Abortion: It happens in the animal world too

And, "deliberately," to the degree you can attribute will to the pipefish, a relative of the sea horse. And, not for deformations, but purely for attractiveness reasons.

The researchers showed that a male pipefish will absorb some of his developing offspring — effectively eating some of his unborn young. This highlights a conflict of interest between the two sexes: the females surrender their eggs to the males in the hope that they will all be supported, but the males instead may support only a fraction of the brood. ...

The fact that male pipefish are selectively judging the fitness of their mate both before and after copulation is surprising because, in general, most animals judge the quality of their mates before sex or, in some species, after sex.

Verrrry interesting. Read the full article.

That said, per someone asking me on Facebook about the "tarted-up" headline, let me provide a lot more backstory to the issue.

Really, the headline isn't "tarted up."

First, as for the facts, and their relevance to humans? Much more often than most people know, and many might like to admit, a woman will, in the same way, absorb a fetus early in pregnancy. Or in the case of twins, especially identical ones, one fetus will actually absorb the other. This is how people can have multiple blood types and such. The technical term for the "absorbed fetus" in the adult survivor is a "teratoma." Fof a non-Wiki, real-world description of a teratoma, go here.

That said, in a more narrow scientific point of view, I believe "abortion," not miscarriage is the correct term.

And, using abortion but excluding "reabsorption," in humans, 25-35 percent of pregnancies are spontaneously aborted, usually 6-8 weeks in.

Reproduction is a lot more fallible of a process than many people know. Or might like to accept, if they did know.

Is it callous to use the word "abortion" in the header when "redistributing" this information to a general audience? That's not my intent, I can say that, at least. Is it meant to be "shocking" in the sense of "eye opening"? Yes.

It's meant to get people to realize that reproductive "oddities" and "fallibilities" are relatively "normal" throughout the animal world, just as homosexuality is. And that, then, for some people who don't want to look at that, ties directly to claims of "intelligent design."

For more on this issue, namely teratomas and other reproductive fallibilities vs. intelligent design, go here.

That said, on the issue of abortion myself, I am not at the left-hand edge of abortion rights. I believe the trimester system should be junked for a bimester one, with Medicaid funding required in the first bimester, but states' rights to regulate abortion as open in the second bimester as they are now in the third trimester, or maybe even a bit more so.