While dialoguing with a friend on the topic of abortion, I was asked how I define abortion. After communicating my own definition of abortion, I thought it would be interesting to see how various dictionaries define it. Needless to say, I was amazed at how inaccurate and politically correct the definitions were. Here are a few:
Dictionary.com
Abortion:
- The removal of an embryo or fetus from the uterus in order to end a pregnancy.
- Any of various surgical methods for terminating a pregnancy, especially during the first six months.
Interestingly, there is no mention of the fate of the unborn baby. Instead, the focus is on the “pregnancy” and terminating that pregnancy.
The first six months? How is that relevant to the definition? If a child is killed in utero at seven months, that is also called an abortion.
Merriam Webster
Abortion:
- The termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus
Notice that while they do speak of the death of the unborn baby, the focus here is on the ending of the pregnancy. Abortion is defined as “the termination of a pregnancy.” According to this definition, the death of the unborn baby is the result of the abortion, not the subject or object of the abortion.
Collins English Dictionary
Abortion:
- An operation or other procedure to terminate pregnancy before the fetus is viable
- The premature termination of pregnancy by spontaneous or induced expulsion of a nonviable fetus from the uterus
Again, no mention of the fate of the unborn baby and the focus is on the fate of the “pregnancy.”
What does the viability of the fetus have to do with anything? There are late-term abortions in which the fetus is fully viable. What makes something an abortion is that the killing takes place in utero.
“Spontaneous” expulsion? We call that a miscarriage, not an abortion (yes, I am aware that hundreds of years ago the Latin word abortionem referred to both spontaneous and induced death of an unborn child, and that some still call a miscarriage a “spontaneous abortion,” but I think this is misleading in our day and age).
Stedman’s Medical Dictionary
Abortion
- The expulsion of an embryo or fetus before it is viable.
Once again, the irrelevant criterion of viability is mentioned.
American Heritage Science Dictionary
Abortion:
- Induced termination of pregnancy, involving destruction of the embryo or fetus.
Finally, someone has the guts to include the purpose and result of abortion in their definition. Abortion always ends with a dead baby. This is probably the best dictionary definition I have seen thus far, but I do not think it is the best definition.
Here is the definition I propose for abortion: Any purposeful act by a human agent that prematurely and artificially takes the life of a human being in utero.
What do you think of this definition? How would you change or improve it?
Thinking to Believe 
August 31, 2012 at 5:16 am
Jason,
The problem is that people would disagree that the fetus is a human being isn’t it? Hence the description being in terms of a pregnancy.
Perhaps changing “human being” to “potential person” ??
For my emotionally filled view, why not “The killing/destruction/murder of an unborn baby”? Accurate, but so emotionally charged, unlikely to enter a dictionary
As an extra point, why have you used “purposeful act”? surely it is possible for an abortion to occur accidentally?
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August 31, 2012 at 9:11 am
Scott,
I could change “human being” to something like “embryo or fetus,” but it would not make it any more biologically accurate since there is no biological question that the unborn is a human being. The change would just go to satisfy the scientifically ignorant. Unfortunately, that describes a lot of pro-choicers!
I would definitely not change it to “potential person” since that is not a biological term, and it is philosophically inaccurate.
I have used “purposeful act” because that is integral to abortion, similar to how “purposeful” is integral to the charge of murder. If a killing was not purposeful, we call it manslaughter or something like that. The same is true of abortion.
Jason
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August 31, 2012 at 10:36 am
The problem for the dictionarist is that what we call miscarriage the medical profession calls “spontaneous abortion”. In this case the word specifically relates to the act, irrespective of whether the fetus or child is alive or has died. More definitions might be be clearer. Doubtless, the sellers of dictionaries are trying to find a way not to offend, though I think their efforts have failed. Since most of the dictionaries that we commonly use are abridged, ti is possible that more satisfactory definitions are found in an unabridged dictionary, though for topics like this most dictionaries defer to medical sources which tend to be more clinical and leave moral distinctions on the sidelines.
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September 4, 2012 at 3:17 pm
Don,
Yes, miscarriages are also defined as “spontaneous abortion.” I do not think this term should be preferred to miscarriage, however. Given the state of the abortion debate today, I think it is just as unhelpful to call a miscarriage a spontaneous abortion as it is to call killing a newborn when every part of its body is outside the womb except for its head, a partial birth abortion. That’s not an abortion. That’s infanticide. And a spontaneous abortion is better referred to as a miscarriage.
Jason
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September 18, 2012 at 2:34 pm
Philosopher Christopher Kaczor defines abortion as “the intentional killing of a human fetus.”
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January 29, 2019 at 12:15 pm
That would include a c section where the baby died.
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