Life at 8.3 weeks

Here is a picture of a little human being at 8.3 weeks. The head to rump length is about 2.3 mm. Already a heartbeat is observable on the screen-rendered ultrasonic scan in the form of a bright/dark a blip something akin to watching a photo-emission electron microscopy image of thermalized super-paramagnetic islands. The heartbeat measured here was about 175 bpm. The head, heart and leg ?(or tail at this stage) are all clearly visible. Some like to call this little one a fetus. Fetus is derived from the latin word `offspring' (Harper, Douglas. (2001). Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 2007-01-20.). We often invent euphemisms and distort the usage and instantiations words to suit own ends. For example the term pro-choice is a euphemism isn't it ? After all it's "a child not a choice", as a poster read during a pro-life protest in Cork, Ireland recently. The euphemisms have to be stacked on the side of those with the most to deny and cover up. Any attempt to define when human life begins must be such that it cannot be revised and pushed around arbitrarily. In view of the continuum that embryological science suggests fetal development to be, it is true and right that inception and conception are one.