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To: BagCamAddict
"...my personal definition: The point at which the baby can survive outside the womb."

What age might that be?

So, by that logic... if a "fetus" comes out of the womb "alive" but dies later... does not survive, it was never a baby? How long does the fetus have to survive out of the womb? One second? One minute? One year? What if the fetus could have survived, but no one cared for it?

...not looking to pick a fight, just trying to understand this kind of thinking.

jw

54 posted on 06/28/2006 2:02:46 PM PDT by JWinNC (www.anailinhisplace.net)
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To: JWinNC
Your first question:

I don't know, because I don't follow the current medical abilities.

Obviously a "pre-birth human"** can't live outside the womb when it's 2 months old (7-months pre-birth).... But a 7.5-month "pre-birth human" can often live outside the womb. I believe I've heard of babies being born 4 months premature and surviving. So that means they can survive at 5-months gestation.

But at what point, between 2-months and 5-months of gestation, babies can live outside the womb, I don't know.

(** I'm calling it a "pre-birth human" because later posts responding to mine challenged my use of the word "fetus" -- even though I had CLEARLY used quotations around the word, and even though I had CLEARLY stated what definition I was using in MY sentence.)

Your second question:

Well, I disagree with your premise that you can jump from my statement to your statement. But like you said, you're not looking to pick a fight. Neither am I. So let me try to be as clear as I can without confusing things even more:

I made a statement about one specific thing: my PERSONAL definition of the difference between a "fetus" and a "baby". My definition has nothing to do with the subsequent death, at any point in time, of that baby. We all die at some point, and that doesn't mean we were never babies. Right?

My definition -- I reiterate, MY definition -- was WHETHER or not a baby COULD live outside the womb, not IF it lives, or for how long. So if a baby dies 5 minutes after being born, then a baby died, not a "fetus." It may have died of a heart defect, but that doesn't make it any less of a baby. That same baby might just as well have lived for 2 years before that heart defect killed it. Or 20 years. Or 80 years. The point is it could have lived outside the womb (if it had been healthy in the first place).

I hope I've made sense here, but if not, tell me where I don't make sense and I'll try it again.
134 posted on 06/28/2006 9:45:00 PM PDT by BagCamAddict (Prayers for the victims - human and animal - of Katrina and Rita)
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