The abortion-friendly Washington Post recently provided a revealing look into a debate taking place in the world of abortion advocacy. The issue, in short, is whether to call abortion “abortion” or call it something else.
According to the Post’s Caroline Kitchener, the argument has heated up in response to legislative activity looking to a Supreme Court decision–expected in June–that many think will either overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling legalizing abortion, or allow meaningful restrictions on the practice.
Until recently, conventional wisdom among abortion activists has been to sidestep naming the procedure. But now, Kitchener writes, “as Democrats seek to mobilize voters…a rhetorical divide has emerged around the one word at the center of the debate.”
“Many far-left liberals will say ‘abortion’ every time they talk about the issue, while some Democrats who will face competitive raises in 2022 and 2024–including the president–have rarely used it, relying instead on broader terms such as ‘reproductive freedom’ and ‘a constitutional right,’” she says.
Biden, Kitchener notes, didn’t use the word in his State of the Union address but called instead for protecting “the constitutional right affirmed by Roe v. Wade.”
She quotes Celinda Lake, one of Biden’s lead pollsters in 2020, saying that “the broadest possible abortion rights coalition” requires using language people feel comfortable with. Most pro-abortion politicians, Lake says, “have realized, particularly in more marginal districts, that you should talk much more about the shared value than the medical procedure.”
Avoiding the word “abortion” isn’t the only word game abortion advocates play. Another favored tactic is the use of high-flown language to cloak the reality of what abortion actually does.
Post columnist Karen Tumulty quotes Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who is currently seeking an advisory opinion from her state supreme court that abortion is a protected right under the state constitution. What’s at stake in abortion, Whitmer loftily declares, are “privacy rights, health rights, and bodily autonomy.”
The words sound swell–until you recall that what’s most directly at stake in an abortion is the life of a unique, unborn human being whom the abortion will kill.
The argument among abortion advocates over naming abortion occurs against the background of a dismayingly common corruption of language–and therefore of thought–via political propaganda, some forms of advertising, and various other more or less systematic efforts to abuse words so as to confer respectability upon things that otherwise are flagrantly unacceptable.
Lately we’ve had an especially ugly illustration in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s repeated description of his brutal war in Ukraine as a “special military operation” or–heaven help us!–a “peacekeeping mission.”
Most individuals with reasonable intelligence and a command of the facts have no trouble discerning the obscene absurdity of rhetoric like that. But the situation is different with abortion–an issue on which people have been brainwashed by media like the Washington Post into thinking killing the unborn is an innocuous procedure serving noble ends.
Many years ago George Orwell, author of anti-authoritarian classics Animal Farm and 1984, skewered systematic abuse of language, whether calculated or merely careless, in a famous essay called “Politics and the English Language.” What he said deserves recalling in the context of outrages like abortion and Putin’s war: “Political language [and what pro-choice politicians say about abortion falls into that category] is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give appearances of solidity to pure wind.”
Orwell was an honest person. Too bad more people aren’t.
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Pro-abort Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer asserts “bodily autonomy,” but to others, this sounds more like “frontal lobotomy.” Before the rads discovered the need for a new vocabulary, and self-administered this cerebral reset, they still told it like it is. And, the un-doctored vocabulary sounded a lot like those historical moments so forgotten by the Democratic Party cancel culture:
“I know of not a single case where anyone came out of the chambers alive” (Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess on the destructive capacity of Zyklon B gas, 1947) and “It never ever results in live births” (an experienced abortionist on the merits of dissection and extraction, 1981);
“The subjects were forced to undergo death-dealing experiments ‘without receiving anesthetics’” (Dachau freezing experiments, 1942) and “the fetuses are fully alive when we cut their heads off, but anesthetics are definitely unnecessary” (Fetal researcher Dr. Martti Kekomaki, 1980);
“No criticism was raised” (conference of German physicians to the Ravenbrueck death camp sulfanilamide experiments, Berlin, May 1943) and “no one ever raised an eyebrow” (meeting of American pediatricians to an experiment involving beheading of aborted babies, San Francisco, 1973); and
“What should we do with this garbage” (Treblinka, 1942) and “an aborted baby is just garbage” (fetal researcher Dr. Martti Kekomaki, 1980).
In “Mein Kampf” (1925) Adolf Hitler referred to Jews as “a parasite in the body of other peoples”; fifty years later, the year of Roe v. Wade, a radical feminist group branded the unborn as “a parasite within the mother’s body” (an early edition of “Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book By and For Women”).
(From William Brennan, The Abortion Holocaust: Today’s Final Solution [St. Louis: Landmark Press, 1983], Chart 6, and 100-102.)
This comment should be a separate article…revealing side by side!
I’ve read some in the “reproductive rights” camp are referring to themselves as “pro-abortion” rather than “pro-choice”. More honest, at least. Now if we can just figure out what abortion actually is. (Hint: It’s not “My body . . .”).
No matter what terminology you use as a euphemism, abortion is simply MURDER.
Softening language to hide it’s real meaning is nothing less than propaganda. Especially in this case. It is an old, old ploy of the left. Whitmer has been a nightmare governor and I hope her voters let her know that in the next election by voting her out. As for her assertion of “bodily autonomy”, what a sick joke. A baby is not conceived by a woman alone. For such conception to take place, a man is required. In the vast majority of cases this action would have taken place with the active cooperation of both parties.Therefore In my opinion the woman alone has no right to terminate without the man’s consent. It is unfortunate that the law does not reflect this reality. These are issues that women should consider BEFORE they sleep with someone, not after. Other linguistic contortions include the recent use of “undocumented immigrants” as the softer version of “illegal aliens”. Almost makes it sounds as though they have a right to be here, doesn’t it?? Except, they have no right to be here at all and changing the language doesnt change reality. Anyone who respects the law and our national integrity knows it. The left can contort all they want. Those of us with functioning brains STILL know what those sanitized words REALLY mean.
“Functioning brains” – good choice of words.
Life begins at conception, that which is conceived immediately begins to grow, and – if it’s growing it’s alive. To terminate the life of the most helpless person in the world, totally unable to defend itself, is, quite simply – murder. Abortion advocates know this, so they construct as many artificial barriers as they can between the word and the actual truth.
The very word itself – abortion – is a foul word and there is no window dressing which is going to change that. Its advocates know that and so they will create as much artificial distance between word and deed as they can, and history has shown us many times that they are VERY good at that.
Which leaves it up to us NOT to let that foul word die.
I read this meme today that perfectly reflects the battle:
“If abortion is health care, then kidnapping is child care”.
The heart of the matter is “Moral Choice”
This context is the only way forward.
Each individual has to be given factual and unbiased information regarding the moment of conception.
My personal belief is such that this topic should be closed down. To date, the terminology is empowering wrong choice. The reality of the process is brutal. The farming of fetus is inhumane. The sale of fetal parts is for greed.
At the end of the day the only powerful action is to prove factually and graphically what abortion is.
This information is vital, it should be scientific .
This information should be in every Doctor’s office and every high school science lab.
Both the man and the woman should be present before the doctor and both should sign accept ing the procedure.
Close down all money making organizations and profit advertising abortion.
This drastic and heinous decision should be left to the human moral conscience.
The human heart will suffer bitterly.
As it stands all the talk and airtime has robbed especially the young men and women from the realization that at the end of the day they must live with the morality of their choice.
All day long each person is making a moral choice. What is wro g a d what should be closed down as illegal are the Oey akin g organ fixation, also all t he variety of clinics a d organizations ignatio s tha t prom vote a d validate a bortion .
Let the wo an all g wit h the man go to the doctor a d get the a vortio.
This I oral choice will bite into their heart a d s oul. They will ow the decisio and have to live with it.
We must remember that the other side is not committed to promoting rational choice but rather to getting rid of impediments to elite women’s careers. The important thing for them is to get rid of legal, medical, and moral impediments to freely choosing abortion. Their goal is for abortion to become normal, everyday, ordinary. One way to do this is by just not mentioning the word “abortion”.
This link explains their aim at slightly greater length: Behind and Beyond the Shout for Abortion, https://consistent-life.org/blog/index.php/2022/04/04/shout-for-abortion/
Seeking to avoid brutal words to describe brutality is sick. It merits a sick joke:
Let’s help President Biden out. He is looking for ways to promote abortion while avoiding the word “abortion,” because of its brutal connotations.
He need look no further than the war in Ukraine. As Mr. Shaw has pointed out, his fellow President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly described his brutal war in Ukraine as a “special military operation,” or even a “peacekeeping mission.”
Following Putin’s lead, Biden might wish to describe abortion as a “special health operation”. (Come to think of it, that’s what many folks already do, by calling it “healthcare.”)
And since abortion often involves the gathering of fetal organs for later sale, President Biden could also call it a “piece-keeping mission”.