Life term-inated

When I heard the verdict come down today live on cable tv news in the Bobby Cutts trial, I thought it was very interesting that the jury found him guilty “of killing two or more persons in violation of”…..whatever the code of law.

For 35 years now, since Roe vs. Wade to this day, the recognition of life in the womb as a separate human person has been at the center of the great battle of our time. Oddly, the media have been just about fully complicit in trying to re-define the limits of ‘personhood’ by changing the terminology that communicates information about people.

Take this one news item, for example. In the headline, the double murder included a “girlfriend” and a “fetus”. Though media have been doing this for a while now, it’s still jarring to hear the baby referred to as a “fetus”. But then, in the lead, it’s a “child”.

A former police officer who tearfully told jurors he accidentally killed his pregnant lover was convicted Friday of murdering her and their unborn child.

But then, by the third paragraph, it’s a “fetus” again.

Cutts, 30, was convicted of aggravated murder in the death of the nearly full-term female fetus, which carries the possible death penalty.

Doesn’t that jar your sensibilities? “Nearly full-term female fetus”? As if we can arbitrarily assign legitimacy to when a baby ‘becomes’ a baby. Seriously.

Then, there’s this line about the defense attorney’s request for a mistrial because of the different verdicts on different counts:

Brown rejected the request, saying the allegations involved separate individuals: Davis and the fetus.

Now that’s really jarring, because it at once recognizes the two “separate individuals” while still using the more de-personalizing term of “fetus”.

Then there’s this ABC News story.

A former Ohio police officer was convicted of murder today for killing his pregnant lover and her unborn baby.

ABC News is honest enough to report that this was a double murder, of a woman and her unborn baby.

After deliberating for more than two days, a jury in Canton, Ohio, found Bobby Cutts Jr. guilty of murder in the death of Jessie Davis and aggravated murder for the death of her unborn child, apparently rejecting Cutts’ claim that he accidentally killed Davis during an argument June 14. Cutts, who sat stone-faced while the judge read the verdict, faces a possible death sentence for killing Davis’ baby.

In those two sentences, ABC News declared that this was an “unborn child” and a “baby”, which we’ve always known as true. After media style book ‘cleansing’ in recent years changed the terminology around, this example of clarity in objective reporting is important to note and appreciate.

Good for ABC. Thanks for honest journalism.