It's a sad and horrifying story enough as it is, yet the Associated Press surely has compounded the grief for a Texas couple with its January 23 story, "Lawsuit: Stillborn Was Put in Laundry," excerpted below (h/t NB reader Tracy Zeeb):
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — A couple filed a lawsuit against a hospital alleging that it sent their stillborn fetus's body with dirty laundry to the cleaners.
The Huguley Memorial Medical Center of Fort Worth staff took 19 hours to find the missing body, which was unpreserved and by then had been crushed and disfigured, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday.
Kourtney McGee of Cleburne went to Huguley in July because she was bleeding in her second trimester, then gave birth to Jacob Dwayne Robinson. According to the lawsuit, staff told McGee and the father, Milburn "Pete" Robinson of Alvarado, that the body would be taken the morgue.
Yes, your eyes aren't deceiving you. This couple named their stillborn infant. Clearly they were and are grieving the loss, compounded with the pain of the hospital's careless treatment of their son's body. Yet that's no matter to the AP, which stuck to a cold and clinical dismissal of their stillborn son as a "fetus."
MRC President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell recently penned a column in which he urged the media to "Ban the Word 'Fetus.'":
While Gloria Steinem is fussing on National Public Radio about why the B-word isn’t taken as seriously as the N-word, perhaps pro-lifers need to really accuse America of insensitivity to what they’ve long seen as an F-bomb: "Fetus."
What a cold, humanity-negating word that is. Happy pregnant women carry "babies." But indecisive or panicked pregnant women carry a "fetus." How discriminatory that sounds in regard to an innocent human life.
"Fetus" has a dictionary definition: the young of a mammal that resembles its parents in physical form, in our case, a human with hands and feet and eyes and a beating heart. But to our media and political analysts, it has a different definition: a subhuman appendage, a disposable mass of tissue, a slave to our whims, and too often, a casualty of our irresponsibility.
—Ken Shepherd is Managing Editor of NewsBusters
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They are holding on by their finger nails
January 24, 2008 - 10:31 ET by c5thenthe liberals (90% of the AP) can't admit that they are babies and people. This is the legacy of the abortion era and the last stand of the pro-death side. They HAVE to try and deny that babies are people and will not use any term other than fetus.
I can picture them with their hands over their ears saying "fetus, fetus, fetus...."
The day that "politician" became a career choice is the day we started losing the Republic. Let's get it back! Alan Keyes '08.
According to libs...its a baby
January 24, 2008 - 11:27 ET by LionKingI have heard too recently that it is a fetus until it is born. This baby was born (sadly, stillborn), therefore it is a baby.
[btw, fetus is derived from the Latin for offspring.]
The terms "baby" and "child"
January 24, 2008 - 12:05 ET by lotrThe terms "baby" and "child" are very generic terms. "Baby" can refer to a pre-born or an infant, newborn or otherwise. "Child" can refer to anything from a baby to a teenager. "Fetus" is biological/clinical term that is describes an organism at a very specific stage of development in utero. There is nothing wrong with the word "fetus" per se, other than that it is used selectively to dehumanize the object. As mentioned above, pregnant women who don't intend induced abortion do not call their unborn offspring "fetus" or "embryo." The same goes for other terms such as "woman." We don't call a pregnant woman a "gestating female homo sapiens" -- while this would accurate biological terminology, it is also dehumanizing, especially in a non-clinical setting. In this particular case, use of the term "fetus" is both ignorant and insensitive.
Hate to sound unduly
January 24, 2008 - 11:42 ET by Jack BauerHate to sound unduly cynical, but maybe there's another thing at play here for the DisAssociated Press.
The grieving couple called their son "Dwayne."
Well, what sort of redneck hicks would do that?
But even by the abort agenda of partisan organizations like the DisAssociated Press, haven't they agreed that once the "fetus" has left the mother's body, at that point it becomes an infant human being, or what we normal folks call a BABY.
A stillborn 'fetus' would appear to be an impossibility. Unless they've changed the terms again.
I heard this report on one
January 24, 2008 - 14:57 ET by bigtimerI heard this report on one of the networks last evening and they said fetus when reporting on it...I was screaming at the television....
BABY you a$$holes...a BABY!
What a disservice to the parents and family...
Disgraceful.
I am sick and tired of this all...
My heart and prayers go out to them for their precious loss.
This ap article
January 24, 2008 - 16:18 ET by zoro7957.............really makes my blood boil. The only reason this tragedy is even being reported is because the parents filed a lawsuit. Otherwise,to the a.p. and the msm,it's just another dead "fetus".
This sort of thing causes
January 24, 2008 - 23:01 ET by CortillaenThis sort of thing causes rational people to wonder: If killing the baby is completely moral, why do these sorts insist on using a dehumanizing term? Of course, the answer is glaringly obvious.
The discrimination point of view on abortion is certainly an interesting one (I mention it in a little more detail here). You'd think the [noun]ist-obsessed media would wet themselves to hype any sort of discrimination, but it appears that rant is superceded by their loyalty to the abortion industry. As long as they keep from granting unborn babies the status of "human beings", they don't have to be concerned with the mass discrimination.
www.rhjunior.com Great comics with a hefty dose of Christian and anti-nutjob goodness.
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