Is it a Child?

There are some things about our culture that really bother me. For example how we talk about "equal rights" for everyone and yet deny them to the most innocent and vulnerable or how people are always talking about individuality and "being yourself" and yet if you fail to conform to the ideologies of today your are labeled as "old-fashioned" or "religious fanatics". Among all these things one issue in particular annoys me. That is the practice of referring to babies in the womb as "it". People say things like "It's a boy" or "how is it doing", "Did you see it yet". Would you ever refer to someone as "it"? When inquiring about someone would you say" How has it been feeling"? This is just one of the many ways we dehumanize, so to speak, the unborn child. Just because we can not see them, and many times their gender is unknown makes them no less human then you or I.
When speaking about unborn human life, then, please do not say it. Say rather "How is the baby"? You can also use terms such as little one or just plain child, after all a baby is a child. Human beings are profoundly influenced by language. It is our way of making sense of the world and communicating and transmitting our ideas to others. The choice of words plays a very important role in correctly transmitting our opinions. When conducting poles and surveys researchers play close attention to the choice of words used, often so they are more likely to get the results they desire. Let us then always choose our words carefully and choose ones which will portray the truth, that all human life is sacred and that unborn babies are living human beings.