Talking about the Baby

One of the most effective ways to lie is to change the words in a discussion. We stop talking about ‘fornication’ and say ‘living together’. We stop talking about ‘unwed mothers’ and talk about ‘teenage pregnancy’. We stop calling it ‘adultery’ and call it ‘open marriage’. We cover our sin with lies, using words.

Fetus

FE'TUS, noun plural fetuses. [Latin faetus.] The young of viviparous animals in the womb, and of oviparous animals in the egg, after it is perfectly formed; before which time it is called embryo. A young animal then is called a fetus from the time its parts are distinctly formed, till its birth.

Webster’s 1828

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from Latin fetus (often, incorrectly, foetus) "the bearing or hatching of young, a bringing forth, pregnancy, childbearing, offspring,"

https://www.etymonline.com/word/foetus

The word ‘fetus’ means ‘baby’. It means young human offspring. Everyone that  understands biology in the slightest knows this. But because it is from the Latin, and sounds all official, people blow smoke in your eyes and make it sound as if the word means ‘non-human blob of tissue’.

One of the most powerful pro-life (indeed abolitionist) visual arguments is to simply show the developing ‘fetus’ in the womb. Its even more powerful if you show it backwards. Perhaps stopping every couple of days of development and development and asking, “So, is it OK to kill it now?”

Try it with children… people too young to have been brainwashed or to have their consciences seared. Find a nice youtube with an animation of the developing baby in the womb (they will call it a ‘fetus’) and play it backwards. Look at the baby ten minutes before she comes out of the vagina, then go back a week, go back another week, and the child will understand what biology has always understood, and our modern sophists try to disguise… she is a baby. She is a developing baby.

Or perhaps it isn’t the sophist. Perhaps it is… you. You don’t want this thing growing inside you, or your girlfriend, or your daughter, to be an actual baby. An actual developing human being that is your son, or daughter, or grandson, or granddaughter, or nephew…

If you don’t want to believe it is human, well, just go and hide behind the word ‘fetus’.

Conclusion

It is a common thing to say that ‘abortion is a complex moral issue’. That is actually a lie, and the way the word ‘fetus’ is used is one part of that lie. In order to attempt to make the issue sound complex, words are used, including ‘fetus’, to distance the reality of the actions involved from the political discussion.

It is a fairly well-known fact that if you were to sit a group of ordinary human beings down and show them an abortion… an actual abortion from beginning to end, including images of the child… the audience would be horrified. They would not merely be ‘grossed out’, as some of them might be with an appendectomy, or react to the immodesty, as you might have with surgery involving the testes, cervix, or breast… they would be horrified.

To use the word ‘fetus’ in the abortion debate is to lie to yourself and your audience. The human being killed is a baby. Abortion murders a human baby. That is the reality, and there is nothing complex about it.

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