A lot has been made of a comment by Dawn Johnsen, Obama's nominee to head the Office of Legal Counsel, in her Supreme Court amicus brief for Webster v. Reproductive Health Services:
“The woman is constantly aware for nine months that her body is not wholly her own: the state has conscripted her body for its own ends. Thus, abortion restrictions ‘reduce pregnant women to no more than fetal containers.’”
Of course every radical prolifer immediately gasped and said, "How dare you call my mom a fetal container?!", proving that a whole lot of people don't get the concept of context.
In the interests of increasing the general knowledge in the world, here's a little context.
I work with a woman who is visibly pregnant*. Her husband is a bartender. It has been her habit for as long as he's worked at that particular bar to go home after work, make dinner and bring it to the bar to share with him. (City regulations forbid smoking in bars and restaurants where I live.) Recently she gave up this precious time with her husband because every single person that is in the bar feels it appropriate to lecture a grown woman on where she chooses to eat dinner.
"You shouldn't be in a bar!"
"You shouldn't be drinking!"
"What are you thinking?!"
"What about your baby?!"
That is treating someone as a fetal container.
*By this I mean she has reached the stage where there is no way you could mistake it for weight gain, etc.
