of human to fit your views. A fetus may not have feelings, hopes and dreams but doesn’t make it any less human in the biology standards.

      When pregnant there are two people to consider, the woman and the fetus. There
      are people who will ignore the woman and think of only the child – but this doesn’t just happen in pro-life part of things. Abortion clinics constantly degrade both and pressure woman. We should respect everyone’s view point, but that should include the child’s. Choice is awesome and all, but what right should over ride? The choice to decide what to do with a pregnancy or the right not to be killed?

      Since both woman and child are human, both should be considered. You wouldn’t
      kill a one of a conjoined twin, would you? In abortion there are risks, in pregnancy there are risk for both. Only difference in abortion is that it’s a sure thing – one will die. Also, there’s adoption. But I do agree with you, broad generalization sucks, for lack of better word.

      • Detroiter327

        1) A fetus is not a sentient being with a viewpoint. Its pretty had to consider the viewpoint of something that does not have one.

        2) You just complained about broad generalizations and proceeded to make several.

        • Basset_Hound

          1) A fetus is not a sentient being with a viewpoint. Its pretty hard to consider the viewpoint of something that does not have one.

          Neither is an infant or a toddler. Should we disregard their well being for our convenience as well?

          2) You just complained about broad generalizations and proceeded to make several.

          Pot…kettle…black…

          • Detroiter327

            A fetus does not even have the ability to be self aware, this part of the brain will not START developing until the 24th week .

            Also please take an introductory development, psychology class etc. The general theory is that self awareness starts around the age of 1, depending on the progress of the baby.

          • http://www.facebook.com/beverly.harlton Beverly Harlton

            Given that self-awareness occurs long after birth, as you have just stated, why, then, should it be considered a criterion when considering the personhood of the fetus?

          • Detroiter327

            Please reread what I just wrote more carefully. It is a criteria because the fetus does not have the ability or the physical capability to do so.

          • http://www.facebook.com/beverly.harlton Beverly Harlton

            Neither does an infant, according to what you’ve written. If an infant is definitely a person, yet lacks self-awareness, how can a lack of self-awareness be a criterion against the personhood of a fetus?

          • Detroiter327

            Wow! I can’t believe I have to explain this further but here it goes! A infant has the ability for self awareness because it has the physical circuitry to one day be able to. A fetus up to 24-28 weeks does not possess this. It is physically not there. A fetus up to a certain point is physically unable to be self conscious or aware. Please do not confuse eventually having the potential to do something with the ability to actually do it.

          • http://www.facebook.com/beverly.harlton Beverly Harlton

            I can’t believe you actually think this is an adequate explanation. A fetus, if it survives until birth, will someday become a one-year-old human, just as an infant will under normal circumstances. Regardless of whether or not the circuitry that will eventually allow self-awareness to happen exists yet, it still will develop under normal circumstances.

            I can see your reasoning, but to me, it is grasping at shreds of science that still allow you to be comfortable with the fact that it is legal to kill the weakest among us.

          • Basset_Hound

            “Also please take an introductory development, psychology class etc. The general theory is that self awareness starts around the age of 1″

            I have, thank you very much. I’m cognizant of the fact that self-awareness is a developmental process that takes years.

            “A fetus does not even have the ability to be self aware, this part of the brain will not START developing until the 24th week .”

            A group of scientists in Italy found identical twins purposely stroking and touching each other at 14 weeks…That’s 10 weeks EARLIER. Scientists have also determined that pain receptors begin to develop at week 9.

            http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0013199

        • Solntsye

          When my husband was involved in a serious motor vehicle accident, he was unconscious and on a vent for almost a week. He was not a sentient being at that time. Therefore, according to you, he no longer retained any rights as a human being. So we could have legally killed him? I mean, he was human…just not sentient and totally dependent on a vent for oxygen, as well as other humans to administer physical care to him.

          Good thing we didn’t see the world as you do, Detroiter, as he recovered and is fine today…at work right now, as a matter of fact. It’s an inconvenient truth that abortion is a supreme double-standard that forces its’ advocates to be inconsistent in ethics, science, morality, legality, etc.

          That inconsistency is the only way one can feel justified in executing innocent human life.

          • Michele

            There’s a difference between a fetus that had no life before and never known life, and that has no personality, friends, etc… yet, and someone who is fully developed, experienced life, know what it is, and is in a temporary situation between two awoken moment. The fetus was never awoken and can’t know what life is. Particularly since the brain is not that developed yet.
            AND, your husband did not require to use the body of another human against her will to survive in this situation. You can’t compare it.

  • Didaskalos

    Francis Beckwith points out the moral and logical indefensibility in pro-choicers’ arguments that an unborn human being has to *do* some pro-choicer’s arbitrarily determined act or *reach* some pro-choicer’s arbitrarily determined level of function to be considered fully “human.” Predictably, the hoops through which a little human has to jump to avoid having her life extinguished by abortion vary widely from one pro-choicer to another. Whether it’s “rationality,” “having a self-concept,” “sentience,” or “organized cortical activity,” pro-choicers are all over the subjective map in picking and choosing what they consider to be the crucial value-making properties that would remove a little human from the abortionist’s clutches.

    Beckwith writes: “. . . organisms, including human beings, are ontologically prior to their parts, which means that the organism as a whole maintains absolute identity through time while it grows, develops, and undergoes numerous changes, largely as a result of the organism’s nature that directs and informs these changes and their limits. The organs and parts of the organism, and their role in actualizing the intrinsic, basic capacities of the whole, acquire their purpose and function because of their roles in maintaining, sustaining, and perfecting the being as a whole.”
    – “The Explanatory Power of the Substance View of Persons”

    . . . “Bioethicist Andrew Varga points out a number of problems with the viability criterion. First, “how does viability transform the nature of the fetus so that the non-human being then turns into a human being?” That is to say, viability is a measure of the sophistication of our neonatal life-support systems. Humanity remains the same, but viability changes. Viability measures medical technology, not one’s humanity.

    “Second, “is viability not just an extrinsic criterion imposed upon the fetus by some members of society who simply declare that the fetus will be accepted at that moment as a human being?” In other words, the viability criterion seems to be arbitrary and not applicable to the question of whether the unborn is fully human, since it relates more to the location and dependency of the unborn than to any essential change in her state of being. This criterion only tells us when certain members of our society want to accept the humanity of the unborn.”
    — “When Does a Human Become a Person?”

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  • peach

    “If you call one woman with an unwanted pregnancy an incubator, then you are calling all pregnant women, including your birth mother, incubators.”

    Uh..the pro-choice argument is that women are NOT incubators. But pro-life people treat women like incubators when they try to force them to carry unwanted pregnancies. This article was confusing. I feel like you thought you had a super clever idea and it just fell apart but you kept at it anyway. And I actually have heard people call men “sperm donors” before so…

  • Clara Oswin Oswald

    this article really doesn’t make any sense at all, unfortunately :/
    you write as if they had said “women ARE incubators”, until the last paragraph, which… just confuses me. You have a few great thoughts, but they don’t line up with the original quotey-thing.

  • http://www.facebook.com/tumbleweedangel2 Jessi Doolittle

    The problem i have is most “pro-choice” people do not define life. Is life oppostire of death? Is life when the heart beats? Is life when you are born? If they say “well life starts after they are born because it relys on the mother for life support/ incubator theory” Then all those people who depend on some thing for life, like kemo theropy, oxygen, or any other life sustaining thing is not really living. Thus you can legally kill them off. If they say “life starts when the heart starts to beat” then that 4 weeks after conception according to mayoclinic.com. It is very double standarded. If they say “well a woman should not have to go on with the pregnacy if she chooses not to” So if she chooses not to feed her child (who was already born) because she choose she had better things to do, would that be neglect or her choice? Since it was her choice to particiapate in activity that would create another human, dont you think she should take the responsibilty to take care of it? For example: A woman wants to purchase a puppy, there are all these warning about the care and responsibility for a puppy. She chooses to buy one any way, but she refuses to walk, feed, and water it. Is it her choice or neglect? She choose to buy the puppy, but it is her property?

    • Michele

      The difference is the fact that kermo theropy, oxygen and other life sustaining thing are not human beings as a pregnant woman. They don’t use the life of another person to be able to survive. Also, these people already experienced life, and are experiencing life. The fetus never did, unless you believe in reincarnation.
      There’s a difference between a baby and a fetus…
      Also, people should stop thinking that you should have sex only if you are ready to have a child. That makes no sens, since our hormonal system wants us to have sex around 15 years old already. It would also mean that we can’t enjoy life at its fullest only because of something that never had the capacity to think, has no personality and most of all is only under development.