The "liberal" media strikes again

AP story via Yahoo about abortion.
It seems to me that one of the primary functions of right wing think tanks is to create imagistic language that colors people's perceptions and then pump those few choice and imagistic phrases out until they become the standard journalistic phrasing. This is a perfect example from this story:

In the outlawed procedure, generally performed in the second trimester and occasionally in the third, a fetus is partially delivered before its skull is punctured.

While there is a concession to those who support this procedure that is generally used to save women's lives by using the word "fetus" instead of "baby", this is pretty much carefull constructed propaganda. I highly doubt that doctors use the phrase "partially deliver". In fact, they call it "extraction". But working the word "delivered" or "delivery" into the phrasing has two functions.
First of all, the word "delivery" has a connotation--it reminds people of babies being delivered. So this word choice very effectively puts the image in people's head of a baby being delivered and then having its head beaten in before it draws its first breath. It's such an arresting image that it overwhelms the critical faculties, thus preventing questions like, "How is something 'partially' delivered anyway?" Using the word "delivery" to describe childbirth is a metaphor anyway, putting us in mind of receiving a delivery in the mail. So, how is a package "partially" delivered? It's not. If my package got all the way to Dallas, but didn't make it here, I wouldn't call it "partially" delivered. I don't intend to take this lightly--any situation where a late-term abortion is necessary is unfortunate. But it is important to point out that an inadequate metaphor is being used instead of the exacting term "extraction" and there is a reason why.
The other reason that "delivery" is used is because it allows the writer to describe the procedure while linguistically removing the pregnant woman from the equation altogether. If the more medically sound term "extraction" was used, the sentences would have to go more like this: "The fetus is extracted from the woman....." In an extraction, the person getting something extracted is the dominant object. In a delivery, the package is all-important. In the "delivery" metaphor, the pregnant woman is the UPS man--necessary, but not really important.