A couple of days ago, I had a post about Michael Medved’s column concerning the importance of language in framing a debate.
Whenever I want to point out liberal bias in the media, I usually use the abortion debate as a prime example. This is because the media’s bias for abortion is so blatant as to be virtually indisputable. Nearly every term used by journalists sounds like it was written by NARAL or Planned Parenthood. From describing people as “for abortion rights” or “against abortion rights” to the constant description of any restrictions on abortion as being an “undue burden,” journalists’ bias is always on display.
One of the examples Medved didn’t use was the description used almost uniformly by the Left when discussing the Gonzales v. Carhart case. The statute passed by Congress is the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. Yet you will frequently see pro-abortion sites refer to so-called “partial birth abortion” bans (see here, here, and here). But that isn’t accurate. The legislation isn’t “so-called,” it is called the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.
Reactions on lefty blogs after the Supreme Court’s decision in Gonzales v. Carhart were uniform in the use of “so-called.” Many commenters said that they wouldn’t use the term because it wasn’t the medical term for the procedure, that it was a euphemism contrived by pro-lifers.
But there are other euphemisms pro-abortion supporters like. Mollie at GetReligion has a post critiquing a Washington Post Magazine story on selective reduction.
Selective reduction is a euphemism for feticide (also known as embryoctony), that is the killing of fetuses or embryos in the womb.
According to Mollie, the story is remarkably honest, brutal and objective. But why the euphemism “selective reduction” if we are all into medical terminology these days? Could it be that feticide would turn off a lot of potential clients?
Cross-posted at Gold-Plated Witch on Wheels.
[...] Common Sense Political Thought » Archives » The Importance of Language, Part 2 says: May 26, 2007, at 1:16 am [...]
“Partial-Birth Abortion” is not a medical term, Sharon. “So-called Partial Birth Abortion” acknowledges that.
It seems likely that the abortion technique banned by the Partial Birth Abortion Act is “Intact Dilation and Extraction” – IDX: a technique used in a small percentage of abortions, usually though not invariably late-term, when the doctor performing the abortion considers it the safest technique to be used to preserve the woman’s health and possibly her life.
Banning this technique, or even just requiring a doctor to consider a court decision by someone with no medical training before he considers what’s best for his patient, will not prevent a single abortion from taking place: it will merely mean that less safe methods will be used instead, more likely to damage the woman’s health or risk her life.
Pro-lifer celebrations of this Act being passed and then upheld by the Supreme Court were rather public acknowledgements that, for pro-lifers, it is not a matter of preventing abortions, but of punishing women. Requiring doctors to damage a woman’s health rather than use IDX if in their medical judgement it is the best method for a late-term abortion, is virulently anti-women, and prevents not a single abortion.
It makes the name the anti-choice movement has for itself, “pro-life” more and more absurd. The importance of language, indeed…
The legislation isn’t “so-called,†it is called the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.
This is what I mean by disingenuous. Had you actually taken the time to learn about the procedure and investigate fully, you would understand that no one outside of people with political agendas calls D&X “partial birth abortion”. That’s why “so-called” is used.
You belie your supposed objectivity.
Partial Birth Abortion is the name of the ban. No, it isn’t medical terminology, but we don’t use medical terminology for a lot of conditions, procedures, and diseases without complaint. Pro-abortion supporters hate the term “partial birth abortion” because it is such a vivid descripter for this procedure. There’s no hiding what you are doing when it is used.
On the other hand, they like the term “selective reduction” simply because it does obfuscate what they are doing: feticide.
You can argue all you want how the Partial Birth Abortion Ban of 2003 doesn’t limit any abortions. If that were true pro-abortion supporters wouldn’t have worked so hard to keep that gruesome procedure legal. They (and you) know that once certain procedures can be limited, then all your procedures can be limited. That’s what they (and you) are afraid of.
This is what I mean by disingenuous. Had you actually taken the time to learn about the procedure and investigate fully, you would understand that no one outside of people with political agendas calls D&X “partial birth abortionâ€. That’s why “so-called†is used.
Actually, everybody outside the pro-abortion movement uses this term. It’s easy and it’s understandable. Laypeople know what you are talking about when you use it. That’s why pro-abortion supporters hate it so much. But “selective reduction”? If you didn’t read up on that, would you know what that was?
The point of the post wasn’t to argue about abortion per se. The point is that the use of language in framing a debate is powerful. People on both the left and the right recognize this. People on the left have done a better job of getting the media to use their terminology for things, which is why you see terms like “so-called” for the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, abortion rights, gay marriage ban, etc. in the press so much.
There are a few examples on the right. For example, the term “death tax” is now easily recognizable as discussing inheritance taxes. But there aren’t very many others, and journalists are very quick to point out that some term is something people on the right call something. I’ve never seen a journalist refer, for instance, to the “so-called” gay marriage ban.
There’s a more accurate term yet. Murder. Of course, the pro-aborts don’t give a damn that a live baby is having its brains sucked out while it is conscious and on the verge of being born. They don’t want to deal with that, which is why they prefer to get in nit picking contests over arcane terminology instead.
I thought of another couple of examples of the importance of framing (one more successful than the other).
First, the Strategic Defense Initiative was dubbed “Star Wars” by its opponents back in the 1980s and the appellation stuck. We still refer to SDI this way.
The second is more personal. If you notice, Jes spends a lot of time spinning comments or events. For example, there’s the way it tries to frame what just happened with the Democrats and the war funding bill. Instead of presenting events fairly or objectively–the President warned Congressional Democrats that he would veto a war funding bill with timetables and pork barrel spending–Jes constantly tries to refer to this as President Bush somehow “refusing” to fund the war. The language doesn’t work in this case, largely because there’s so many stories which explain the situation more accurately, and most people reading this blog are intelligent enough not to be fooled by this attempt to reframe an issue.
What this does show is that Jes also recognizes the importance of framing issues in ways favorable to your POV. Nice to see some agreement!
Of course abortion proponents prefer the term “intact dilation and extraction.” Of course, that, too, is inaccurate: since part of “intact dilation and extraction” is the removal of the unborn child’s brain, the unborn child is not “extracted” “intact,” is he?
There’s a case in the Philly burbs concerning a 19 year old girl who her lawyer said was suffering from “pregnancy denial.” She delivered her child, apparently alone, and suffocated him, put his body in a gym bag, and hid it in the trunk of her mother’s car. Perhaps she simply had a very late term “intact dilation and extraction.”
Fortunately, the Montgomery County prosecutor knows murder when he sees it.
Maybe Left Wingers, having no brains themselves, figure removing one from a baby is no big deal, like removing an appendix …
Dana: There’s a case in the Philly burbs concerning a 19 year old girl who her lawyer said was suffering from “pregnancy denial.†She delivered her child, apparently alone, and suffocated him, put his body in a gym bag, and hid it in the trunk of her mother’s car. Perhaps she simply had a very late term “intact dilation and extraction.â€
Oh God, poor girl.
What a horrible thing to happen to her, and to her family.
This is why no child – anywhere – should grow up not knowing how to use contraception: why contraception needs to be available, confidentially and without charge, to everyone: why abortion needs to be available free to all women, no matter their age, guaranteed confidentiality – and above all: children need to know, well before they’d have a need to make use of that knowledge, that they can use contraception, that
More tragic cases like these are the goal pro-lifers (who named themselves so falsely) aim for: girls who don’t know that, at least as soon as they skip a period, they can and should get themselves to a doctor, have a pregnancy test, and – if they don’t want to be pregnant – have an abortion. Plus the pro-lifer goals of high maternal morbidity, and more girls and women dead in illegal abortions.
We know that if pro-lifers wanted to prevent abortions, they could turn their efforts to campaigning for everyone who doesn’t want children to use contraception whenever they have heterosexual intercourse – and to ensure that they use their method of contraception correctly. That, all by itself, could cut the number of abortions performed in the US in half. But pro-lifers aren’t interested in preventing abortions: only in creating a country in which more girls end up committing infanticide, more pregnant women die, and more women die in illegal abortions.
That’s what being anti-choice does. “Pro-life” is such an ironic, yet successful, spin on a pro-death campaign.
Thanks for giving us another example of leftwing misuse of language. Demonization is quite common when pro-abortion types discuss pro-lifers.