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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: The Philosopher who wrote (11755)	4/18/2001 12:47:26 AM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Oh, look, in your very presentation of your proposition, you referred to a cell cluster as a "person." Word use is so interesting. If a thrilled prospective mother "commonly, normally" and sentimentally calls something in advance what she excitedly anticipates it becoming, does that way of referring to it make it that entity literally? We could make a list of things people refer to as one thing or another. Let's not. Women who plan and hope for a pregnancy are happy when the test is positive, and it makes them feel happy (and, unconsciously, doing so in front of the male whose support they now need may be quite smart of them) to refer from the first moment to a microscopic entity as "my baby," or "our baby." Charming, exciting, sentimental, and perfectly understandable-- even though not literally accurate. And what does literal accuracy matter? It's a happy-making conceit. Christopher, sentimental ovulating women have, with tender feeling and intuitive conviction, used the words "our baby" to their male partner while they were both still breathing hard, for heaven's sake-- before any sperm even reached an ovum. What does that prove? Women who are aghast at having an egg fertilized and commencing gestation inside of them don't normally and commonly and immediately think and speak of the cells or embryo as "my baby," despite the pervasive sentimental propaganda, in which you participate, encouraging them to do so. (It's my impression, though, that both joyous and despairing women begin to think "baby" at quickening. That's what the Church thought, too, until relatively recently in its history. St. Thomas Aquinas, too.) Some sophistry going on here, Christopher. Words are powerful emotionally, but they aren't always literally true simply because they are uttered.