source?

[David Bergdahl]

When my first wife had a miscarriage in 1966 the doctor referred to it as an
abortion.  I remember he prescribed birth-control pills afterward to delay
pregnancy for a period of 12-18 months and once, in a pharmacy, we used the
term and got a rise out of other customers.  The drug store was in a middle
class area where many faculty lived, adjacent to the Syracuse Univ campus,
so I don't think social class played into it.

I think that at the time doctors were trying to be frank with patients, esp.
when identifying competing diagnoses.  Three years later a colleague here in
Ohio was told that his newborn son's enlarged testees could indicate
dwarfism, unnecessarily frightening the parents.

On 4/25/06, David Bowie <db.list at pmpkn.net> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       David Bowie <db.list at PMPKN.NET>
> Subject:      Re: source?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From:    "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
>
> >         And I was equally surprised when I read this (at
> > http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003034.html, as you
> > note) that Roger Shuy seemed to characterize this as an example of
> > different words for working class patients.  I'm perfectly well aware
> > that physicians use "abortion" to refer to both spontaneous abortions
> > (miscarriages) and induced abortions, but I think I would have given the
> > same answer the patient gave, unless it was clear that both kinds of
> > abortions were intended.  In its ordinary lay meaning, "abortion" refers
> > only to an induced abortion.
>
> Just to give support to the idea that this is*n't* a working- vs.
> professional-class thing, Jeanne and i, as an engineer and a professor
> with graduate degrees and therefore presumably professional-class,
> wouldn't describe  the miscarriage she experienced some years ago as an
> "abortion" unless the adjective "spontaneous" were attached to it. We're
> both quite aware that "abortion" as a technical term means any early
> cessation of pregnancy, but we wouldn't use it that way, presumably
> because of the cultural baggage attached to the word "abortion", which
> forces unmodified abortion to be automatically elective.
>
> I think there *might* be a working- vs. professional-class distinction
> in the interpretation of the phrase "spontaneous abortion", but i have
> no data beyond wild speculation on that--it's worth looking into.
>
> In any forms she's filled out lately that have asked about this,
> apparently, she gets asked two separate things: how many times she's
> been pregnant, and how many times she's given birth. Since it's two
> different numbers for her, her doctors have then asked whether the extra
> pregnancy was a miscarriage or an (unmodified) abortion.
>
> I don't know where stillbirths would fit into this, though.
>
> --
> David Bowie                                         http://pmpkn.net/lx
>      Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
>      house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
>      chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org