Umbilical Cord Related Quotes

Each new step into his new human existence is frightening. It always means to give up a secure state, which was relatively known, for one which is new, which one has not yet mastered. Undoubtedly, if the infant could think at the moment of the severance of the umbilical cord, he would experience the fear of dying. A loving fate protects us from this first panic. But at any new step, at any new stage of our birth, we are afraid again. We are never free from two conflicting tendencies: one to emerge from the womb, from the animal form of existence into a more human existence, from bondage to freedom; another, to return to the womb, to nature, to certainty and security.

In this impossibility of reapprehending the world through images and of moving from information to a collective action and will, in this absence of sensibility and mobilization, it isn't apathy or general indifference that's at issue; it is quite simply that the umbilical cord of representation is severed. The screen reflects nothing. It is as though you are behind a two-way mirror: you see the world, but it doesn't see you, it doesn't look at you. Now, you only see things if they are looking at you. The screen screens out any dual relation (any possibility of 'response'). It is this failure of representation which, together with a failure of action, underlies the impossibility of developing an ethics of information, an ethics of images, an ethics of the Virtual and the networks. All attempts in that direction inevitably fail. All that remains is the mental diaspora of images and the extravagant performance of the medium. Susan Sontag tells a good story about this pre-eminence of the medium and of images: as she is sitting in front of the television watching the moon landing, the people she is watching with tell her they don't believe it at all. 'But what are you watching, then?' she asks. 'Oh, we're watching television!' Fantastic: they do not see the moon; they see only the screen showing the moon. They do not see the message; they see only the image. Ultimately, contrary to what Susan Sontag thinks, only intellectuals believe in the ascendancy of meaning; 'people' believe only in the ascendancy of signs. They long ago said goodbye to reality. They have gone over, body and soul, to the spectacular.

But forcing a woman to undergo nine months of incubation and labor is a rather obvious violation of her Thirteenth Amendment protections. I can prove that. After conception, the developing embryo is sustained by the woman’s ovum, or egg. This is why an embryo can be (relatively) easy to create and develop in a laboratory; it has something to eat. But embryos can’t live on personhood yolk forever, so the woman’s body starts building an entirely new organ, the placenta. When fully developed, by about the end of the first trimester, the placenta will leech nutrients from the woman’s bloodstream and “feed” it to the developing fetus through the umbilical cord. Legally, we treat the placenta as the woman’s, just like any other organ in her body. She has legal ownership of it, and that’s important, because after birth, there are some options for what to do with it. Some women eat it. Others freeze it or donate it to science, because emerging research suggests that placental cells can be useful in the treatment of certain childhood diseases. Most women allow the hospital to discard it.

Relationships, with all the pain and joy they bring, are an inherent part of life, as unavoidable as breathing. After all, we are all born in relationship. We are conceived in the relationship of husband and wife. Nine months later we emerge, not from an egg to hatch on its own, but from the womb, wet and bawling, literally tied to our mother. We are programmed from the beginning, from the moment that first tie (the umbilical cord) is severed, we are programmed to feel that we are relational beings dependent on one another. Relationships are central to our lives. Our learning, our work, the discovery of ourselves all depends on relationships. We cannot truly know ourselves if we do not have another person to relate to. Of course, the most important relationship for us Christians is our relationship with God Whom we are called to know and love with all our mind, heart, soul, and strength in order to establish thereby a relationship of love with our neighbor. Thus, the first and greatest commandment “You shall love the Lord thy God with all your heart…and your neighbor as yourself,” is a personal call to love and commitment.

We all need love. In its absence we never fully develop emotionally, relationally and or socially. Love is the umbilical cord that which feeds our very souls. It, inevitably, provides us with all the essential nutrients our spirits rely on to survive, thrive and grow. Without love all things wither, atrophy and die. ~Jason Neville Versey

was “relatively impervious” to the “innumerable little umbilical cords” that tied her to “icebox, phone, doorbell, baby and so on.