How a Baby Is Not a Parasite: A Guide for Idiots

(AP Photo/Kathy Willens)

Every time pro-life chat surfaces in the news, I see stupid people try to justify abortions by any means possible. With the March for Life in full swing, you can bet the pro-abortion crowd has surged forth on social media and put their dumbest foot forward in order to combat the growing menace of people who don’t want babies to be killed.

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One of my favorite excuses the pro-abortion crowd uses is the reasoning that a baby is essentially a parasite, and if a woman wants to rid herself of a parasite, who am I to tell her she can’t?

https://twitter.com/shelleyguerrero/status/825100858081767424

Well, my stupid friends, I can somewhat see where your logic originates from. On the surface, a baby does indeed seem like a parasite. It feeds off of the host mommy’s body and intakes her food supply in order to grow healthy and strong. It can sometimes make the host mommy sick. Even the placenta masks itself from the host mommy’s immune system like a parasite does.

But that’s where the similarities end, and the glaring fact that a baby is not a parasite begins.

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Like a cloud in the sky is not actually floating cotton because it’s white and fluffy, a baby is not a parasite just because its a growing organism inside someone’s body. Bearing some similarities does not a perfect comparison make, especially due to the starkness of its differences. Just because I can kill the electricity by shooting at powerlines, it doesn’t make my AR-15 a light switch.

For one, a baby in the womb is homospecific. This means that both mommy and baby are the same species, and mommy’s body is specifically geared to gestate a baby of her own species while it lives inside her. The same cannot be said of a tapeworm. A mother’s body naturally works to strengthen baby, help it grow, prepares for its arrival and departure, and even afterward works to sustain baby by providing it with milk and an instinctive bond that urges the mother to protect and love her baby.

A parasite does not get the same treatment. To the host body, the parasite is the enemy, and it will work hard to kill it. The parasite has a whole plethora of evasion strategies to avoid the plethora of weapons the host body uses against it. Like an episode of Tom and Jerry, the host and the parasite attempt consistently to harm the other, with the thriving parasite often getting the upper hand and making the host very sick.

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Unlike the baby, however, the parasite has no intention to leave and be cuddled by its host, be dressed in cute clothes, or be celebrated with gender-reveal parties. It wants to stay put, feed off the host, and reproduce while it’s at it.

By the way, a baby does not reproduce inside the mother. Just thought I’d throw that tidbit in there.

Even more amazing, is the fact that the bond between mother and baby is also one of mutually assured construction. In one of the most amazing relationships seen in nature, the baby that is being developed by the mother will actually help heal its mother should mommy be harmed.

Essentially, the baby almost turns mommy into Wolverine with an increased healing factor using a process called “fetomaternal microchimerism.” Essentially, if mommy is harmed in any of her organs — be it liver, heart, or skin — baby will donate some of its stem cells to mommy so that she can heal up so both can be in a state of solid health. In essence, mommy and baby repair and rejuvenate each other.

You will not get this same treatment from a leech.

Also, a leech will not reduce your chances of cancer like pregnancy will, nor will it make sex better due to the increased flow of blood to the vaginal area. A plasmodium will not improve your sex life, it’ll pretty much just give you malaria.

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“But Brandon!” says idiot. “Pregnancy often makes women sick! Parasites obviously do that too!”

Well, my stupid friend, you are correct, but according to a 2014 Stanford study, science — that thing you ignore when it comes to inconvenient pro-life facts but say you religiously believe any other time — has uncovered that the reason expectant mothers sometimes get very sick is that her immune system turns into Rambo on a rampage, not because it’s weaker.

Scientists had thought up until then that pregnancy causes the mother’s immune system to power down so it could direct its efforts into creating a healthy baby. However, the real story turned out to be the opposite. The mother’s immune system tends to overreact against sickness in order to make sure the baby is protected.

Pregnancy is messy, complicated, and oftentimes painful. It results in nausea, cramps, frequent trips to the bathroom, and the dreaded mood swings. In some cases, it can suck even more than having a parasite.

But any crying mother holding her baby for the first time will vehemently disagree that the most precious thing in the world she’s currently cradling qualifies as a parasite. Both mother and baby worked hard for months to get to that point, and while mommies may be glad baby is out of the body, very rarely are they ever glad to see them gone.

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A host will never be depressed that she can’t be host to a parasite or be emotionally devastated and scarred should the parasite die while it’s inside her. A host does not spend her life planning to have ringworm or dedicate her and her spouse’s finances to raising healthy lice. A host does not put aside money so that one day her cryptosporidium can afford to go to college and become a productive citizen. A host will never be brought to tears while she watches her hookworm walk down the aisle in a white dress.

A baby is a human at every stage of its life. A parasite is not.

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