These past few weeks, proponents of abortion rights have had a lot to say about the importance of using the “correct” language when discussing abortion. Mark Memmott, NPR’s supervising senior editor for standards and practices, issued a guidance reminder that included the following noteworthy policy: “Babies are not babies until they are born. They’re fetuses. Incorrectly calling a fetus a ‘baby’ or ‘the unborn’ is part of the strategy used by antiabortion groups to shift language/legality/public opinion.”
Indeed, yours truly had the pleasure of being dunked on by hundreds of Twitter followers of Dr. Jennifer Gunter, a radical abortion-rights advocate who recently declared that “all abortions are moral,” for claiming that “baby” is a perfectly sensible term to use for a fetus, despite its being a colloquial term instead of a medical one.
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