Sometimes it's just not a good time for "fetus" and removing it is the easiest solution.
This was an A+ comment.
It's not dangerous, it's just bad timing. It makes it look like NYT "chose" that word because of the recent ruling and is making a political statement, even though it's totally random.
It isn't random, it's just word 333 in the list of words to use, and it's been on the list for a while.
My wife was using fetus as her first guess throughout most of her pregnancy, in honor of the fetus. Baby is 1 month old now, and the first guess preference has changed. Too bad this word didn’t come earlier, she would have got it first guess!
I am surprised that they are not stating the word explicitly, only vaguely as "closely connected to a major recent news event" ("He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" comes to mind as an association)
Edit: the wording was updated to be more constructive
They’re trying not to spoil the puzzle?
That'd be a reason to not mention the replacement word, but they could have mentioned the one they removed.
The article states that some players will still see the one they removed, which is the problematically-timed word in question.
But players who read this article will know to force-refresh to get their replacement word.