Abortion: Dehumanizing the vulnerable
Last week Colorado for Equal Rights announced that“for the first time in US history, the issue of personhood will be decided in the public forum by a constitutional amendment”
and that the
“Colorado Secretary of State’s Office found that enough valid signatures were submitted to put the Every Human is a Person amendment on the November 2008 ballot. The Secretary of State’s Office’s random sampling indicated that there were 103,377 valid signatures, surpassing the 76,047 valid signatures that were required.”
The exact wording of the proposed state amendment is:
Be it Enacted by the People of the State of Colorado:
SECTION 1. Article II of the constitution of the state of Colorado is amended BY THE ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION to read:
Section 31. Person defined.
As used in sections 3, 6, and 25 of Article II of the state constitution, the terms “person” or “persons” shall include any human being from the moment of fertilization.
That’s simple enough: a person is defined as any human being from the moment of fertilization.
But that’s not the way the Associated Press reported the story: AP said,
DENVER (AP) - A proposed state constitutional amendment defining a fertilized human egg as a person [my italics] was certified Thursday for the November ballot, moving Colorado a step closer to an election battle over abortion rights.
Welcome to Spin City.
“Fertilized egg” is not medically correct. Dr. J.C. Willke,
president of Life Issues Institute, says “Conception (fertilization) consists of the union of sperm and ovum. The penetration of the ovum by the sperm, the integration and finally the beginning of the first cell division encompasses approximately twenty-four hours. The medical name for this single cell stage is zygote.”Why would AP use the term “fertilized egg”? Dr. Willke says those who use this term “say it with something of a sneer…..Whoever heard of a fertilized egg being a ‘full human’? The very words ‘fertilized egg’ do not conjure up in anyone’s mind the full human being that this new biologic entity is. Rest assured, semantically speaking, they know exactly what they are doing when they continue to speak of fertilized eggs.”
National Geographic simply uses the word “embryo” in its theatrical release describing In the Womb, a National Geographic video of unborn life:
“From the moment of conception every human embryo embarks on an incredible nine month journey of development.”
No “fertilized egg” in the National Geographic video — and no “pre-embryo” either, another discredited term used by those whose intent is to denigrate unborn humans.
AP’s linguistic sleight-of-hand matters. Dr. William Brennan, author of Dehumanizing the Vulnerable: When Word Games Take Lives, gives us other examples of language used to oppress unborn humans: “a primitive animal”, “a real parasite”, “personal property”, “garbage…just refuse”. Add to this list the oh-so-familiar “product of pregnancy” and “blob of tissue” — and the trite “smaller than the period at the end of this sentence”.
The AP — like the rest of the press often accused of being in the pocket of the abortion industry — needs to be held accountable. Let’s put their feet to the fire.
Sherry Tyree, 66, a graduate of John Burroughs School and Washington University, is a founding member (1984) and Vice President of Women for Faith & Family, a national Catholic women's organization that supports and defends traditional church teachings. Sherry is married to Dr. Donald A. Tyree, professor emeritus, School of Business, St. Louis University. 
From a biological standpoint, there is a reason the AP uses that terminology. Not that they are right or wrong, but an explanation should be done. For there to be a pregnancy, TWO things are required (and, in full disclosure, I have no medical background). One, fertilization of the egg by the sperm. Second, the fertilized egg (using AP’s wording) needs to be implanted in the uterine wall to effect development. Then, and only then, does pregnancy happen. AP’s point is that the Colorado law would define a person at the first point, not the second. As you likely realize, the point of this law is to ban emergency contraception, which stops the second point, stopping pregnancy. That is why emergency contraception is referred to (incorrectly, by my opinion) as causing an abortion. Please correct me if I am wrong. Thanks.
Funny this was not reported in the PD isn’t it?
I agree with spyguy, the goal of the law is to outlaw emergency contraception. Why would the religious folks try to outlaw something (i.e. spontaneous aborting of the zygote) that God does on a regular basis?
Thanks for providing consistently interesting postings.
Let me suggest a non-sinister reason why AP might have used “fertilized egg” instead of zygote. I suspect that they believed, and I would be inclined to agree, that more readers would recognize and understand “fertilized egg” as compared to “zygote.”
Even if the terms are equally comprehensible to the reading public, is zygote really a more appealing or respectful term than fertilized egg? It doesn’t seem so to me, despite Dr. Willke’s opinion. If anything, to my ear zygote sounds more clinical, more detached, less human. Maybe I’m tone deaf on this one; I’d be curious what others think.
By the way, “hold their feet to the fire” derives at least in part from one of the techniques used historically by the Catholic Church to extract confessions from suspected heretics and witches. Perhaps not the most felicitous choice of metaphors for a blog devoted to Catholic apologetics.
To Wink: The goal of the law is to protect human life from its beginning and, yes, that would outlaw emergency “contraception” and various IVF procedures as well. Not a good point about humans at the zygote stage dying anyway. We all die at one stage or another, but that doesn’t mean we don’t enact laws protecting innocent human life from other humans who are bent on destroying it.
To Steve Kirk: When I see the words “fertilized egg” I remember going to the fridge in my youth, pulling out a carton of eggs and seeing one or two with what appeared to be blood in it. The rooster had gotten to them! Those were fertilized eggs and they were deader than a doornail. I think you have a point about the clinical sound of “zygote”. Perhaps, living, developing, one-of-a-kind human zygote sounds better? On the other hand, years ago we pro-lifers weren’t happy with the constant references to the “fetus”. But then as years went by and more people saw Ultrasounds, saw the National Geographic In the Womb video and saw books devoted to the development of the unborn human a funny thing happened: the word fetus became humanized. I remember our oldest granddaughter talking about all those cute fetuses! Who knows, maybe we’ll get to the point of cute zygotes.