Humans now give birth by laying an egg, it still takes 9 months to hatch, how is society now different?
Humans now give birth by laying an egg, it still takes 9 months to hatch, how is society now different?
Abortion is now called "Making an omelette"
Also, if you think we are overly protective of pregnant mothers now, its gonna be worse when a minor bump causes the shell to crack.
Would this mean that instead of periods, you just lay an unfertilised egg once a month? Do you have to constantly be hathing the egg? Are the eggs hard like bird eggs or soft like reptilian eggs?
If the egg required constantly being there, I think that in our current society, that'd become the mother's task. Some couples would take turns hatching it, like dad is with the egg until noon when he goes to work and the mom takes over. Conservatives would be losing their minds over fathers who hatch eggs because it's 'women's work'.
Rich people would first start hiring people to hatch their eggs for them, and probably soon move on to hatching machines. Later automated hatchers would become more and more common until only the very poor would hatch their eggs manually. Chances are that hatching your eggs by yourself would become a tradwife thing soon.
There would probably be a huge debate over whether or not it is okay to eat human eggs. Eating the eggshells after the baby has hatched might become a thing, similar to how some people eat their placentas after giving birth.
Abortion would become much easier and safer to do and really hard to restrict: just smash the egg and dispose of the evidence. In poor areas, there would probably be a lot of abandoned eggs; on a rainy night I hear the doorbell ringing. When I open the door, before me is an egg, gently wrapped in a floral blanket. I manage to catch a quick glimpse of a young woman's silhouette running away before she disappears behind the corner
Abortion would become much easier and safer to do and really hard to restrict: just smash the egg and dispose of the evidence.
Its not even "Abortion" anymore, the definition of "Abortion" involves "pregnancy. This is not a "pregnancy" so its just called termination now
And most women probably wouldn't care what happens to the egg as long as paper abortion becomes legal (and if not, I absolutely see how some women would just smashing the egg and throw it out in the trash, or eat it, and I wont blame them. Paper Abortion should be legal, especially in this scenario.)
And I think, since the "fetus" is now in the egg, some country's laws might change to require both parents to consent before termination, since the mother is no longer at risk since they are no longer carrying it, and both parent have stakes in the egg.
And those very patriarchal and conservative societies might make the father the only one with control over whether or not a egg gets terminated.
(Also, Fun Fact: Egg abduction becomes a thing)
Large, expensive in home incubators.
How big are human eggs in this world? Real women's bodies have to rearrange a lot to give birth.
Human eggs are about the largest single cell humans produce, about 0.1mm in diameter.
But human eggs don't provide nutrients to the fetus, they grow the placenta to do that. So over all the entire process would have to change to something probably impossible. Consider the ostrich lays the largest egg now, and ostriches are larger than humans. Humans that would need a far larger egg.
The math just doesn't work for humans to have a hard shell egg.
You are right in your final statement about the hard shell, and the size ratio, but that doesn't make it completely impossible. Egg laying could work for humans if the shell was leathery and flexible, like that of some reptiles.
Humans could lay an egg large enough to hold a newborn, and since at the time of laying the insides of the egg would be mostly still liquid, a flexible shell would work out just fine for passage. Then the baby would develop inside the egg. Just like with birds.
Foxes now scarier than sharks
Office management complaining about how much space eggs take up at work.
It's not that hard to provide a room for people to sit on their eggs when they need to.
bowlegged-ness, or the ability to protect that egg in between the legs is the new rizzfactor.
pubes flex for superior heating ability and coverage. well, okay chest hair can be a thing too.
if girls now have problems with calcium deficiency, imagine how this will escalate for eggshell quality.
Maybe after laying an egg, your pubes and ass hair would start growing at a turbo speed to make sure it hatches well.
yeah, it would be like how cats or cows have those winter coats.
To the best of my knowledge, all egg layers have cloaca (the one hole) and no external sex organs, so that could abate a bunch of pointless culture war stuff.
Transitioning would be sooo much easier. No surgery, only hormones. Though if we were still mammals despite laying eggs, you might still need top surgery.
If egg-humans were monotremes like a platypus, they would still have mammary glands, but they are also internal. They don't have nipples, but instead secrete milk through pores in the skin, somewhat like sweating milk, that the babies will just lick at. Other egg layers like birds and reptiles just have babies that hatch ready for regular food, so they don't have any mammaries to worry about.
May be a little off topic, but do hormones actually affect personality? With no external sex organs of any kind, would transitioning even be a thing? Other than preventing a female from laying an egg, would there be any benefit to any kind of hormonal therapy?
There would be so many weird egg posts on social media. Could you imagine how horrible "influencers" would be that do extravagant gender reveals if they had an egg to display?
Also weird egg porn would be a thing which I preemptively find rather disturbing.
Weird egg porn is already a thing, but at least now it’s not (quasi) incestuous.
there would be a couple of new tags on pornhub. Some freaks would eat the eggs
Oviposition is already a thing, you can even get toys.
Abortion issue is gone. Now the issue is paper abortion (aka: termination of parental rights and responsibilities).
(I'm a supporter of both abortion rights and paper abortion)
Btw: I'd be okay with the eggs being eaten as long as both parents give permission, and it happens before viability. Eggs cannot feel pain.
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Is eating your own egg cannibalism or breakfast?
Natural Selection
(Eggs can't feel, so the parents have the right to eat it before it becomes viable to hatch)
Hospitals would be packed because those eggs need to be taken care of.
Gonna be a lot fewer humans.
Society is divided between those born in old way, and the egg-born. More discriminations, hate is coming. Civil war is looming
People might not want to eat chicken eggs since they might look like smaller human eggs and that would be weird.
Monkeys look like smaller, hairier versions of ourselves and we still eat those.
Maybe they would sell it in a more disconnected form. Cause like we eat veal even though that's a baby. So maybe instead of eggs being sold in the shell they'd mostly be sold already cracked in a container or something.
Companies start selling incubator subscriptions and making massive profits; women (and men where applies) lose their rights to maternity leave.
Are unfertised human eggs a thing? Like, the chicken eggs we eat aren't fertilised. I'm imagining something like an ostrich egg. Lots of omelette in that ... um, definitely-not-a-baby.
90% more Mork.