Parthood view of pregnancy makes more sense than the containment view

 This will be a summary of a journal called Were you a part of your mother? that discusses two different views on the relationship between a pregnant person and a fetus.

This journal entry refers to the pregnant person as the gravida and the fetus as the foster, so I will be referring to them with those terms as well.

One view is the containment view and the other is the parthood view. The containment view seems to be a fairly commonly held view, one that I have seen both sides of the argument hold, so I will be focusing on the parthood view. I believe that the parthood view has a stronger logical standing. I will be summarizing it below by following the four criteria presented for what makes something a whole organism and what is a part of that whole organism. Following that will be the objections and how they can be addressed. I will not address every piece of criteria presented, but will do my best to condense down key points of this 55 minute read.

Here is a mini table of contents of each section summary: 

THE FOUR CRITERIA:

1. HOMEOSTASIS
2. METABOLIC & FUNCTIONAL INTEGRATION
3. TOPOLOGICAL CONTINUITY
4. IMMUNOLOGICAL TOLERANCE
5. THE FOUR CRITERIA COMBINED

OBJECTIONS:

1. GENETIC DIFFERENCE
2. FUTURE DETACHMENT
3. SOCIAL & PSYCHOLOGICAL DEPENDENCE
4. MORAL
5. STATUS INTUITION

HOMEOSTASIS

''Organisms, especially mammals, have an internal environment which they actively maintain in a state of relative homeostasis, and within a narrow range of parameters, as opposed to their external environment, where much larger variations in conditions can be tolerated.'' The foster falls within the internal environment of the gravida, both in a spatial sense & in a homeostatic sense. On that latter point, ''The foster’s state is regulated by, and within the context of, the rest of the gravida, so that the entire entity can maintain its internal environment within the narrow range of parameters that are compatible with life.''

One objection is that the foster appears to be able to maintain its own internal environment. There are several reasons this is problematic. For one, ''the foster relies on the rest of the gravida for many of its important physiological functions, including the extraction of oxygen, digestion, temperature regulation and waste disposal. (Its lungs only start working after birth, and its kidneys, despite functioning prior to birth, are only fully relied on postnatally.) '' Another reason that its ability to regulate itself to some degree, thus it is its own being, is not applicable is because other parts of a multicellular being do this, such as the testes or the blood brain barrier.

METABOLIC & FUNCTIONAL INTEGRATION

The foster is functionally and metabolically integrated with the gravida. I would say that the biggest reasoning for this is that the foster depends on the gravida for several of its metabolic activities: waste removal and temperature regulation.

One could argue that the foster is not a part of the gravidas body because it does not promote its survival and in fact is a danger to that. This point is silly because we would then have to exclude all reproductive organs, testes, penises, ovaries, uteruses and breasts from being included as part of the gravida.

Another objection could be that of serious fetal-maternal conflicts, where in the foster could even threaten the gravidas life. But there are other instances where we see this, such as autoimmune reactions or tumors. The fact that they pose a threat to the persons life does not exclude them from being a part of their body. These are not the norm of those situations and, in the case of pregnancy, it is not in the foster or gravidas interest for this conflict to exist.

''If we stick to the present criterion, which states that organisms are marked by the high degree of functional integration and metabolic unity among their parts, then, according to this criterion, fosters appear to be parts of gravidae.''

TOPOLOGICAL CONTINUITY

''A third criterion that frequently appears in accounts of organism delineation is that of being ‘physically continuous and bounded’: organisms display ‘spatio-temporal continuity’, or are one material object. '' Fosters are spatially continuous with the gravida. ''...the placenta and umbilical cord both grow directly out of the foster’s abdomen and into/out of the maternal uterine tissue—there isn’t even a separating membrane.40 There is therefore not a complete spatial discontinuity between foster and gravida. And so the foster is hooked up to, or rather hooked into, the gravida, not only metabolically and functionally, but also topologically.''

IMMUNOLOGICAL TOLERANCE

''A fourth common way of delineating and understanding organisms is by appealing to what an organism immunologically tolerates '' Fosters are immunological tolerated by the gravida, meaning, the gravidas immune system does not attack the foster.

One objection to this is in how the body does this. The immune system does not recognize the foster as self, but rather shields it from the immune system, partly through separate cardiovascular systems. This fails, however to demonstrate that the foster is not integrated with the gravida. Shielding ''is simply the best way for the gravida to realize that integration whilst also maintaining a sound immune system. '' The blood brain barrier is an example of the body shielding a part of itself from the immune system. ''In a similar way, the relative shielding of the foster from the gravida’s immune system is the way in which the gravida maintains its immune system whilst also having parts (fosters) and engaging in activities (reproduction) whose full exposure to the immune system would be detrimental. Such shielding does not stop us from recognizing the brain as part of the organism, and so it should not stop us from recognizing the foster as part of the gravida. Indeed, because immunological shielding is active, it is more fruitful to think of the blood-brain barrier and the placenta as elements of the pregnant organism’s immune regulation: these are the ways that the organism has found to accommodate certain important parts (brain and foster, respectively) within the context of the workings of its own immune system. ''

THE FOUR CRITERIA COMBINED

Presented above are four criteria for the delineation of a single organism. So when does the foster cease to be part of the gravidae? Birth. At birth, the foster ceases to be topologically continuous with the gravidae. It mostly marks an ending of the immunological tolerance of the foster, with breastfeeding maintaining some shared immunological activity. The foster is no longer a part of the internal environment of, or the autonomous homeostasis unity that is the gravida. A birth, they are now two different entities, each with their own internal environment living in a similar external environment.

There could be an argument that metabolic unity and functional integration does not end at birth, as all baby mammals are heavily dependent on maternal care. In the case of nursing exclusively, mother and baby may continue to count as one metabolic unit as the regulation of lactation quantity and response between mother and child is cooperative and functional.

Birth does, however mark a sudden and substantial drop in both functional integration and metabolic regulation. ''The baby starts breathing, thus regulating its own oxygen supply; it starts using its kidneys in earnest; it quickly begins to regulate its own temperature; it gains a microbiome, and thereby digestive abilities; and so on. Taken together, then, the criteria suggest that birth marks the end of the foster’s being part of the gravida.'' (I am going to skip over the section of responses to this above criteria for the sake of brevity.)

OBJECTIONS

GENETIC DIFFERENCE

This objection is that the foster is not a part of the gravida because it has a different genome, however it is not a convincing one. ''First, many parts of a typical mammalian organism will not have its genome any more, including its hairs and its red blood cells. '' Mitochondria would be another part that has a different genome. Mammalian organisms have always harbored multiple genomes. The microbiome is one. Microchimaerism, the small scale mixing of different genetic cell lines in one organism, is another. This happens by way of fetal cells traversing the placenta and remaining in the maternal body for years after giving birth. Similarly, fosters can end up with maternal cells. And twins can also end up with each others cells & blood through placental transfer. When an organism receives a transfusion or organ transplant, such as donated blood, bone marrow, or kidney, it becomes a part of them. Macrochimaerism, the merging of two distinct blastocysts into one single organism which will have genetic material originating from one zygote and other genetic material from another.

FUTURE DETACHMENT

This objection is that fosters cannot be parts of gravidae because they will not be parts of them in the future. In one variation of this argument, ''one might think that fosters are not parts of gravidae because they can exist as non-parts.'' But this argument is fallacious as it conflates a possibility with its actualization. ''The fact that a glass could be broken does not mean it is broken now; nor does the fact that I am mortal make me dead. Similarly, an organism has many parts, such as hair, blood and kidneys, that can be separated from it; the potential for separate existence doesn’t preclude parthood.''

Another variation of this argument is that it is relevant that the foster will become separate and have a life of its own. But this runs into similar issues as the above. Though I will die someday, I am not, now, dead. Now, just because parts of an organism can exist separately in the future, does not preclude their present parthood. And if we took this idea of future detachment as a means to negate present parthood, we could consider that none of the parts of any given organism could be counted as a part of it, which is absurd.

SOCIAL & PSYCHOLOGICAL DEPENDENCE

This section went a bit above my head, so I am going to skip over it.

MORAL STATUS

This objection is that the foster has some sort of special moral status and this is reason to deny that it is a part of the gravida.

But all parts of an organism can have differing moral relevance. Kidneys, hearts, brains, hair, nails, sperm, and skin cells all can have differing moral value. Yet they are still a part of a single organism. ''If (human) fosters can be shown to have the relevant moral property, and the parthood view is otherwise plausible, then surely the correct conclusion to draw is not that fosters aren’t parts of gravidae after all, but rather that organisms can, in the special case of (human) pregnancy, have parts with this moral property. ''

INTUITION

''Finally, one might simply claim that it is intuitively obvious that fosters are not parts of gravidae, and that birth is merely the relocation of a baby rather than the separation of a part. There are, however, multiple problems with this line of objection. ''

First, we should be willing to reject intuition when faced with good arguments to the contrary.

Second, there is the weight of the containment view as being a social and historical preference as the dominant representation of pregnancy. With cultural conditioning in mind, it is not surprising that there is an intuitive pull towards the view. And it is questionable whether this intuition should have any deeper significance. And there have been different times throughout history when the parthood view was deemed more intuitive in different cultures.

It is also worth noting that women, pregnant people, and mothers have not always had much of a social voice on matters of medical or philosophical discussions of pregnancy. So the idea of a social intuition is flawed when a significant portion of the human race has had their intuitions on the matter ignored. While women may have differing intuitions on the subject, ''several female philosophers who have written about pregnancy provide us with a picture that is distinctly un-container-like: metaphysically messy and ambiguous, active and agential, constructed and transitional, and characterized by intimacy and intertwinement. Even Judith Jarvis Thomson writes that ‘[a] woman may be utterly devastated by the thought of a child, a bit of herself, put out for adoption and never seen or heard of again’ '' This knowledge should make us further question which intuition should be given weight.