| | There is a furtherance which needs be said to this. As said, an 'unborn child' is a contradiction in terms, The [2a] defonition referred to is a bogus one because it directly contradicts the first one, instead of being an extended or derivative - there is a totally different concept involved, one which posits a religionist's viewpoint into an otherwise neutral conceptualization. This in turn violate an integrated view of existance ['there are no contradictions in reality'] by turning the pregnancy of a female into a form of slavery, a servitude of being. This itself, in turn, is a violation of the sovereignty of the individual.
The word 'child' stems back from OE thru OT or Old High Germanic, and always referred as being the mother's 'fruit of the womb'. It is a term in reference to 'what is begat', that is, delivered from the mother. 'To be with child' refers to an upcomingness, a begatting - a potential, a futureness, not an actual.
We are, as are all higher order organisms, overlays of more primitive ancestralness. This is recognised, for example, in that area of the brain referred to as the primitive brain - a commonness even to reptiles. It is also noted in the various stages the fetus goes thru in its development into the human organism - as is also the case with any other higher order organism into their respective kind. One of the inducements to survival of higher organisms is that of the propensity of the gestating female to take an interest in the viability of upcoming offspring, to the extent of hormonal inducements which emit emotional bonding. This is not a conscious mannerism, but an attribute of specie survivability - and not just humans, but again, all higher order organisms. Humans, however, have an extra overlay - their consciousness of self awareness, which by its accord induces anthromorphric responses. This is to say, humans tend to attribute human characteristics to what is only superficially human in nature. This is noted, for instance, in giving 'human attributes' to pets. It is also taking place when viewing sonograms of the fetus in the womb - to the uneducated, it looks like a human, therefore it must be human, even tho in fact it is only becoming human, in the process of acquiring life as a human [remember, 'life is a proces of self-sustaining and self-generated action'], a life, by the way, which begins when the 'spirit' - the 'breath of life' enters at birth.
That is right. The spiritual refers, in fact, to that non-material aspect of life which begins with the materialness of breathing in air - when the process thus begins self generated action. There is nothing inherently mystical, just a reflective reaction to being cut off from the mother womb, a sort of self-firing mechanism wherein 'all systems go' is in effect, and life - human life - begins. The reason why life begins at birth is because he act of breathing air induces a feedback to the brain, from the lungs, which are not needed to operate until birth, because the oxygen is received from the mother. It is then, with the activation of breathing, the importation of air into the body, that consciousness takes place - and human life begins.
If it helps to understanding fetal development from a non-emotive standpoint, I suggest reading Morovitz and Trefil, THE FACTS OF LIFE, Oxford University Press.
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ld) n. pl. chil·dren (ch
l
dr
n) 