Seeing the country becoming increasingly pro-life is proving distressing for many pro-choicers. Not distressing enough, mind you, to reassess their position on the humanity of the unborn but enough to consider changing tactics.
Los Angeles Times columnist Nancy Cohen hit the pro-choice panic button in a piece yesterday by suggesting that the cultural shift is the result of word wars. She frets that the term “pro-life” has gained the upper hand in the nomenclature war over “pro-choice” in the American mind.
On a side note, this perceived upper hand is a testament to the ascent of new media and the irrepressible pro-life movement that the term “pro-life” is known at all in that it has suffered from all but a complete media blackout. In fact, the only time the media uses the term is when someone in the pro-life movement does something not very pro-life and the media scoffs by introducing them as “supposedly pro-life…”
But Cohen’s suggestion is most remarkable for being one of the worst and most crass examples of rhetorical gamesmanship since “Freedom fries.” Cohen is suggesting calling people in favor of abortion rights “pro-freedom” activists. Weak, huh? Hey, it still beats being called pro-abortion which would be a heck of a lot more accurate.
Cohen tries admirably in her first nine paragraphs to assure us that all is well in the pro-choice community but eventually is forced to get to the point and sound the alarm herself. By the end of the piece she is essentially throwing deck chairs off off the HMS Abortion.
She writes:
“Pro-choice” has turned into a tone-deaf rallying cry, inadequate to our actual policy preferences and to the philosophical values Americans hold on the subject of abortion. It essentially cedes the moral high ground to the antiabortion movement. It doesn’t do enough to communicate the very American ideals at the foundation of the abortion rights movement — the belief that, in a free and democratic nation, the decision to have a child should rest with the individual woman and those with whom she freely consults.
Perhaps “pro-choice” was once good enough shorthand for liberty, human dignity, individualism, pluralism, self-government and women’s equality. But anyone who thinks it is still sufficient, as we enter our fifth decade of the culture wars, hasn’t been paying attention.
Legendary feminist Gloria Feldt wonders if Cohen’s term “moves the dial” enough because “Freedom is a strong American value but it doesn’t move the dial of public opinion because in the rhetorical wars, ‘life’ still trumps ‘freedom.’”
So Feldt seems to be shooting down “pro-freedom.” But don’t worry, Lynn Harris, the author of the piece in Salon.com who seems like she may be ready to jump up and down on the panic button is offering a radical suggestion indeed. She seems to be suggesting foregoing words altogether. I’m not sure exactly how that would work as far as signage would go but she seems earnest:
Certain words are potent weapons, yes, but they’re not the war itself. And, as the polls suggest, we can win the war without them. Perhaps we should choose other battles after all.
You know, I’d be willing to forego words too. Let’s just show ultrasound images. But pro-aborts…pro-choicers…pro-freedom activists are against those too.
So to be clear they’re against words and images.
All of this is turning a blind eye to what is really going on here which is that pro-lifers are winning is because 1)pro-lifers have more babies than pro-choicers and 2) technology has opened a window into the womb and an increasing number of people are seeing humans in the womb. Not choices. Not freedom. Humans.
Note to pro-choice nomenclature alarmists: Renaming the Titanic wouldn’t have avoided its sinking to the bottom of the ocean.
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Cohen writes, “...the belief that, in a free and democratic nation, the decision to have a child should rest with the individual woman and those with whom she freely consults.”
If Cohen truly believes what she writes, then she would be preaching chastity vice abortion.
A pregnant women already has a child (hence the term, “pregnant”). This child is the inevitable result of the choice that was made to engage in a conjugal act. The only “choice” that remains at this point is whether to nurture that child, or kill it.
Ha! Bravo. Especially “by the end of the piece she is essentially throwing deck chairs off the HMS Abortion.” :)
You people are the ones for whom zygotes are the exact same thing as “babies” and “children”—yet WE are the “nomenclature alarmists”? That’s rich—really rich. Tell me another one.
Julie, perhaps “human” or “human person” would be better words.
The terms “baby”,“child”,“teenager”, etc. merely denote a specific stage of human development, nothing more. We are no less human because we are 19 (“teanager”) than we are at 9 (“child”).
No doubt, you prefer terms like “zygote” because they tend to dehumanize the human person growing within the womb. I prefer terms like “baby” and “child” for the opposite reason: they acknowledge the humanity of the person growing within the womb.
As Mat wrote above, “Renaming the Titanic wouldn’t have avoided its sinking to the bottom of the ocean.” Referring to a child growing in the womb as a “zygote” makes him or her no less human.
I prefer words that are *accurate*. Imbuing them with moral judgment is your schtick, not mine. Ta!
I’m in the game. Six children who are pro-life giving me 13 grandchildren and counting, who are pro-life. Can you spell “exponential”?
Elm’s 13 grandchildren (all zygotes at some stage in their human development)will be the ones who will understand the full reality of the human person growing in the mother’s womb, and the dignity that is owed that human person. Once again, Julie, your claims of accuracy seem to to be nothing more than a weak attempt at denying that a human zygote (like a human baby, human toddler or human teenager) is nothing less than a human person.
Right on Elm! I’m pro-life. I vote. And so will all my kids! Hahahah.
And Julie should be sent one of those T-shirts. You know, the ones that read “former zygote”. People really get the point with that one:)
PS Matt, I can’t comment on the CMR blog…Have I been cut off?
Science is behind the pro-life movement. There is a human being at the moment of conception, one with all of their DNA in place and the sex of that human being determined. So Julie, your “accurate” words describe a human being, with the DNA and sex determined at the zygote phase of development. Dictionary.com describes zygote as
zy·gote
? ?–noun Biology .
the cell produced by the union of two gametes, before it undergoes cleavage.
If we are using the term to refer to mankind, and not animals, then the zygote is a human being. There is no moral judgment imbued in the use of the biological term zygote. Sorry. You can try to dehumanize the baby with biological terms, but the facts are the facts. I find it humorous that women that want a child will call their zygote a baby, but when they don’t want a child they call their baby a zygote or fetus. You and I were both zygotes at one point in our lives.
O Lord have mercy! I hear Julie’s comment, and the completely accurate replies to Julies comment over and over and over again, for the last 30 years…. even as the science gets more and more clear, as the photos of the children in the womb become more and more vivid, the arguments stay the same…. “when will we ever learn, when will we ever… learn…. “
I am 100% pro-life, but I do not worry in the least about overturning roe v wade, that is not going to stop abortion. I for one don’t waste my time trying to take your right away, although i do not believe that it should have ever been a law to begin with, but non the less it is a law. I focus more on informing pro-choicers of the consequences of abortion to the mother the baby and other family members.
Abortion is the law of the land, so u have your freedom to do as you wish. But, how is it acceptable to you or any pro-choicer that there is no disclosure when going for an abortion? It is the only industry in the medical society that has no rules or regulations, u think that is OK? When a female, becomes pregnant she is an adult in the eyes of the law, which means she is emancipated, she can chose any form of medical care she wishes. So an 11 yr old little girl pregnant from incest or rape can freely go into a clinic, have an abortion no questions asked and be sent right back into the victimizers hands, that is ok with you Julie?
When a female opts for an abortion, she needs to be counseled to see if she is being pressured, or coerced. She needs to be counseled to see if she was raped, if a crime was committed etc….but none of that happens, and that is OK with you? You see Julie, your rights as a woman are not rights at all they are cruel, brutal, and heinous, abortion is a crime, not just in the religious realm but in the legal realm as well. Your rights end where someone elses begin, a mother or father is not the same body as the baby, a woman only has one heart and one blood type etc..
When entering a clinic a person needs to be made fully aware of all the possible side affects both emotionally and physically to the mother and if there the other family members, as well as a sonogram to see exactly which stage of development the baby is at the time of the abortion and what exactly what the baby will feel. Abortion is a decision that affects people for the rest of their lives, I am living proof of that. If you so badly want to keep your rights at least have the dignity to demand full disclosure, or would too many people decide against killing the life once they really saw the baby, or heard of all the side effect that can occur to the mother. Most people who are so for abortion are usually suffering from being involved in one themselves either directly or indirectly and need healing, confession and peace. Abortion is a multimillion dollar industry!
Oh, and Julie,
By the time most abortions are done, it is wayyyyyyy past the zygote stage which is usually within a few days of conception
If you are pro-life one assumes that you are anti-death penalty and anti-war. If in fact you are not, you are a hypocrite. Plain and simple.
David: The reality is that there is a difference between abortion, war and the death penalty. The Church believes that war can be justified under certain circumstances (CCC 2309), and that the death penalty would be justified if certain conditions warranted it, which are highly unlikely to occur in modern society (CCC 2266). Every procured abortion (willed as either an end or a means) is considered a moral evil (CCC 2270 - 2275).
War is bad, but may be justified for a greater good (think WWII and Hitler). The death penalty is unwarranted in this day and age. The killing of the innocents… Good luck justifying that.
The 12-day-old person asleep in my lap is the exact same person he was when conceived, genetically and biologically. He will be the exact same person at 10, at 40, at 100. That’s biological fact. This would not change if you called him a “post-term fetus”—the words do not change the genetic and biological reality. But it may change your perception of it.
For my part, as a realist and a former radical feminist, I challenge Julie to cut to the chase. My excellent feminist philosophy professor put it this way: What we really need to discuss is when is it OK in our society to kill a defenceless human being? In what context does the rights of the independent human being trump those of the dependent one in the pregnancy relationship, and why? What does it mean, philosophically, to be human? Is it more than being alive, because a zygote, embryo and fetus are certainly living beings?
You can’t talk about this subject through slight of hand. Brutal honesty on both sides is necessary.
For my part, I’ve chosen to be pro-life.
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