What’s In A Name?

One of the arguments that the Pro-Abortion side of the debate uses to attempt to assuage guilt and justify their position is to assign and control the names given to life in an attempt to dehumanize it.  They believe—and it’s worked for a while—that if they are able to call the baby in the mother’s womb a “fetus”, then they will be able to convince the mother that it isn’t a baby:

The unborn is an embryo or a fetus—just a simple blob of tissue, a product of conception—not a baby.  Abortion is terminating a pregnancy, not killing a child.

The word embryo is used of any living creature at an early stage of development.  Fetus is the Latin word variously translated “offspring”, “young one”, or “little child.”

By very definition this confirms the Pro-Life position.  The baby in the womb is not a different being or entity—it’s a human being at a different stage of development.  It would be the equivalent of saying that a toddler or a teenager is not a human being because they are not a full grown adult¹.

Also, simply because a child is younger does not make them of less worth.  My oldest is as precious to me as my youngest, as is the life yet unborn.

We have tried to place a value on life because we cannot see it.  And yet life is precious regardless of age.  Applying a different name to it may make a person who has chosen abortion feel better about their choice², but it doesn’t change the facts of the situation.

1. Though I know that some parents wonder about their kids when they get to be teens—could they have changed? [↩]
2. The jury is still out here, because many mothers know inside what they have done, whether they try to reason it away or not. [↩]