[kosta50]

Actually, it's the "product" that calls the shots gestationally and does so from implantation to birth. It takes over the mother's body and controls the mother's biological processes

That's a skewed way of looking at things, dear friend. Then we can say that children "take over" our lives. That may be true in some case, but if we allow them. The same can be said of pets.

What happens in human mothers happens in all mammalian mothers. This is not some specially designated gift from God to humans. If a mother wants to smoke and drink, or use drugs during pregnancies, and not take care of herself, the "product" can do nothing to force her to do otherwise. And, the mother's behavior can lead directly to the premature expulsion of the "product." The "product" has no control over nay of it.

It's growing in the body the way tumors grow, sapping the nutrients and oxygen from the host. It is "parasitic" in that sense; and when the parameters established by natural law have been reached, the product is expelled, not by its will but by the will of the body that carries it, the autonomic nervous system over which neither the mother nor the offspring have any control.

[aruanan]

It is "parasitic" in that sense; and when the parameters established by natural law have been reached, the product is expelled, not by its will but by the will of the body that carries it, the autonomic nervous system over which neither the mother nor the offspring have any control.

This is simply physiologically untrue. The signals to initiate labor come from the fetus, not the mother. And if you're going to talk about "skewed" ways of looking at things, referring to a developing individual as a tumor or a parasite is definitely skewed, even more so than when PETA folks try to dissuade kids from eating of meat by personalizing the animal. Besides, there is no such thing as "natural law" that oversees and regulates and directs and controls. "Natural law" is just another way of saying "here are regularities we observe in the way things operate; given a similar set of circumstances, we can expect a similar outcome." The outcome depends entirely on the existing circumstances and not at all on our understanding of them or our codification of our experiences with them.