Friday, December 17, 2004

When is a fetus a baby?

Police Find Baby; Could Be From Slain Mom
Thank God that missing infant from Missouri has been found safe and sound.

If you're not familiar with the story, a pregant woman was attacked, killed and her unborn child was stolen from her womb.

There was a debate about this story here at work. Someone I work with said we shouldn't be referrring to the child as a "baby" since, at that point, we weren't sure if she was alive and techinically it was never born -- it was instead ripped from her mother. It is still a fetus, he said.

So I asked him, "By your logic, if this child survives, when she is 30 years old is she still just a fetus because technically she was never born?"

He chuckeld at me, at which point I told I wasn't kidding, I was asking him a serious question. He never gave me an answer.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I guess my father or my great aunt are technically fetuses since they were two months premature. Where is this guys logic, Does a C-section count as a proper birth? Is it only when the child is a full nine months in the womb and born through the birth canal that it can be something more than a fetus.

I think the use of the word fetus is a way to desensitise feelings by using a scientific and impersonal sounding word to describe the child.

It is interesting to note that the Chinese perform late term abortions by injecting formaldihyde into the brain while the "fetus" is crowning, but if it takes its first breath, they let it live. Another interesting thing to note with that train of thought is that the Netherlands has legalised euthanasia both for the terminally ill and elderly but also for a child born with birth defects or handicaps. Can these children also be termed as something else so we don't have to remember that the Nazis tested their extermination program fist on the crippled war veterans, elderly infirm and children born with handicaps?

Sorry, That way of thinking offends me a bit.
As you might understand.

ChrisJ

Anonymous said...

i have one question why tha freak does it really matter??????

Anonymous said...

i have one question why tha freak does it really matter??????

Anonymous said...

was that your first troll, Chris?

ChrisJ

Roon said...

Troll? That's the first time I've heard that term. I assume you mean someone leaving a flame-like comment. In which case, no, it's not my first. Someone practicallt accused me of being racist when I posted that I liked the Office Max Rubberband Man commecials.

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