Quickies

Skepchick Quickies, 4.6

Jen

Jen is a writer and web designer/developer in Columbus, Ohio. She spends too much time on Twitter at @antiheroine.

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19 Comments

  1. I’m very skeptical of this genital measurement claim. How can we be sure the results aren’t tainted?

  2. Anyone happen to know what the miscarriage rate is for humans? I’m seeing numbers ranging from 10% to 50%, mostly in the first few weeks after fertilization. I wonder if Alabama is going to require a coroner’s report and death certificate for each one.

  3. Steve D. This isn’t some zygote we’re talking about it is a person. To be safe all sexually active women of child bearing age should assume that they have 12 to 13 dependents each year that failed to implant or were not viable but still count as tax deductions for state income tax.

    Women could apply for benefits the morning after.

  4. @Steve D: It depends upon what you count as a miscarriage. If you mean a fertilized egg fails to implant all the way upto unexpected stillbirths then the rate would be quite high.

    I’ve heard that 1 in 3 fertilized eggs will fail to implant and are passed normally in a period before the woman even has any signs of pregnancy.

    After that I think between 15 – 20% are given as a common rate among women in first world nations.

  5. @SomeoneYouKnow: *groan* that was terrible :)

    I do like the fact that the uterus incorporation and the male fertility link are in the same day. Does that mean if I incorporate my uterus and my spouse ends up being infertile I can sue him for loss of product, profit, and potentially false advertising?

  6. I totally agree with personhood laws. In fact, we should fight against these poor fertilized eggs being held against their wills in the uteri of America. It’s not abortion; it’s a jailbreak!

  7. So, with the incorporation of the uterus…

    Let us say that someone makes their living as a surrogate mother. Couples pay her large amounts of cash to carry a baby to term for them, including attendant health care costs. Being the practical sort, she incorporates this business, listing her uterus as a corporate asset.

    Now, obviously, she’s not the type to have an abortion… there’s money in those sprogs. However, would conservatives explode as they tried to both deregulate a business and heavily regulate a uterus?

  8. RE: “personhood laws”

    A personhood amendment could not block stem cell research or treatments. Personhood amendments and legislation clearly state that every human being is a person, which only makes it illegal to kill human beings. Therefore, the only stem cell research affected by a personhood amendment would be embryonic stem cell research, which has largely proven to be unsuccessful.

    Actually, yes it could block it, as you could easily construe the law to mean that embryonic cells were used without the informed consent of their donor. And not only would this law make it illegal to “kill” a fertilized egg (at any stage), you could construe any treatment of that egg as abuse or torture, and persecute mothers for their own poor health, lack of healthcare, diet, or lifestyle of which you do not approve, because each of these would then be defined as the “person’s” environment.

    Isn’t the primary reason embryonic stem cell research has been unsuccessful is because of inhibited funding from zealots like you?

    This is only a step away from a previous Skepchick Quickie (4.4, third one down).

  9. “You can’t argue with the proof” What proof? All there is is anecdata. I’m sure they’re great cupcakes, but not only is the so-called experiment not blinded in any way, people are actually telling each other about the cupcakes. I blame the pathetic state of science education in America.

  10. @Buzz Parsec: Who knows if the cupcakes are even that good? All we have are the words of some folk who think they’re magic…that’s one heck of a bias!

  11. @SomeoneYouKnow: Ha! COTW.

    Shouldn’t they be warning pregnant women against eating the cupcakes if this is true? Or do they somehow only magically work on women who are past their due date (who never would have given birth eventually, had they not eaten the cupcake!)?

  12. Don’t forget to incorporate your uterus.

    Incorporation is far too invasive but I am thinking of setting my uterus up in a nice LLC.

    Step one; locate uterus, d’oh!

  13. For some reason, every time I see a word beginning with ‘m’ after the word “genital”, I see “mutilation”. I spent the entire article trying to figure out what “male genital mutilation” had to do with fertility.

  14. I just finished a unit on pregnancy in my anatomy course, and if the textbook is correct, the number of spontaneously terminating pregnancies is the vast majority of all fertilizations.

    “It is estimated that a minimum of two-thirds of all zygotes formed fail to implant by the end of the first week or spontaneously abort. Moreover, an estimated 30% of implanted embryos later miscarry due to genetic defects of the embryo, uterine malformation, or other, often unknown, problems.”

    That would be fully 75% of fertilized ova failing to come to term. With those odds, it seems that every mother’s a murderer in Alabama.

    Marieb, E.N., & Hoehn, K. (2010). Human Anatomy & Physiology (8th ed.). San Francisco, CA: Pearson Benjamin Cummings.

  15. My uterus has now been incorporated under the name, Jonesy’s Kid Catapult. Up next, selling stock.

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