Today, the House Committee on State Affairs will hear arguments regarding House Bill 708, an anti-Life measure that would strike the term “unborn child” from all state laws and the informed consent materials given to pregnant women before an abortion. Bill sponsor Jessica Farrar (D-Houston) intends to replace “unborn child” with the term “fetus.”
“Fetus” is a scientifically accurate term to describe preborn children at a certain stage of their development; the term is identical in meaning to “unborn child.” But the abortion lobby and anti-Life legislators like Farrar have a vested interest in stopping any and all public acknowledgments of the humanity of the preborn. Therefore, they and the abortion lobby have insisted for decades that preborn children be referred to by the Latin, “fetus,” instead of the word’s English translation. Likewise, the abortion industry refers to preborn children as “pregnancies,” “products of conception,” and “tissue,” an intentional effort to muddle the reality of children in utero. This semantics game is really the abortion lobby’s only remaining effective means of dehumanizing the preborn.
Fortunately, the majority of legislators see through the abortion lobby’s thinly-veiled attempt to regain the ground they have lost in the last few legislative sessions. Pro-Life lawmakers proudly displayed their own “former fetus” status in a highly-publicized solidarity campaign at the Capitol last month. Several legislators affixed former fetus signs on their doors and nameplates in the state capitol, demonstrating their commitment to protect unborn children and pregnant women. The majority of legislators are unlikely to support HB 708 since many of them voted for HB 15 in 2003, Texas law on informed consent before an abortion that included the materials that Farrar wants to change.