Actually, the comments section is a pretty useful trashing of this guy's ideas.
I don't know what the editors' motivation is, but I don't see this article as providing a soapbox for Bennett Haselton; I see it as providing the community of better-informed individuals the opportunity to expose the problems & dangers in his line of reasoning.
It will then need at least 5 but generally 9 months of full life support before it has any chance to survive as a separate individual.
A newborn child still has no chance to survive as a separate individual . You've attempted to distinguish a child in the womb as unable to survive independently and a newborn child as able to survive independently. This is patently untrue.
I assume your reasoning is that this affords those willing to extinguish the life of an unborn child the mentality that it is just a 'parasite' - an attempt to cloud judgement on the core issue.
...does a woman have an obligation to make sure each ovum is fertilized? It is, after all a human cell that will naturally develop if only that minimal support is given to it.
No, that makes no sense. An ovum is one part of the puzzle needed before a life can grow. An ovum by itself will never turn into a growing human. Not difficult to conceptualize, it's not a growing human before fertilization.
And therein lies the point. Once fertilized, there is no denying that the "collection of cells" (which I reiterate, we all are) will become an adult human.
Forgive me if I misinterpret you, but it sounds like you do believe you should impose this upon others (take a stand).
You're use of the word impose seems like an attempt to sully my position on this - especially given your past arguments, but yes - just like we 'force' people against their will to murder others in the street, I believe we should do the same for the innocent, defenceless, unborn child.
Turn the tables a bit. Given your thoughts on the subject, it seems that you would believe that it is fine to kill unborn children?
There can be no conclusion made regarding the existence or the direction of a cause and effect relationship only from the fact that A and B are correlated. Determining whether there is an actual cause and effect relationship requires further investigation, even when the relationship between A and B is statistically significant, a large effect size is observed, or a large part of the variance is explained.
It's worth noting that until you've covered all contributing variables and factors to a problem domain you cannot with certainty draw causation from correlation; something that this article (and sensationalised headline) lacks. That is the point.
An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know.