How We Refer To It Matters
Language affects feeling and action
In my Cal Poly argument class a few years ago we were discussing various articles we’d read about abortion when I used the term “pro-life.” A student in the back of the class rose his hand and commented: I don’t think it’s right to refer to them as pro-life when what they are is anti-abortion. I thought that was an interesting distinction, especially since it had become engrained in me over the years to think of those opposed to abortion as “pro-life.” Indeed, they seemed have claimed the moral high ground through diction by using terms like “unborn” and phrases like “sanctity of life,” and by holding the “March for Life” protest.
In addition, the language the pro-life/anti-abortion people use against the opposition, those who want to see abortion rights protected, can be quite dark, meant to shock or shame: Abortion is killing a child; it is murder. I’ve been attuned to that language for some time as I’ve tried to expose myself to both—indeed, all—sides. I’ve seen the killing/murder argument framed in different ways, such as when Cal Thomas takes his liberal friends to task for being against the death penalty but in favor of abortion rights: “In the case of abortion,” he writes, “obviously there can be no sentence of death or life in prison for the ‘murderer’….The death chambers will close in Maryland…but thousands of abortions will continue in Maryland each year—more than 1 million annually nationwide – ‘sentencing’ innocents to death without due process.” (To clarify, according to the Centers for Disease Control, there were 664,435 reported abortions performed in the United States in 2013 when Thomas’s article was published; and in 2018, there were even fewer: 619,591.) Even though he uses air quotes around “murderer,” his message is clear.
A more developed and nuanced argument was published by Federica Mathewes-Green for National Review: A prolific writer with dozens of books and hundreds of articles to her name, her 2016 article, “When Abortion Suddenly Stopped Making Sense,” describes her transition from college-aged feminist activist to a religious pro-life writer: “There I was, anti-war, anti–capital punishment, even vegetarian, and a firm believer that social justice cannot be won at the cost of violence.” Her awakening occurred after reading an article that described the procedure of a 19-week abortion. (She does concede that a 19-week abortion is “unusually late; most abortions are done by the tenth or twelfth week—and she was right: The CDC reports that in 2018, “The majority of abortions in 2018 took place early in gestation: 92.2% of abortions were performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation.”) The author is gravely moved by the description and begins to doubt this tenet of feminism: “How had I agreed to make this hideous act the centerpiece of my feminism? How could I think it was wrong to execute homicidal criminals, wrong to shoot enemies in wartime, but all right to kill our own sons and daughters?”
She’s a good writer, and readers left positive comments, praising her “truly wonderful article,” and for being “someone who can see all sides.” One commenter wrote: “Thank you for writing these words that no man could have written. You have given words to the thoughts that have been with me in vague, shapeless form for a long time.”
I was interested in this article especially since I wanted to bring reasonable, well-written articles to my class that showed all sides of the debate. But upon re-reading this article this week, I felt myself filling with frustration. I admire her rhetorical skills, but I find them problematic—not because they might persuade people that they shouldn’t have an abortion, but because of how she frames the argument as an indictment against those who have had or may get an abortion or support the right of others to get one. She writes:
The usual justification for abortion is that the unborn is not a “person.” It’s said that “Nobody knows when life begins.” But that’s not true; everybody knows when life — a new individual human life — gets started. It’s when the sperm dissolves in the egg. If there are different categories of innocent victim, surely the small and helpless have a higher claim to protection, and tiny babies the highest of all. The minimum purpose of government is to shield the weak from abuse by the strong, and there is no one weaker or more voiceless than unborn children.
In time, it’s going to be impossible to deny that abortion is violence against children. In fact, the kind of hatred that people now level at Nazis and slave-owners may well fall upon our era. Future generations can accurately say, “It’s not like they didn’t know.” They can say, “After all, they had sonograms.” They may consider this bloodshed to be a form of genocide. They might judge our generation to be monsters.
Abortion, according to the author, is not only killing an innocent or murder—it’s on par with genocide. And women or girls who have abortions—and any medical care professional who helps them, any voter who votes pro-choice…is probably a monster. False analogy, ad hominem, strawman—there are many logical fallacies here, but no matter: the piece provides strong, damning language to shape and express the thoughts of those leaning toward or already in her camp.
I can’t help but read her conclusion and picture the abortion doctor hanging from the wall in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” I surprise myself with an outlandish thought like that, especially since I pride myself on not being alarmist. But if you convince people that abortion is murder or genocide, if you give them something that damning and concrete when their thoughts might have been “in vague, shapeless form,” you could convince them to pray and march and vote with you, but you may also convince them that the abortion doctor should be shot (as Doctor George Tiller was shot in the foyer of his church in Kansas, where he was serving as an usher) or that the clinic should be attacked (a shooting attack at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs in 2015 left three people dead). You may convince them that people who get abortions or that anyone who aids and abets one is a monster that should be stopped one way or another. All under the guise of moral certitude.
I can’t imagine anyone getting an abortion taking it lightly, can’t imagine that any person is flippant or casual about the decision. And in fact, most women who get an abortion—59 percent, according to the Guttmacher institute, have carried a pregnancy to term at least once—that is, the person knows what it means give birth and bring a child into the world. These women already know that the fetus is not a “blob of tissue,” as the author says she and her friends used to say before her transformation.
We can and should acknowledge that fetuses have heartbeats and that during weeks 9-12 are fully developing hand and feet, arms, hands, and toes. And yet, I refuse to think of a person who chooses not to carry a pregnancy to term as a monster—and there are organizations and individuals trying to bring in a different language and way of thinking about abortion that reject the sentiments expressed by Mathewes-Green, Cal Thomas, and their ilk.
The plaintiff in the newest Texas abortion law the Supreme Court heard on November 1 was Whole Woman’s Health. I did some research about them and realized it was not the first time they had a Supreme Court case. In Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, a case from 2016, the court ruled 5-3 that “Texas cannot place restrictions on the delivery of abortion services that create an undue burden for women seeking an abortion.”
I discovered that Whole Woman’s Health was founded by Amy Hagstrom Miller nearly 20 years ago, “with the mission to provide fabulous abortion care.” Their clinics offer gynecological care and abortions. Here’s an excerpt from their “Who We Are” tab on the website:
We understand that no one gets pregnant to have an abortion. We also understand that facing an unplanned pregnancy and choosing abortion involves all the big things in people’s lives – examination of identity, life, death, sex, religion, family; your dreams and your aspirations.
This message shows up halfway down the “Message from Our Founder” link:
EVERY DAY IN THE USA GOOD PEOPLE YOU KNOW AND LOVE
HAVE ABORTIONS.
When I read those words, my mind immediately went to a family friend who recently passed away. He was a pro-life Republican to the end, but I couldn’t help but wonder how it might have changed him if he’d known that some of his closest family members had had abortions—would he have been able to look them in the eyes and call them monsters? If he knew that good people he loved had had abortions, would his views have softened?
Here’s more from the website:
The people we serve at Whole Woman’s Health come from all walks of life – from young college students, teenagers, professionals, stay at home parents; religious folks and spiritual people to those struggling to figure out what they believe; from people with insurance to those who have no health care safety net and need financial support. The fact is, there is not just one kind of person who has an abortion. Abortion is a normal part of our reproductive lives and nearly 1 in 4 women will have an abortion by the age of 45. It is the mission of Whole Woman’s Health to deliver excellent care with dignity, respect and compassion. All of us deserve to be free from the stigma that can be associated with making the choice to have an abortion in our society.
Removing that stigma is a big part of their mission. One blog post on the website explains the organization’s attempt to combat the language of the abortion opponents, whom they refer to as “masters of weaponizing language,” by becoming “masters of affirmation.” They challenge people to change their language from “pro-choice” to “pro-abortion,” since, as they see it, a woman might choose to have an abortion, but she may not have access to one, like in Texas, where abortion is now banned after six weeks. They write:
Abortion isn’t a dirty word and it’s more important than ever that we all work together to create a society that values abortion care without apology.
Here is what you can say instead of “pro-choice”:
· Abortion is a human right.
· Abortions help people thrive.
· Abortion is healthcare.
· Abortions are a radical act of self-care.
· Abortion is normal.
· Abortion providers are heroes.
· Everyone deserves compassionate abortion care.
· Abortions save lives.
· Abortions make people’s lives better.
· Abortion is a moral and social good.
This might be challenging language and concepts for many to accept. How do they make you feel? We are used to seeing abortion referred to, as the National Review article does, as “destructive and tragic,” “a grim experience,” “painful and humiliating.” Yet a peer-reviewed study published in Social Science and Medicine found relief, not regret, “was the most commonly felt emotion” by 99 percent of women five years after their abortion. Ninety-nine percent.
I’ll never forget a different argument class during a different quarter when another male student raised his hand toward the end of our discussion about abortion. I don’t like abortion,” he said, but I’m sure glad it’s legal. The class was hushed as we let the gravity and truth of his declaration set it; his relief was palpable.
While I don’t share the views or feelings of pro-life/anti-abortion activists, I don’t deny the feelings they must have, that they are truly pained by the fact that abortions happen. In speaking about the March for Life, Mathewes-Green writes, “Pro-lifers have been doing this for 43 years now, and will continue holding a candle in the darkness for as many more years as it takes.”
However, since we don’t live in a utopian society where women and girls are freed of the burden of unwanted pregnancies, I contend that what Whole Woman Health writes is true: “Abortion saves lives”—those of the girls, women, and individuals who got to be the final arbiters of the decision of whether to go through with their pregnancy and who, for their own deeply personal reasons, decided to have an abortion. The Supreme Court affirmed this right when they ruled on Roe v. Wade.
The subtitle of Frederica Mathewes-Green’s article made a reference to that seminal case: “Abortion Won the Day, but Sooner or Later That Day Will End.” If there’s one thing that both sides of the argument should be able to readily agree upon, it is that if and when that day ends, abortions will not end with it.