In August, I blogged about CBS reporters using the medical term "fetus" to describe an unborn child, even in stories where the child was a "planned and wanted child" as former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders was wont to say.
The Early Show's Rene Syler continued the practice today in setting up a report on a Pennsylvania woman accused of attempting to remove an unborn baby from her eight-months pregnant neighbor, to claim the baby as her own. But the correspondent Syler introduced, a reporter for the local CBS affiliate KDKA in Pittsburgh, used the term "unborn baby" and noted that one of the charges the suspect faces is "assault on an unborn child."
Rene Syler: "As we mentioned, there was a horrible attack on a pregnant woman near Pittsburgh. A woman is in custody for allegedly beating her neighbor and then trying to steal her fetus. Ralph Iannotti of our Pittsburgh station KDKA reports."
Ralph Iannotti, over video of police impounding evidence: "These are some of the baby items Pennsylvania state police removed from the trailer home of an Armstrong county woman now accused of trying to use a razor knife to cut an unborn baby from the abdomen of a woman who was eight months pregnant. The suspect is 38-year-old Peggy Jo Conner. Charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault and assault on an unborn child."
