Jim Mason
1 min readJul 11, 2022

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Well said, Cristóbal.

As I see it, there is also a fundamental issue of language usage here over the meaning of the word "pregnancy". Anti-abortion advocates use that word in an outmoded binary way, assuming that a person is either "pregnant" or not, although we know that pregnancy is a process that begins with fertilization of an ovum by one or more sperm (or possibly even, though very rarely, by parthenogenesis).

It then usually goes on to involve implantation in a uterus, although that fails in the case of ectopic pregnancies, and then further development of the zygote into an embryo and then into a fetus. At many stages along the way things can go wrong that affect the health of the mother and/or the developing potential, but not yet independently living, human being.

Laws prohibiting medical termination of that process are just too crude to take into account the complexities of the process. Despite the old saying that "you can't be a little bit pregnant", one actually can be so.

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Jim Mason
Jim Mason

Written by Jim Mason

I study language, cognition, and humans as social animals. You can support me by joining Medium at https://jmason37-80878.medium.com/membership

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