A Fetus Is Not A Child

[jberryhill]

136. It adopts an anti-choice false dichotomy

Roe v. Wade is not premised on some formula of IF (fetus = person) THEN (abortion = murder).

That is an anti-choice framing which the left, for reasons which continue to mystify me, has eagerly adopted.

This country experimented with making alcohol illegal. That didn't end because alcohol became any less of an intoxicant, or because anyone's opinions about drinking changed. It ended because it became apparent that the consequences of its illegality were invasive, made criminals out of ordinary people, resulted in dangerous behaviors, and its impact depended on one's social class. A similar history, one recounted in Roe v. Wade, applies relative to abortion, and the decision is not premised on or affected by how people choose to colloquially refer to things.

A friend of mine is near term and refers to her soon-to-be child as her child. She has reached a point in her life where she is able to competently support and raise a child because abortion was an option available to her years ago. She is not at all confused on that point, and I cannot at all wrap my head around what good anyone thinks is to be accomplished by scolding her over her use of language.

And, no, it is not the vanguard of a return to pre-Roe merely because people generally believe that a violent crime against a pregnant woman is an aggravated form of that violent crime. It is. And, yes, for pregnancies carried to term there is a legitimate societal interest in pre-natal care, because that has a direct impact on social costs of in the health care and education of youth. Neither of those considerations results in some linguistic jiu-jitsu that upends Roe v. Wade, because Roe v. Wade wasn't based on some kind of semantic categorization in the first place.