Abortion glossary :: Organism
An organism is any individual living thing that can function independently on its own. The primary traits of an organism include:
- growth: increases in size over time (at varying rates depending on the species, environment, nutrients, etc.)
- homeostatis: remaining a stable, internal balance consistent with survival
- metabolism: using energy and consuming nutrients to sustain life
- reproduction capability: having a way to reproduce more organisms like themselves (this point is controversial because some members of a given species cannot reproduce, or an entire species cannot reproduce even though its existence was the result of ancestrial inbreeding)
- response to stimuli: responds to changes in its local environment
Debating strategy
Sometimes anti-abortion people incorrectly refer to an intrauterine foetus as an "organism," which is inconsistent with the fact that a foetus can't functioning independently on its own. It's usually an attempt be sneaky by creating confusion, and an effective response is to point out the fact that a developing foetus is not a separate organism since it's part of the pregnant person's body, which also avoids delving into definitions of the word "organism," which is generally a waste of time since it's off-topic.
See also