Panda Baby | thebereancall.org

TBC Staff

AP: Unborn Panda "Baby," But with Human Unborn Child a "Fetus"

"Life Begins at Conception -- If You're a Panda," James Taranto noted Wednesday, in the OpinionJournal.com's "Best of the Web" column, in contrasting how August 3 AP dispatches described the offspring of a panda versus a brain-dead woman who was kept on life support until the entity inside her could survive outside the womb. One AP story referred to how "a 13-year-old giant panda gave birth to a cub at San Diego Zoo, but a second baby died in the womb, officials said Wednesday." Another dispatch cited how "a cancer-ravaged woman robbed of consciousness by a stroke has given birth after being kept on life support for three months to give her fetus extra time to develop." Subsequently, however, the AP updated its stories so that the terms were reversed. The "second baby" panda became the "second fetus" and the woman's "fetus" became "the child she was carrying" (http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2005/cyb20050805.asp#2).