[WikiEN-l] (no subject)

Wed Oct 29 19:10:01 UTC 2003

I wish to take the time to thank those who responded to my attempt at a
neutral replacement page for the current one dealing with the D&X abortion
procedure.  The responses have made the methods and purpose of Wikipedia much
clearer to me.

I was laboring under the false impression that the purpose of Wikipedia was
to present factual information in an encyclopedic form.  The answer I
received from Delerium/Mark makes it abundantly clear that I was mistaken in this
evaluation.  These two paragraphs sum up his point succintly.

>>In both these cases, the problem is that there is no entirely neutral
terminology.  Using strictly medical terms is considered biased by the
anti-abortion community, as they see it as an attempt to cast a moral issue as a
strictly sanitized medical issue; using non-medical terms is seen as similarly
biased by the pro-abortion community.  My preferred solution would be to use both
sets of terms interchangeably--both "womb" and "uterus" and both "birth
canal" and "vagina/cervix/vulva").  In particular I don't really see anything
wrong with "birth canal", and have seen it used in pro-abortion literature as
well as anti-abortion literature.

As for the term "Partial Birth Abortion" itself, there's no good solution to
that either that I can see.  Certainly there some be some discussion about
the controversy over terminology, but simply adopting an alternate term would
be biased as well.  The only other term in reasonably widespread use is "late
term abortion", but as you pointed out some of these procedures do not
actually occur in the last trimester, so can't really fall under that heading.  So
I'd say keeping the term PBA with the qualification that some abortion
supporters object to the term is the best solution.<<

The medical terms I suggested (which were also linked) **ARE** neutral and
are well understood by both the lay person and the medical professional.  Your
preferred choices are in fact **NOT** neutral terms but deliberately loaded
terms intended to subtly present a particular POV.

Furthermore the propaganda term "Partial Birth Abortion" is not a medical
term and ** HAS NO DEFINITION ** according to the rulings of a number of State
Supreme Courts, the US Supreme Court, the ACOG who are most qualified to
discuss abortion procedures, and the AMA representing in excess of 35,000 members
of the US medical profession (Dec. 2002).  It is neither a medical procedure
NOR a lay term for any abortion procedure because it has no unequivocal
description even in the current S3 bill.

So it has become obvious to me very quickly that the "edit" function on your
articles in Wikipedia is open to exactly the same type of "stacking the
deck" abuse that online internet polls are and thus the entries in Wilipedia are
less than useless if the purpose is to find reliable information.

Fred Bauder suggested I just jump in and edit liberally but this, I have
absolutely no doubt, would simply lead to a pissing contest between those who
want the propaganda retained and those interested in factual information. I
have neither the time nor the inclination to engage in such an exchange.

It is for these reasons that I will retain the answers I have recived to
this query as background and support of my position and will simply refuse in
the future to accept any citition from Wikipedia as a reference to a legitimate
authority but will put it in the same class as a letter to the editor in a
small local newspaper.

I appreciate the thought put into the responses by Jimmy Wales and Daniel
Mayer also.

Thank you all for your responses,

Eileen.

Cada niño un niño querido.
Chaque enfant un enfant voulu.
Jedes Kind ein gewünschtes Kind.
Cada criança uma criança querida
Ogni bambino un bambino desiderato.
Every child a wanted child.

http://www.eileene.cjb.net

PS - If anybody is interested in viewing the suggested D&X entry as I
revised it I will leave it temporarily at
http://eileen.undonet.com/Main/Wikipedia_Intact_dilation_and_extraction.html

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