Monday, March 31, 2008

What the heck is an apparent fetus?

Apparent Fetus Discovered in Bathroom of NYC Flight

FBI Special Agent Shauna Dunlap said that while the plane was being cleaned about an hour after the plane landed Sunday, the cleaning crew found the apparent fetus. The medical examiner's office will do an autopsy to determine if it was viable.


This sounds like the question is, "Was this a miscarried/aborted fetus or a premature infant?"

Reminds me of the moment -- was it in "Jaws" or a Mad Magazine spoof of "Jaws"? -- in which somebody is looking for someone to consult about "the alleged shark". He's told "The alleged shark bit off his alleged head. Also his alleged arms and legs."

5 comments:

Leslie said...

AND FROM THIS FASCINATING ARTICLE -
"Anti-Fetal Rhetoric: America's Best-Loved Hate Speech

We find this little gem:

"In his classic essay "Politics and the English Language, " George Orwell warned about the destruction of our minds and our culture by euphemisms and slogans. The tyrannical, thought-stifling world depicted in Orwell's novel 1984 was a place of mendacious rhetoric where the heresy of heresies was to speak plainly. The first and most basic defense against today's totalitarian terminology aimed at unborn humans is likewise plain speaking.

Plain speaking must challenge the entrenched false rhetoric on two fronts. (1) The derisive expressions must be exposed as an outrageous and insidious brand of hate speech concocted to further the pro-abortion agenda by inducing in pregnant women fear of and loathing for their preborn offspring. (2) The disparaging designations need to be discredited by documenting how closely they echo the most extreme forms of murderous name-calling in the annals of humanity."

POSTED BY LESLIE AT 9:26 PM 0 COMMENTS

Anonymous said...

It would be shoddy journalism to declare the apparent fetus as an absolute anything until it had been examined don't you think?

Christina Dunigan said...

"apparently stillborn infant" might have been more appropriate. Then if they discovered that it was indeed just a worthless blob of undifferentiated tissue, they could clarify.

L. said...

Apparent fetuses are not always fetuses:

http://www.newschannel5.tv/News/Other/973889/Fetus-Misidentified

Sometimes they are worthless blobs of decomposing citrus! :)

Christina Dunigan said...

Yeah, there was that ... Some people need their eyes examined.