"made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally"
adjl posted...
The fact that you're calling them "loaded words" illustrates that specifying that they're fetuses creates distance between that state and what they will become. The only difference between a fetus and an infant is time. It's important to make the distinction in a medical context, for obvious reasons, but for laypeople, using "kid" as an informal blanket term and relying on context to indicate that it's an unborn child doesn't actually take away any important semantic information. Steering clear of such colloquialisms doesn't deny that abortion is taking a life, but it is pretty flagrantly trying to avoid the discomfort of talking about killing kids.
Basically, I don't feel that "technically it's not a baby yet" is a good response to "you're killing babies!" You don't shut down a guilt trip by pointing out that they got their terminology wrong, you shut it down by facing exactly what they're saying and not feeling guilty about it.
Actually it's the shitty appeal to emotion fallacy when they use those loaded words. That's why it's better to avoid them entirely. ---