I think you garnered the “disapproval” of the “Jane bloggers” all by yourself, and quite handily, too.

Think I’ll pass on the gauntlet. If you can’t understand what you’ve been writing about for two weeks, I can’t help you.

Please?

For full disclosure, so that ALL can see here on this blog, where exactly I’ve even intimated what you say.

Hard to argue on the points, isn’t it, Mike, when you really have no argument. Gives you only one tactic: call names and slander. Good show!

It’s so Stalinist of you to even suggest removing words from the lexicon because they’re “Latin” to further your agenda. Again, “fetus” accurately describes a fetus. To insist someone should bend to your word choice is just pushy, and shows you’re delusion regarding how you view your role in debates in which you choose to engage.

It’s also highly bore-bag of you to haul out word histories and Rome lectures. Good grief…

And you’ve certainly changed your tack. First you claimed that “baby” and “fetus” were synonomous (effectively arguing against yourself). Now you’ve tried a new approach – digging through the cattacombs to ban words. You people will try anything. O’Reilly and others deserve protection from people like you.

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/viewarticle.php?selectedarticle=2009.06.23.001.pdart

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Words matter. Context is everything. Words aren’t “just” words. They’re “words” for a purpose.

The only reason not to use words correctly is to obfuscate, confuse, defuse, and manipulate the receiver.

Latin hasn’t been used as daily vernacular by any people since Rome was sacked over a millennium ago; it is still used by the Roman Catholic Church so that all its clergy, no matter where in the world, or of what nationality, can understand each other; it is a “universal language” in that sense. And exactly for that reason — the sake of universal understanding — it and Greek are used by science, mathematics, and medicine as well. It is not used in everyday lay vernacular by anyone else, especially not in America.

The meaning of the Latin word, fetus, as I pointed out above, is young one, child, baby. Look it up yourself. (I suspect you already know, and that’s why you’re trying so hard to minimize this argument.) Its use by medical and biological science specifically acknowledges what is growing in the mammalian womb past the blastocyst, zygote (which are the real “lumps of tissue”), and embryo stages.

The pro-choice movement has tried to change the language to one of those a couple of times, to remove the reality of what abortion is even further from scrutiny, but even their non-scientific supporters had difficulty pronouncing, understanding and applying the technical terms. And besides, once you get beyond the embryonic stage, it is a fetus, anyway. So for the pro-choice movement fetus remains the rigid stand-in for the simple and too-loaded English word, “baby.”

Yes, “fetus” is VERY familiar, thanks to the pro-choice crowd. Otherwise, hardly anyone not in the biological or medical sciences would be familiar with it.

But its simple meaning, not to be confused with its use as an impersonal and depersonalizing medical label, is not. The pro-choice crowd has been adamant that fetus be used up until birth; even a premature birth is then referred to as a baby. The very same entity that in the womb they insist be referred to as a mere fetus.

If it’s in the womb, it’s a “fetus.” If it’s outside the womb, it’s a baby, even at the same stage of development (after the earliest — zygote, blastula, of course). How much more prevaricating and dishonest can one be?

That’s where the controversy over the “medical” procedure popularly known as partial-birth abortion swirls. If it’s a fetus, it’s okay to “abort” it. If it’s a baby, and this is a perfectly natural birth, then it’s murder. During this Nightmare on Elm Street act, the baby even has to be turned in the womb to present breech so the deed can be done before it takes its first breath. Yeah, this is nothing more than a routine medical procedure, to save the mother’s life. Yeah. Do you know what’s involved in turning a baby in the womb or birth canal? If the mother were in any REAL physical danger, that little maneuver would surely help her into the next life!

So the body outside the womb is a baby, the head still smothering in the birth canal is a fetus. Uh, huh.

And, like you, the pro-choice crowd cannot afford for ordinary people who think they support “a woman’s right to choose” to understand the real, simple meaning of that “scientific” term “fetus,” because then it becomes clear just what they’re really talking about. And very, very few honest people are willing to advocate for execution or murder of a helpless innocent.

I’m not “might be able to,” but in actuality DO claim that a fetus IS a baby, by actually knowing the simple translation of the Latin word into English. If it’s so easily interchangeable, then why not use the plain English word INSTEAD of the Latin word? That’s what Jane was trying to advocate by reporters/commentators using plain, direct language. Yah?

After all, O’Reilly, et al. are not doctors; using technical medical terminology when talking to “the folks” is inappropriate. At the very least, it’s pretentious.

You’ll never hear an abortion supporter refer to what is in the womb as a baby. And that’s the simple reason you’re arguing against it, too.

You dance around and try to deny the real issue: what is in the human womb, at all stages of development, regardless of whether English or Latin or Greek is used to label it, is a brand-new human being.

So, Mike, if it’s a baby, a brand-new human being, by any other name, and abortion is the act of killing and throwing away into the garbage that brand-new human being, is it murder?

That is the crux of the whole argument. You’ve insisted that fetus or baby, doesn’t matter, is referring to the same entity, which is a brand-new human being. If its only “offense” was to be conceived through the sexual activity of its parents, whether it was planned or not, whether it was wanted, deliberate or not, is it right, moral, ethical, to kill that weak, unsuspecting, and defenseless human being?

Abortion is analogous to shooting or stabbing an unsuspecting person in the back, someone who had done nothing except exist at the same time as you on this earth. If one is wrong, then when stripped of the obscuring trappings of medical terminology, why isn’t the other?

Why is it in our society, one class of human beings, of one sex and biological condition, namely, pregnant women, get to choose to kill another human being (albeit under certain circumstances — but these specific circumstances make the act even more unimaginably heinous — and the rest of us are forced to finance it!), if she wishes, but no one else does, for ANY reason? (Except warding off a violent attack by another fully capable human being, or executing a murderer, or during war (topics for other discussions).)

Where’s the logic and morality in that? Why should ANYONE support that?