I realize that it is reasonable to call the pre-born babies, and even Planned Parenthood employees have been caught using that term and in an old advertisement they noted that “abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun.”

But I prefer to use the term children when explaining what abortion does — i.e., it kills children.  Why?  Because it is more precise and it baits the pro-aborts into denying what the dictionary clearly says (even if they don’t realize it yet).  Pro-aborts — especially those from the “Christian” Left — usually balk at that term.  Those ghouls are far more extreme than the average “pro-choice” person, as the former insist that life begins at the first breath and concludes that you can kill a child at any time until she is 100% out of her mother.  So they hate it when you refer to the unborn as children and they pretend that the word is being misused.

But what do the nice folks at Dictionary.com have to say about the term children?  Is it legitimate to use that to describe the unborn?  Yep.  Just because it isn’t the first use of the word doesn’t mean it isn’t accurate.

British Dictionary definitions for child

3. an unborn baby related prefix paedo-

4. with child, another term for pregnant

Word Origin and History for child

Old English cild “fetus, infant, unborn or newly born person,” from Proto-Germanic *kiltham (cf. Gothic kilþei “womb,” inkilþo “pregnant;” Danishkuld “children of the same marriage;” Old Swedish kulder “litter;” Old English cildhama “womb,” lit. “child-home”); no certain cognates outside Germanic. “App[arently] originally always used in relation to the mother as the ‘fruit of the womb'” [Buck]. Also in late Old English, “a youth of gentle birth” (archaic, usually written childe). In 16c.-17c. especially “girl child.”

I’ve always noted the scientific fact that the unborn are human beings from fertilization. Check out any mainstream embryology textbook.  When pro-aborts say it is “just” a fetus (or embryo, etc.) I note that the fetus in question is a human being at a particular stage of development: Human embryo ==> human fetus ==> human baby ==> human toddler ==> etc.  Always human and always worthy of protection.  But going straight to calling them children is both accurate and effective.

So please use children as often as possible when describing what abortion does.  It has great rhetorical force, it baits pro-aborts into having to agree with the term or showing how they have to disagree with the dictionary to make their case, and it helps demolish the anti-science, anti-God “just a fetus” arguments.