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Comment by hitekker | Hacker News Reader

"Babies are not babies until they are born. They’re fetuses." from https://wamu.org/story/19/05/15/guidance-reminder-on-abortio...

I'm not against abortion. In fact, I actually see the legal necessity of it in an overpopulating world. But NPR's bias on the front does not align with my own bias or, I think, with most people.

Everyone has bias and that's perfectly human. The problem is when we don't own up to it. NPR tries to cover theirs with circuitous language and lies-by-omission, https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2019/05/29/7280694.... That double-talk served well in insulating them from criticism, but it ended up costing them the public trust.

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> Babies are not babies until they are born. They’re fetuses.

This is a factual statement with accurate medical terminology.

We don’t call them meteorites until they hit the earth, either.

I hate to have to inform you of this, but "babies" is not a medical term.

He didn't say it was.

Yes he did bro

It's verbal sleight of hand in the cultural tug-of-war to emphasize or de-emphasize the future human. The point is that massaged language blunts or sharpens its impact, and an org's political choices therein reflect the bias.

Meteorites don't have that baggage.

It's a style guide; not "verbal sleight-of-hand." It codifies what terms should be used by their reporters, and refers to the AP style guide.

so you're saying if they said babies in their style guide it wouldn't have any impact on perception?

The baggage isn't calling fetuses what they are. The baggage and bias comes in when you lie about what a fetus is, depicting it as a human baby, which it is not. The right does that specifically to emotionally manipulate people and feed a narrative of baby killing.

Who here is doing the verbal slight of hand? The people using factual terms, or the people lying? This should be an easy one to answer.

In medical jargon, sure. In common usage, including among medical professionals, it's extremely common to just say "baby" in many contexts, especially when the baby is wanted and expected to be viable and brought to term. Nobody but a few weirdos or people trying to make some kind of a joke are gonna say to their partner "oh, did they give you any pictures of our fetus from the ultrasound? Oh look at our fetus' tiny little hands!"

(I'm pro-choice but think the "acksually they're fetuses" angle is fucking gross, both on an intellectually-honest debate level because it's semantic bullshit, and because it absolutely reads as a move toward dehumanization, and I hate to provide reasons for those kinds of accusations from pro-lifers to ring true)

You're responding to someone who thinks pointing to a dictionary automatically wins an argument.

> "acksually they're fetuses"

I highly doubt anyone in your actual life has said this to you, or distilled the entire argument down to this point.

> because it's semantic bullshit

Obviously, semantics isn't "bullshit" because there's been a massive decades long debate over semantics, including millions and millions spent by the right to define the semantics.

I can concede that some people hear this debate and think they're under attack in a "culture war", which I'm really not sure what the solution to that is because semantics is important.

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