What should be expected from the interaction between
vampirism and pregnancy depends on what characteristics one
chooses for the vampiric infection, and may also be affected by
one's suppositions as to whether a fetus should be considered
human and/or alive. As an entity with a firm attachment to its
hide in an intact condition, I hasten to add that these musings
represent the purest speculation. No true wanderers of the
night have any cause for outrage, regardless of their position
in the choice/life/whatever street riot. The strains of
vampirism tend to run along a continuum from biology to
possession. The more mystical variants should be just as likely
as other forms of magic to act on individual selves and lives,
whose definition may become important.
Biological Models:
Some types of vampirism, of which the
infections described by P.N. Elrod or Lee Killough may be
considered typical, operate very much like conventional diseases.
Among humans, some pathogens cross the placenta and affect the
fetus while others do not. The outcome of the vampiric
conversion of a pregnant woman would probably depend on whether
or not the entity responsible for the infection does so. If it
does, the fetus should be sustained by the infection quite as
well as the woman would be. The fetus might or might not ever be
born, but there is no reason to expect a miscarriage. If
pregnancy progresses, the infant should be a vampire also. If
the infection does not cross the placenta, a female vampire,
almost certainly non-breathing, would be unable to support a
still-human fetus. It would die, and, one _hopes_, miscarry
promptly.
Spirit models:
Ricean vampires are infected with the spirit
of a poltergeist that invaded the ancient queen Akasha. Many
other wanderers of the night share a similar condition, in which
the infection is not a living organism but a ghost or force
transmitted according to more or less arbitrary rules. Here,
one also ought to enquire whether the pregnant woman is (1) one
life carrying another equivalent life, (2) a single entity, in
which one life encompasses all, or (3) one life carrying a
non-equivalent life or potential life in a relationship akin to
parasitism.
Spirit model (two equivalent lives):
The woman, not the fetus, is being infected. The infection could behave like either
the placenta-crossing or non-crossing biological infections
above.
Spirit model (one life):
If the pregnant woman is a single
life, a symbiotic entity, the vampiric spirit should maintain the
unit in an unchanged condition... permanent pregnancy. Ouch.
Spirit model (two nonequivalent lives):
This might result
in miscarriage. If it did not, the outcome would imply that
*all* of the living occupants of the human body participate in
the vampiric transformation. The normal bacterial of the human
intestine, any possible mundane pathogens, and any possible
parasites, would all be transformed. Vampire tapeworms, anyone?
Further thoughts:
Any of these models may permit (according to auctorial
tastes) a woman to become infected in a way that does not kill
her immediately. Very interesting (in the Chinese sense of the
word) problems might arise if a living but infected woman became
pregnant. Consider that a very large proportion of human
pregnancies, probably more than half counting from fertilization,
abort spontaneously due to implantation failures or defects in
the fetus. What happens if the infection invades the fetus? Now
a still-living woman is hosting something that, if it dies, will
not stay dead. 64 cells, undead and hungry, might not become a
problem. On the other hand, it might behoove a woman in this
situation to seek sterilization with all possible haste.
With regard to dinoflagellates and taxonomy:
The five-kingdom
scheme isn't just a textbook convenience. It is intended to
follow a proposal for the evolutionary origin of all eukaryotic
organisms including the protista. (Crudely, anything fancier
than a bacterium is a eukaryote.) The idea is that these
organisms originated from parasitic or symbiotic associations
between originally free-living bacteria-like ancestors.
Mitochondria and chloroplasts do have some DNA of their own, so
the arrangement is plausible. The kingdom Protista puts the
single-celled eukaryotes together, because the details that give
"plant", "animal" or "fungus" characteristics tend to emerge in
multicellular organisms. Dinoflagellates are not the oddest
example around. Wierder are beasties like _Euglena_, which
normally has chloroplasts but can get by without them.
Disagreements over this sort of thing amount to holy war, pursued
by means of drive-by publication. (If you call viruses alive, it
never stops. Viruses have all sorts of parasitic genome of their
own. One would eventually have to call a single RNA or DNA
base-pair a life-form, to the eternal amusement of chemists.)
Remember ... Biology is the study of plants and their parasites!