Have you noticed that network news now refers to a pregnant woman as

[no_hypocrisy]

"a woman and her unborn child"? Besides the criminal stories like Laci Peterson.

I just saw a news story on "Today" where rescuers saved a woman trapped in a pick-up truck in a flood and the story referred to her as I noted above.

This isn't the first time I've heard this. I think this is trying to get the American public to regard abortion as murder by generally portraying pregnant women as actually two distinct people, not a woman with a zygote, an embryo, or a fetus. And this re-programming of the issue will incrementally erode public support for a woman's right to choose.

Although the media is controlled by corporate interests, I believe it still responds to some degree to public pressure. Please complain, get your friends and family to complain about this, and often.

[liberalnurse]

1. This shit has got to stop!

[salvorhardin]

2. I gave up on the media

when even Bill Gates managed to co-opt language for his own purposes back around 1995 (I can't remember the exact date, it was during the anti-trust trial) and the media blissfully played along like a little puppy.

Remember how all of a sudden companies like Microsoft needed "to be free to innovate"? Microsoft was "innovating new ideas", companies needed to "innovate more" if they were to compete in the new business environment...

Gates may have been the one to put it out there, but was there any excuse for the media to take it and run with it?

[flordehinojos]

3. This also sounds Victorian-ish when it was improper and almost sinful to

use the word pregnant. it had something to do with the repressed sexuality of the Victorian era.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. This isn't talking about how you couldn't say "pregnant" on "I Love Lucy"

in the 50's.

This is about mass mind control where the media keeps repeating that pregnant women are two distinct people from Day One. Therefore when harm comes to the subordinate "person", i.e., the "unborn child", it's bad. Bad like even if the "mother" doesn't want to be a mother. Making her a murderer if she opts for an abortion in the future.

In your premise, the media would say that the woman was "expecting", etc., or find another word for pregnant. My contention is the stress on the "unborn child" status.

[flordehinojos]

6. I get your point now. Than you for making it clear.

A good point which begs the question, is the corporate media also bowing to the Christian Right? Apparantly so. Yet, once I heard a ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST say that the only problem he had with the PRO-LIFERS is that they always talked about the unborn child but were never there with food and lodging for the unwanted but born children.
He said that really presented a moral dilemma for him.

[fudge stripe cookays]

7. Please remind any clergy you know....

that CLERGY were initially the ones, in the 50s and 60s who HELPED women find doctors to perform abortions, since they wre the ones seeing women with 9 and 10 mouths to feed who could not afford another child, they saw husbands abusing wives who were pregnant (and they didn't want the child), or they knew a woman's life was in danger from a birth.

Clergy used to care about the women in their flock. Now these women are only seen as mindless useless means to obtain more babies to indoctrinate. It's only the babies that anyone cares about.

FSC

[glarius]

5. They ALWAYS refer to Laci and Connor

CNN always refers to the name he would have been given when he is mentioned. I have never before heard an unborn child refered to by name as they do with this one constantly....