Verbal smoke screens have long been used to accustom people to accept ideas, actions, and policies they would otherwise find obnoxious. A few years ago, in a high-profile trial of an abortion doctor, a picture was shown of an unborn child the same gestational age as the one who had been aborted. Shakespeare understood that it is easier to kill a snake than to kill a human being. Yet women throughout the ages have always known that what they carry are children. Before ever there was a Pro-Life Movement there were baby showers, not fetus showers.
Expectant parents are quick to show ultrasound pictures of their baby in the womb.
Women who miscarry grieve the loss of a child, not of a fetus. The unborn child, of course, is not the same as the child sleeping in a crib or playing in a sandbox. Yet, if someone were to say he or she had at home an infant and an adolescent, we surely would not wonder if that person was referring to different kinds of pets or variations of plants. Infant and adolescent are terms that describe human beings at various stages of development. It tells us where a child is on the life spectrum.