FETUS OR CHILD

When a fetus becomes a child
National Post  Sat 18 Dec 2004  
Page: A26  
By Susan Martinuk

Having once been a wee unborn child myself, I feel compelled to comment on a week of extraordinary media coverage in the Scott Peterson murder case.

The world's most famous fertilizer salesman was sentenced to death by a California jury for killing his eight-month pregnant wife, Laci, and their unborn child. His formal sentence will be announced in February, and the judge does have some discretion to overturn the jury's death verdict in favour of a life-long sentence with no chance of parole. Either way, legal strategists estimate it could take up to 20 years for Peterson's lawyers to exhaust their legal appeals, which means he will have a nice long time to linger at San Quentin State Prison, overlooking the very site where his murdered wife's body was found. Perhaps, that in and of itself, is justice enough.

To say that the case has been sensationalized by the media is an understatement. For two years, it has dominated tabloid covers and provided virtually inescapable television viewing. Almost like a horrific car wreck, the public doesn't seem able to turn away.

This fixation may be due to the fact that he murdered his wife, or that he did it on Christmas Eve, or that it was totally unexpected because he was seen as a loving husband who was supposedly the antithesis of a calculating murderer. Perhaps it is the adultery angle -- he apparently killed her to pursue "the other woman," and he continued this affair throughout the period following Laci's disappearance, even while publicly claiming that he was frantically trying to locate her. (A lame explanation that is highly reminiscent of O.J.'s desperate search for his wife's killers on golf courses across America).

But far surpassing all of the above tantalizing issues is that his wife was eight-months pregnant and the media unashamedly both acknowledged and promoted this as a key fact in their coverage. The very same media that thrives on dissecting pro-lifers and their belief that the unborn are human suddenly began to treat the unborn as ... human.

This is a remarkable shift and there were few exceptions. News reports consistently referred to the humanity of Peterson's dead child, referring to the victims as his "wife and child," as "Laci and her baby," or as his "unborn son." Carrying the personalization of the unborn still further, the media specifically referred to him as "Conner," the name his parents had planned to bestow on him.

These are small words on a big page. But they are highly significant when viewed in contrast to the commonly-used term, fetus, and when the perception created by the words "son" or "child" is juxtaposed with the media's commonly portrayed perception -- that the unborn are mere bits of tissue and quite expendable based on the whims of humankind.

This transformation, however temporarily and case-specific it may be, accurately reflected the remarks of key individuals in the trial. The prosecuting D.A. told jurors Peterson "left his son to be found as trash." Jurors stated that the imposition of the death penalty was driven, in part, by the idea that Peterson had taken the life of his own son, saying, he "was Laci's husband, Conner's daddy, the one person that should've protected them."

Such remarks are rarely given much of a media profile. But suddenly the media appear to be haunted by the idea that a human life was interrupted before it was able to fully live. Suddenly it had no need to use the usual euphemisms or dispassionate phrases that deny or disguise the humanity of the unborn and have largely become the politically correct terms for the unborn.

Granted, this shift is undoubtedly the product of a media strategy to use words that enhance the emotional impact of the murders. But the truth is that the proper terminology for referring to the unborn has, for the past two years, been burned into the memory and conscience of a nation. There, it can -- and will -- resurface whenever the media returns to smokescreen words like "fetus" to disguise the inherent moral wrong of abortion.

Beyond the media's change of heart, this case has presented the undeniable irony that, according to California law, Laci Peterson herself could have legally killed her own child and called it an abortion. If she had been the one to take Conner's life under the guise of "removing the products of conception," she would have been cheered for exercising her reproductive freedom and publicly celebrated in a parade as she wore a T-shirt proclaiming, "I had an abortion." (Planned Parenthood's current version of a fashion statement).

The media have yet to acknowledge that angle of this story. But the story has expressed the truism that all women who have had a baby inherently know. Inside the womb lies a child, not a fetus and, for once, the media has properly conveyed that which is rarely acknowledged.