« And lo, they came home from school | Main | Time's tip to GW and blogs »
December 18, 2004
Peeved at PC
I'm sure by now you all have heard of the gruesome story of the woman who was murdered and her baby was cut out of her body and stolen. Thank God the murderer left a trail of clues that the authorities were able to track in such a timely manner and the baby was rescued alive and in apparently good health.
What annoyed me about much of the media reporting was they couldn't bring themselves to use the word "baby". It was "Amber Alert for Fetus" and later "Fetus Found Alive."
Sorry, guys, but when a "fetus" is eight-months term and now outside of mom's body ... it is a BABY.
What, have you becomed so cowed by the histrionics from the NOW and NARAL crowd you can't even utter the word "baby" in these gruesome circumstances??
The mind doth boggle.
UPDATE: Sara (in the comments) believes it is 'rightwing' media that is using the term fetus while the 'leftwing' media uses baby.
Washington Post today - Fetus
CNN just changed the article headline to "baby", but if you hover over the link you'll see the article is saved as 'fetus.found.alive'
Los Angeles Times -- 'baby'
NYTimes -- 'baby'
Kansas City Star -- 'fetus'
I've also noticed that many of the newsites I had visited yesterday, had almost universally used 'fetus'... but their stories today are using 'baby' and old articles have updated headlines. I had first just gone to google news with 'stinnett' in the search term. Then I used 'stinnett, fetus' and even while the link used 'fetus' the headlines on the linked articles had been changed to 'baby.'
Notice above I never used 'right' or 'left' wing to describe the media that was using the term 'fetus' because both sides in the spectrum are just as liable to use Politically Correct terms.
Posted by Darleen at December 18, 2004 08:47 AM
Comments
I've noticed that the different media outlets are calling it different names.
Right-wing media: Fetus
Left-wing media: Baby/child
I know you don't agree with my particular politics (I'm a hippy tree-hugging liberal), but I think that the reason this is being done is because the Right is trying to emotionalize the word fetus on the left. Everyone is outraged by the idea of an 8 month s-gestational being hacked out of its mom's belly. When the left reads that the 8-month old was a "fetus", the reaction is "ACK! NO! That's a baby!" which leads/could lead to the re-evaluation of the whole pro-choice stance, increased support for the Conservatives, etc. etc. It's clever. It installs a bit of brain-software that, every time you hear the word "fetus", you remember this violent gory murder, and the poor child that lived through it all.
The word "Fetus" in this situation grates on my nerves. Because it's politics. Because it's a blatant attempt at manipulating a horrible tragic event to suit a political agenda.
The dictionary defines Fetus as "a developing human from usually three months after conception to birth" As violent and hell-ridden as this baby's "birth" was, it's undoubtably been born. It's undoubtably healthy, as it's survived without medical care despite being 1 month premature.
Posted by: Sara at December 18, 2004 02:06 PM
(Just a note- your preview function seems to result in comments being lost rather than posted.)
I've noticed that the different media outlets are calling the baby different terms.
Right-wing media: Fetus
Left-wing media: Baby/child
I know you don't agree with my particular politics (I'm a hippy tree-hugging liberal), but I think that the reason this is being done is because the Right is trying to emotionalize the word fetus on the left. Everyone is outraged by the idea of an 8 month s-gestational being hacked out of its mom's belly. When the left reads that the 8-month old was a "fetus", the reaction is "ACK! NO! That's a baby!" which leads/could lead to the re-evaluation of the whole pro-choice stance, increased support for the Conservatives, etc. etc. It's clever. It installs a bit of brain-software-code that, whenever you hear the word "fetus" your mind jumps to this horrible tragedy, and how a poor innocent child was ripped from its murdered mom's belly. It makes you second-guess the emotionally-less-charged word "fetus".
The word "Fetus" in this situation grates on my nerves. Because it's politics. Because it's a blatant attempt at manipulating a story to suit a political agenda. Because it's inaccurate. The dictionary defines Fetus as "a developing human from usually three months after conception to birth" As violent and hell-ridden as this baby's "birth" was, it's undoubtably been born. And it's undoubtably healthy--as it survived a significant amount of time without medical care despite its being born one month prematurely.
Posted by: sara at December 18, 2004 02:10 PM