Why would we adopt a Latin word meaning baby to describe what we already know is a baby in formation? It seems that word-use here is used to minimize the defined organism. If the organism in formation were readily called a “baby,” the human mind with emotion would perhaps trigger a different response.
No one wants to think about the killing of babies. To justify aborting unborn babies, the abortionist may be minimizing the identity of the unborn child by calling this developing organism a “fetus,” the Latin word for baby.
This is why one of my missions in life is to make "fetus" and "unborn baby" synonymous in our culture, both linguistically and emotionally.
My screensaver consists of pictures of my family. On of the pictures I have is of Daughter #3 (the most recent) when she was in my womb.
I told my 3-year-old that it was a picture of her sister when she was a "fetus". DD#2 said "Fetus?" I said "Yes. A fetus is a baby in the womb."
In my estimation, that's what we should be doing. We can't humanize the fetus in the minds of abortionists, but we can humanize the word "fetus" in the culture.
By humanizing the word "fetus", we take away one instrument fetal rights opponents use to oppress the unborn.
