Don’t be pedantic with a pregnant person who is trying to reach live birth and raise the child about when it’s ok to say “child.” There’s nothing paradoxical about it in that situation. The time to consider being pedantic is when debating with a pro-forced-birth authoritarian who thinks they should have a say in someone else’s reproductive choices. And even then, the person who needs to have an abortion at 20 weeks isn’t going to think they’re discarding a fetus, they’re going to think they’re losing a child they wanted. At 20 weeks it’s about the size of a banana (so it’s not going to just idly discharge along with the uterine lining like it’s a zygote that just didn’t implant) and has a brain, a nervous system, a hardening skeleton, a digestive system, a functioning pancreas, etc… It’s very much their child (and their choice).
Don’t be pedantic with a pregnant person who is trying to reach live birth and raise the child about when it’s ok to say “child.” There’s nothing paradoxical about it in that situation. The time to consider being pedantic is when debating with a pro-forced-birth authoritarian who thinks they should have a say in someone else’s reproductive choices. And even then, the person who needs to have an abortion at 20 weeks isn’t going to think they’re discarding a fetus, they’re going to think they’re losing a child they wanted. At 20 weeks it’s about the size of a banana (so it’s not going to just idly discharge along with the uterine lining like it’s a zygote that just didn’t implant) and has a brain, a nervous system, a hardening skeleton, a digestive system, a functioning pancreas, etc… It’s very much their child (and their choice).