The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos could be destroyed at the request of a mother even though the father objected. They were ruled "marital property" and the couple who created them had previously agreed to destroy them in the event of divorce.
A quote from the decision includes the term “pre-embryo,” which isn't a scientific term and was constructed purely for the sake of politics.
“Pre-embryo is a medically accurate term for a zygote or fertilized egg that has not been implanted in a uterus,” the court wrote. “It refers to the approximately 14-day period of development from fertilization to the time when the embryo implants in the uterine wall and the primitive streak, the precursor to the nervous system, appears. An embryo proper develops only after implantation.”
A textbook would say something entirely different. The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology (6th ed.), by Keith Moore and T.V.N. Persaud, says this:
The term “pre-embryo” is not used here [in their book] for the following reasons: (1) it is ill-defined; (2) it is inaccurate…(3) it is unjustified because the accepted meaning of the word embryo includes all of the first 8 weeks; (4) it is equivocal because it may convey the erroneous idea that a new human organism is formed at only some considerable time after fertilization; and (5) it was introduced in 1986 “largely for public policy reasons.”By controlling and manipulating the language by which many understand the development of human life, those who don't care about what happens to preborn children can have a powerful influence on how politicians respond to the issue.
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