This one is not funny, and I don't enjoy writing it.

It has to be said though. Jon Hurdle at the New York Times is a sick, twisted man. Let me state, for the record, that I'm not arguing the merits of the Gosnell case here. I'm pretty sure he has another judgment coming. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's a whole other discussion. My point is one of basic English.

Hurdle reported on the story of...

"Dr. Gosnell, who according to prosecutors killed fetuses that were alive after they were aborted."

Kick it around in your brain for a minute, take it from a few different angles, and... shit, I don't know. Whatever. Fetuses that were alive after they were aborted.

Hurdle is referring to babies who were born - alive. Being born alive means, by definition, that they weren't aborted. Where I come from, those babies are called babies, or newborns, or humans, or any of a number of other nouns. I left out the gratuitous descriptions of what happened because I'm not trying to have an emotional discussion here. You have probably heard a few details about the case, despite the efforts of some media to ignore it. The gruesome actions of the doctor speak for themselves. But if you're a reporter, if your job is to report the story, is this really an acceptable twist on the English language? I submit to you that it's not. Otherwise, every run-of-the-mill birth in this country yields nothing more than a fetus that was never aborted.

There are thousands of posts on this blog. You can read them. I typically word things in a way that supports my viewpoint, or sounds amusing to me, or emphasizes whatever aspect of a story I intend to emphasize. This is how the real world works when it comes to writing, and I'm no innocent bystander on that score. I get it. But shit, man. Some of this really has gone too far. This is not a matter of 'pro choice' or 'pro life' being used to put a happy spin on one's chosen viewpoint. This is something else. And it makes me sad to think that we have "news" stories written in this manner.