Twenty years ago, Kate Michelman of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) addressed an audience of pro-abortion politicians, feminists, and other abortion advocates. They were commemorating the 30th anniversary of
Roe v. Wade
.
The event itself was unremarkable. One would expect NARAL to be celebrating Roe v. Wade. But what was remarkable was Michelman’s speech. She spoke of abortion as a “reproductive right.” It was the first time we heard the term — one that is an oxymoron if ever there was one. After all, if abortion can be considered a right at all, it is a right not to reproduce. Unfortunately, this buzzword has gained widespread acceptance and has become an integral part of left-wing culture.
As George Orwell revealed so elegantly in his novels about communist dystopias, leftist propaganda is typically sprinkled with terms describing the opposite of reality. Orwell’s 1984 featured many such instances, including the very names of Oceania’s institutions — the Ministry of Truth, which fabricated history, the Ministry of Love, which used torture to elicit confessions, and the Ministry of Plenty, which oversaw an economy of typical communist scarcity. It also included such paradoxical slogans as “War is Peace,” the hidden meaning of which is that war unites the population, sustaining order within the state.
So it is par for the course that pro-abortion advocates should call abortion what it is not. In their Orwellian doublethink, abortion is the right to stop reproduction, therefore is a reproductive right. Unfortunately, major media journalists, being part of the leftist social welfare propaganda complex, are perfectly willing to parrot such language in their reporting.
There are similar terms in the abortion lexicon that are every bit as deceptive as calling abortion a reproductive right. For example, the very term they use to define themselves is rather sophistic. “Pro-choice” is taken to refer only to one choice — the choice to abort a baby — as those who support it tend to oppose choice in any other area of life (schools, mask-wearing, vaccinations, etc.).
Then there is the term “emergency contraception,” which conjures up a whole set of images. What the pro-abortion people mean by it is a sort of super birth control pill that can dramatically reduce a woman’s chance of becoming pregnant if taken as soon as possible after sex.
But at heart is the idea that abortion-on-demand is a fundamental right of women. Without the right to abort at any time and for any reason, women can never realize their potential. But this purported right is certainly not contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is not stated in the text of the Constitution. It is a judicial creation of a handful of white male Supreme Court Justices. Even then, it is not abortion per se but the right to “privacy” that was somehow extrapolated to include abortion — or at least it was for nearly 50 years.
One thing is for sure: no one in the corporate media asks abortion advocates to explain their propaganda terms. But they ought to. The issue of “ reproductive rights” is not semantical. It makes the issue sound like one of government interfering in the lives of individuals. But this clashes with the fact that abortion advocates most certainly do want laws that interfere with private lives. The most arrant interference is the elimination of parental notification. This means that a minor can legally be taken by some other adult — often an adult sexual abuser, covering up his crime — to have an abortion without her parent’s knowledge.
A child who normally would not be able to have a wart removed without a parent present is able to have a major surgical procedure without a parent’s knowledge. The government tells parents, who must bear the responsibility of providing and nurturing the child, that they are not fit to make this choice. Who is suitable? The government has said, to cite one case, that the mother of the boy who made the girl pregnant is suitable to make this choice for someone else’s child.
The pro-abortion mob says that prohibiting parental notification protects children from abusive parents. This is another fallacy. A molesting or incestuous father who wants to keep the relationship secret would be just the type of man to force his child to have an abortion. Outlawing parental notification for that reason is ludicrous.
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Unfortunately, the Left has controlled the narrative in popular culture regarding abortion. All of the messaging focuses on the alleged rights of women instead of the rights of the unborn — the actual human beings harmed by the violence of abortion. This is something conservatives and Republicans must work to change. If the public became aware of the horrors associated with abortion, it could legitimately change the entire narrative in our country’s culture.
But such is the Orwellian world of “abortionspeak” — where good is bad, where all are equal, but some are more equal than others. Regardless of one’s opinion of abortion, it is quite apparent that the pro-abortion apostles are perpetrating an enormous fraud on the public.
