Twilight Sparkle thought she knew where foals come from, but her information appears to be wildly inaccurate, and this has gotten her into a 'delicate' condition.
Rated teen for clinical descriptions of sex.
Chapters (1)
Sozmioi
Joined 11th Dec, 2012 ·
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Hah! You got the character's personalities 100%, Enjoyed out of boredom.
I don't get the downvotes. It's a well-written story, and the mystery elements and explanation at the end are done well. Yeah, the topic might not be for everyone, but it's still well done.
2415270
The original version wasn't as good, that's why. The final segment in particular was even weirder than it ended up, as you might gather from the authors' note.
Highly disturbing.
But intriguing.
>"when it was still early enough"
It's not that much more difficult later on.
2753275
but then it's not an embryo. Having to magic a fetus out yourself would be worse than the worst forced-ultrasound/lecture real life has to offer. Even if you were sure it was all right morally speaking, you'd probably end up grossing out.
I think Celestia would, like most people, hold abortion to be acceptable to the extent that the developing child is not yet a person*. For her (and, not entirely coincidentally, me), embryos clearly pass this test. Viable unborn foals do not. She probably has magic to refine this line closer than we can, and for story purposes I've decided that TS is by this point too far along, not that she ends up taking that option.
Note that the incident Pinkie was suggesting was not the explanation, so it wasn't that recent.
* (or if the mother's life or basic health is in danger, though I imagine this happens a lot less in Equestria than real life, if only because of the more favorable hip to head ratio)
2755000
First of all, viability is not the dividing line between an embryo and a fetus.
Secondly, viability changes with medical technology, so it's a pretty poor standard for personhood.
On the third hoof, I'm magic expert, but whatever spell would be used to magic out an embryo should also work on a fetus.
Fourth of all, if we're just talking gross-out factor, embryos are pretty squicky-looking.
Fifth of all (on the tail?), if the mother's life is in danger, it's usually from complications the pregnancy, not the prospect of childbirth.
Finally, I'm not so sure about that head-to-hip ratio, as ponies have much larger heads than horses do, and they seem to be capable of at least some form of (awkward) bipedalism.
First and second: I was not saying that it was. Just, the very beginning is too early for the dividing line between person/not person, and the very end is too late.
Third: depends on how it works. Could be. Or it could be that most of the time across which she finds it acceptable, it's an embryo... or alternately because she's got special magical senses the 'OK/not OK' line is brighter and then there was word meaning drift so that things that are and have been fetuses for biological purposes are as far as the relevant issue is concerned an 'embryo'. Point being, the spell would still work, but she wouldn't approve of that - but not to say that the embryo/fetus line we draw is the one she's using.
Fourth: eh. Not as bad as a fetus.
Fifth: Yes, but the now-infamous 'dilation and extraction' is a procedure for a reason. Just covering the less common bases.
Sixth, good point.
All in all, I was wondering how long it would take for someone to make an issue of that line.
2766316
1. & 2. Your comment on "viable unborn foals" seemed to imply viability was the line you were using. If not, what is?
3. Regardless of how the spell works whether it be teleportation, disintigration, or what have you, it should work just as well on an embryo as on a fetus. I can't say much more on this point until I know what this "line" is. If we're going to start redefining words, we need to at least both understand the new meanings.
4. A fetus looks squickier than an embryo? A fetus pretty much just looks like a smaller infant.
5. The details of PBA and its necessity are a little complicated and off topic, so I'll just say that all possible measures should be taken to save both lives if possible.
6. Ponies are made of taffy anyway, so I'm not sure how much it matters.
2773388
As I already said, the viable unborn comment was situated to place the line before then.
I see I didn't state my 'person/not a person' distinction clearly enough - I meant mentally - for which encephalization should make a decent proxy, but we can't calibrate the curve without what amounts to magic.
2779841
So you're basing someone's personhood on their mental capabilities? Which mental faculty are you using for this judgement, and to what extent must it be present?
I'll be very surprised if you can find an answer that doesn't either either disqualify human infants from personhood, or grant personhood to a wide variety of non-humans.
2782361
Newborn humans are extremely ignorant - abnormally even for newborns, compared to other animals - but they are also very quick at picking things up. I'm also not averse to granting that some animals are people.
What with that second point, I guess I don't feel this logical jam you seem to be trying to put me in to be all that tight.
If you don't mind my asking, where do you draw the line?
2783067
Human newborns are pretty much still fetuses, just born early enough that our huge noggins needed for intelligence can fit through the tiny pelvises needed for an upright stance.
And when I "a wide variety of non-humans", I don't just mean dolphins and some higher primates. I mean a lot, from pigs to dogs to magpies.
I draw the line as soon as a new human being comes into existence, be that fertilization, cloning, or some as-yet uninvented technique (3D printing? Matter replicators? Magic?). I do not believe that someone's mental capabilities should determine what rights they are granted.
(For those wondering, the deleted post was just the part of the first sentence of this post that was posted before I finished.)
The degree to which that variety is wide really depends how much and what kinds of mental capacity you require. I certainly think that dogs and pigs are close enough to personhood to deserve a degree of respect and protection (I haven't eaten enough pork to account for a single pig over the past decade). I don't know enough about Magpies. I suspect some octopi might get close too.
My criteria, now that I'm thinking about it a bit more, are more along the lines of the potential of the already-built mental infrastructure. The mental infrastructure capacity feels to me a lot like what one is. And on the other hand, I don't feel the need to assign direct moral weight to things that don't exist yet - in the relevant case, that's the rest of the mental capacity, that hasn't been built yet.
2785374
I'm not sure what you mean by the "potential of the … infrastructure" if you're not considering "things that don't exist yet", seeing as something's potential, by definition, refers to a possible future state of affairs.
I'd love to know exactly what criteria you're using for personhood.
So would I! I can constrain the exact philosophically correct criteria, but it is not a solved problem. I'd love to have a sharp dividing line like conception, but I can't find any that are in vaguely the right area.
As for the 'potential', imagine hypothetical scenarios in which brain construction was halted but other aspects of development such as learning did not. Recognize the difference between 'those things we will observe happening' and 'those things which can happen'. Potential is already not defined over the actual future.
It's so nice being a nihilist.
There are no right answers to wrong questions.
Rewriting the laws of the universe to justify her accidental pregnancy? That's something only Twilight would and could do
This was enjoyable to read, good job