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.
