Since I"ve been told that I'm incapable of doing my own thinking, I've decided to just let dictionaries do all my thinking. It's going to take some careful planning, but maybe I can make it work. I'll start with this:
We see those prochoice revisionist claims that "a fetus is not a baby" all the time. Usually, I respond with a definition of "baby" that includes the word "fetus" as evidence that they are wrong. And there's a reason why that's the easiest evidence to find: technical terms are not commonly defined with terms of the vernacular.
A good example is the word "appendage". The majority of online sources will say things like "a part of the body that projects beyond the trunk", or something to that effect, but only a very few of them will actually say something like "an arm or a leg", even though we all know that those ARE appendages. So it is also with the technical term "fetus", a majority of sources do not define it in vernacular terms. Also, "fetus" is a general term for the young of any animal that goes through the gestation process, not just we humans. And so a prochoicer will sometimes quote a definition of "fetus" that doesn't use the word "baby" as "proof" of their idiotic claim.
However, with a bit of looking, I have found some impressive sources that do define "fetus" using the vernacular term "baby":
The Baby Center (UK):
fetus: The name given to a growing
baby after eight weeks of development; before eight weeks, the developing baby is called an embryo.
http://www.babycentre.co.uk/glossary/F.htm
l
AllWords.com
fetus noun
1. (embryology) An unborn or unhatched vertebrate showing signs of the mature animal.
2. (embryology) An unborn
baby after the 7th week of gestation.
http://www.allwords.com/ (and plug in the word "fetus")
And here's the BEST one yet:
from WordNet 3.0 Vocabulary Helper:
Hyponyms of noun fetus 1 sense of fetus
Sense 1
fetus, foetus -- (an unborn or unhatched vertebrate in the later stages of development showing the main recognizable features of the mature animal)
* monster, teras -- ((medicine) a grossly malformed and usually nonviable fetus)
* abortus -- (a human fetus whose weight is less than 0.5 kilogram when removed or expelled from the mother's body)
*
baby -- (an unborn child; a human fetus; ``I felt healthy and very feminine carrying the baby"; "it was great to feel my baby moving about inside'' )
http://poets.notredame.ac.jp/cgi-bin/wn (and plug in the word "fetus")
Why do I say it's the "best"? Well, a look at the word "hyponym" will tell you why:
hy.po.nym Pronunciation: (h?'pu-nim), [key]
- n. Ling.
a term that denotes a subcategory of a more general class: "Chair" and "table" are hyponyms of "furniture." Cf. superordinate (def. 4).
http://www.infoplease.com/dictionary/hypon
ym
How clear is that? And if that's not enough, here's something else:
American Heritage Dictionary:
http://www.bartleby.com/61/
Unborn : ADJECTIVE : 1. Not yet born: “an
unborn child .”
Information Please:
http://www.infoplease.com/ Unborn :
Pronunciation: (un-bôrn') -adj. 2. not yet delivered; still existing in the mother's womb: an
unborn baby .