Haha! The hilarity that ensues when language is manipulated for political purposes!

Why do they do it? 'Cause "fetuskiller" doesn't sting so much.

Congratulations! The Radical Right Now Controls Your Body!

We've occasionally consulted WebMD.com for information on health and medicine, but imagine our shock when we learned that it had been hijacked--wittingly or unwittingly, we know not--by the radical right!

A page called "Your Pregnancy Week by Week: Weeks 9-12" is chock full of antichoice propaganda. "By the end of the third month," it outrageously claims, "your baby is fully formed. Your baby has arms, hands, fingers, feet and toes and can open and close its fists and mouth."

They mean the third month of pregnancy, not the third month after the kid is born. That's right, what they're talking about isn't a baby at all but a fetus. In case the antichoice fanatics have you flummoxed, the following definitions are helpful:

fetus: a clump of tissue.

baby: one of those little--sorry, vertically challenged--persons that the village raises while his or her mother pursues a fulfilling career.

But the WebMD folks are either hopelessly confused or part of a sinister plot against reproductive rights. Look what it says under Week 10:

Congratulations! Your baby is now officially called a "fetus."

This is a contradiction in terms, a nonsensical statement. It's like saying, "Congratulations! Your accountant is now officially called a 'tumor.' " But of course the radical right wants to propagate the myth that a fetus is somehow "human" so as to further its agenda of heteronormative white male supremacy.

Are the folks at WebMD co-conspirators in this effort or mere dupes? If the guys at the National Organization for Women would get off the dime and file a RICO action, maybe we'd find out.
(Thanks to James Taranto and Best of the Web Today for the heads up.)