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February 15, 2005
Fetus or Baby?
Yesterday on CNN I saw this AP story
Pregnant woman: 'Maternal instinct' helped kill attacker.
Katherine Smith, 22, died Thursday after luring Brady to her apartment to pick up a package supposedly delivered to the wrong address. When Smith pulled out a knife and attacked the pregnant woman, Brady fought back, striking Smith on the head with an ash tray and stabbing her three times with her own knife, police said.
The attacker was trying to steal her baby. Good for her! The story reminds me of the other incidents of women trying to steal babies from women while they are still pregnant that have happened in the past several years.
It really makes me wonder if this is a new phenomenon, and if it is, is it just a coincidence, or is there some reason? Babies being stolen, after all, is not a new thing. After all, it even happens in the Bible. But cutting them out of a pregnant woman? Now that’s weird.
What really caught my eye, was at the end of the article:
In 2003, a woman was shot to death in Oklahoma, allegedly by another woman who then pretended the 6-month-old fetus was her child. That fetus died.I really started wondering about the reference to child as a fetus.
I did some more checking around about the story. It appears that what happened is that Effie Goodson shot Carolyn Simpson and cut the child from her body. The next day she showed up at a hospital with a dead child. There are no details as to whether the doctors were able to determine if the child had lived past the time its mother had died.
It certainly seems logical to assume that it had, though, since if it hadn’t, you’d think Goodson would have either left it there with the mother, or taken it to the hospital earlier. Also, considering the fact that the pregnancy was in the sixth month, it seems logical to assume that the child would be able to survive for at least a few minutes after being taken from the womb, assuming of course that it was taken out early enough. However, it also seems logical to assume that Goodson had some mental problems; so assigning logic to her is probably not a particularly robust method.
However, even if the child didn’t survive outside of the womb, I still don’t think calling it a fetus is correct. For instance, the difference between a miscarriage and a stillbirth is that a miscarriage occurs before 20 weeks of gestation (4.5 months), and a stillbirth occurs after that time. However, stillborn babies are generally referred to as babies, even though they can die well before they are born.
I note that in reference to the Scott Peterson case, the child is referred to as both a fetus and a baby. That child was full term, but did not ever survive outside of the womb.
Something tells me, though, that the terminology in these cases would have been quite different 40 years ago.
(Gosh this a gruesome topic.)
Posted by illuminaria at February 15, 2005 02:36 PM