The New York Times is suddenly using the term ‘unborn child.’ The question is, why?
The New York Times published a piece this past week titled, “A New Fear for Undocumented Women: Will My Unborn Child Be a Citizen?”
It’s a response to a move President Trump made on his first day in office when he issued an order seeking to end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants. Lawsuits have already been filed against the controversial order, and a judge has issued a temporary injunction.
Regardless of the point of the article, it was the Times’ use of humanizing language that really got people’s attention.
Changing the language when it fits the narrative
The Times has a history of using dehumanizing language such as “fetus” and “embryo” when reporting about abortion. While these are scientifically accurate terms, they are often used by the media with the intent to muffle any potential compassion that adults naturally feel towards preborn children — the most vulnerable among us.
In 2022, the Times argued that abortion should be allowed when “the fetus is unlikely to survive.” Replace “fetus” with “child” or “unborn/preborn baby” and it becomes obvious what a difference language makes. If it had argued instead that a “child’s” life should be ended because doctors determined he had a disability or illness, it would have appeared to many readers as a repulsive lack of compassion and respect.
The Times also argued in 2022 that calling a ‘fetus’ a “child” could lead to changes in child abuse laws, in which women might be penalized for undergoing medical procedures “that harm a fertilized egg….” However, dealing with a side effect of medication is not the same as intentionally causing harm, suffering, or even death — as induced abortion does.
The media outlet also denounced a potential law that would “grant fetuses the same legal rights and protections as any person” — as if the expectation that all humans are afforded the same human rights is somehow outlandish. The Times went as far as to complain about Georgia allowing both tax credits for parents and child support for single parents to kick in during pregnancy.
“The laws also open up questions well beyond abortion, about immigration and who is entitled to public benefits,” it argued. It also said, “…under fetal personhood, Georgia would be required to pay public benefits to the fetus of an immigrant woman, even as it now denies those benefits to her, because any person born in the United States becomes a citizen” — alluding to the fact that the person inside the womb is the same person outside the womb, and — if not intentionally killed by abortion — will in all likelihood be born a U.S. citizen and live out her full life.
The right to citizenship, but not the right to be born?
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In switching up its language, the Times is arguing in favor of the right to citizenship for children for whom they wouldn’t argue in favor of the right to life.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, nine states plus D.C. currently have no gestational restrictions on abortion — meaning some of the children the Times is so concerned about when it comes to citizenship are being targeted in the womb for death — right up to the moment before they are born. What good is citizenship if your government approves your death?
In fact, in 2019, the Times published a negative-leaning piece on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, in which it argued that abortion survivors are rare, and therefore, don’t need protection.
In Minnesota, over 20 infants survived abortions between 2015 and 2021, though the state will now no longer report on abortion survivors, and revoked protections requiring that they receive lifesaving care. Still, another report found 100 abortion survivors across just five states in 10 years.
In its article, the Times failed to mention any living abortion survivors by name (like Claire Culwell and Josiah Presley), relay the statistics on abortion survivors, or stand up for the right of those children to receive life-saving healthcare.
Now, it properly humanizes preborn children (and women!) to argue for an issue it believes requires such humanization.
The pattern emerges: humanize preborn humans when there’s an issue you want people to feel compassion towards; dehumanize them when you want them to believe it’s none of their business, because it’s just a mindless ‘clump of cells’ at risk.
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