One brief Twitter exchange between a New York Times contributor and a pro-life radio host became a story of its own.
The pro-life radio host copied and pasted the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of the word fetus.
But the contributor could have responded with the second definition of the word fetus from the “Medical Dictionary for the Health Professions and Nursing” that states: Fetus—in humans, the product of conception from the end of the eighth week to the moment of birth.
The pro-life radio host used the definition that emphasized the humanity of the fetus to justify his moral stance against abortion, but the NYT-contributor used the definition that dehumanized the fetus, which creates moral ambiguity, in order to justify her pro-choice position.
In the abortion example the moral ambiguity is derived from the difference between the medical and non-medical definition of the term fetus.
