Photo by Christin Noelle on Unsplash
One of the core pro-choice arguments is that an unborn child is not yet alive, and therefore it has no rights. Rather than calling it an unborn child, a baby or human life, abortion supporters prefer dehumanizing terms such as a “clump of cells” or “pregnancy tissue”.
Whatever names are used, there can be no debate that whatever is inside the mother is certainly human. It has human DNA, and does not come from a plant or an animal. The fundamental question is whether the unborn human is alive. If it is both human and alive, it becomes difficult to argue that an innocent, unborn human life can be terminated simply for convenience.
It may come as a surprise that up until very recently Planned Parenthood argued that the unborn human in the womb is indeed alive. On their own website, Planned Parenthood defined a miscarriage as “When an embryo or fetus dies before the 20th week of pregnancy” (emphasis added). Of particular note in their definition is the use of the word “dies”. In order for something to die, it must first of course be living. Planned Parenthood was unwittingly acknowledging that the unborn child was a living, human life.
They have used this wording in their definition for years, and only very recently updated their verbiage to remove the word “dies”. The current definition now follows their predictable pattern of euphemisms and dehumanizing language: “A miscarriage is when you lose a pregnancy before the 20th week of pregnancy”.
It seems Planned Parenthood finally realized that their definition did not support their business model, and went to great pains to cleverly wordsmith a new definition for a miscarriage that sidesteps the obvious fact that the baby is alive. Leaving aside the poor grammar and sentence structure in their new definition, the basic premise is fundamentally flawed. What other possible explanation could there be for “losing” a pregnancy other than the child has died? It’s not as if a pregnancy was misplaced like a set of car keys, and the mother just can’t remember the last place she put it.
It is certainly worth acknowledging that every miscarriage is a deeply personal and sensitive event, and delicate terms such as “losing a pregnancy” are obviously appropriate when dealing with individuals circumstances. But it seems Planned Parenthood’s recent obfuscation on their website was more for business reasons rather than personal sensitivity.
Many other sources also support Planned Parenthood’s original premise that a fetus was once living but has died, in their respective definitions of miscarriage:
The Mayo Clinic: “An embryo forms but stops developing and dies”
MedlinePlus: “.. fertilized eggs die and are lost”
Cambridge Dictionary: “The fetus is born too early and dies”
Harvard Health: “A fetus has died”
WebMD : “The baby has fatal genetic problems”
American Pregnancy Association: “embryonic death has occurred”
World Health Organization: “baby who dies before 28 weeks of pregnancy”
UK Miscarriage Association: “When a baby dies in the uterus”
Kaiser Foundation: “Also called fetal death”
Healthline: “Intrauterine fatal demise”
Merck Manual: “by definition, is death of the fetus”
Obstetric Excellence: “Baby has died in the womb”
CDC: “Fetal death…irrespective of the duration of the pregnancy”
Even Planned Parenthood’s updated business friendly miscarriage section still states “An ultrasound shows an embryo without cardiac activity”, which means that prior to the miscarriage, the embryo had cardiac activity. Miscarriage, just like intentional abortion, stops a beating human heart.
An unborn child is alive by every sense of the word. No amount of clever marketing by Planned Parenthood can change this fact, and intentionally ending an innocent human life is wrong.
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Sources:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220831202153/https:/www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/glossary#id_M
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/pregnancy/miscarriage
https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/001488.htm
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/miscarriage
https://www.health.harvard.edu/a_to_z/miscarriage-a-to-z
https://www.webmd.com/baby/guide/pregnancy-miscarriage
https://americanpregnancy.org/getting-pregnant/pregnancy-loss/signs-of-miscarriage/
https://www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/why-we-need-to-talk-about-losing-a-baby
https://www.miscarriageassociation.org.uk/information/miscarriage/
https://www.healthline.com/health/miscarriage#causes
https://www.obstetricexcellence.com.au/pregnancy-concerns/miscarriage/
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/misc/itop97.pdf