At 11:24 AM 10/28/03 -0800, Delirium wrote:
Eileen wrote:
I also note the use of "birth canal" to
describe the vagina as if a woman
had an exit chute on her baby factory; and the use of "womb" in place of
'uterus'. Both these terms, and the misstatement of the time the procedure is
performed, lead me to believe the article was mainly written by somebody
opposed
to abortion who was more interested in getting a subtle message out then
actually providing honest information. Since we are describing a medical
procedure appropriate medical/biological terminology which is well
understood by the
general population is the appropriate vocabulary.
May I suggest reading this article before using the term "PBA" as loosely as
it is used in your current entry.
http://womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/499/
In both these cases, the problem is that there is no entirely neutral
terminology. Using strictly medical terms is considered biased by the
anti-abortion community, as they see it as an attempt to cast a moral
issue as a strictly sanitized medical issue; using non-medical terms is
seen as similarly biased by the pro-abortion community. My preferred
solution would be to use both sets of terms interchangeably--both "womb"
and "uterus" and both "birth canal" and
"vagina/cervix/vulva"). In
particular I don't really see anything wrong with "birth canal", and have
seen it used in pro-abortion literature as well as anti-abortion literature.
Womb is a fine old English word, uterus is medical Latin. Both are
perfectly acceptable.
There is little or no "pro-abortion literature": those of us who support
abortion rights
also support the rights of women to have children if they wish--and, in
fact, part of the
fight for reproductive freedom is an ongoing battle against forced
sterilization. If you're
trying for neutrality, don't use one side's terminology for the other.
As for the term "Partial Birth Abortion"
itself, there's no good solution
to that either that I can see. Certainly there some be some discussion
about the controversy over terminology, but simply adopting an alternate
term would be biased as well. The only other term in reasonably
widespread use is "late term abortion", but as you pointed out some of
these procedures do not actually occur in the last trimester, so can't
really fall under that heading. So I'd say keeping the term PBA with the
qualification that some abortion supporters object to the term is the best
solution.
There is a legitimate medical term for this procedure, which goes back to
before the
anti-choice movement politicized it: intact dilation and extraction. That
some people
haven't heard the term doesn't mean we can't use it.
What I think we should do is use the medical term, and note that some abortion
opponents prefer to call it by a recently-invented term that makes better
anti-abortion
propaganda.