Think of the audacity of abortion advocates, trying to convince abortion-seekers they can have a simple, voluntary miscarriage.
It is a lie they all try to tell each other.
No, no, we’re not seeking an abortion, they tell themselves. They are merely having a voluntary miscarriage.
As if miscarriages are no big deal.
Their rationale is simple. Involuntary miscarriages come armed with no moral repercussions. They are unfortunate events in couples’ lives, as they mark the real death of real children. (For more about how we do not mourn miscarriage as well as we should, check out my post, “Grieving Lost Fatherhood.”)
Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers using this euphemism are selling miscarriages. Think about that. As if it was not bad enough they are selling child killing. Now they are cloaking their actions with language describing accidental death, not purposeful killing.
Reports a midwife-nurse practitioner familiar with abortion, “I think for some women, there was a connection between something more natural, more like a miscarriage. A miscarriage is okay; an abortion is not okay. So if I’m having a miscarriage I can tell everybody I had a miscarriage. I didn’t pay for someone to put an instrument in my uterus and remove my pregnancy” (1).
Author J. Budziszewski calls it a diversionary tactic of remorse. Abortion providers and seekers try to deny what they are doing by calling it something else. They exhibit remorse as they cover up their misdeed with sugar-coated language.
I am not doing what I am obviously doing. I am doing something else. Something harmless, defensible, maybe even honorable. Yeah, that’s what I am doing.
No one wants to restrict another person’s freedom, so I am merely supporting choice. No one should be forced into anything, I am just backing her decision not to remain a mother. Yeah, that’s all.
Diversionary language has become the M.O. for the liberal agenda. When they promote death, they can’t call it what it is. They need to appeal to something else to tug at your heart strings.
Other diversionary language is common in promotion of abortion:
Ending a pregnancy
The above quote from that nurse-practitioner exemplifies this one. She chose to describe abortion as “remov[ing] a pregnancy.” I am not sure how a pregnancy can ever be removed. What is removed, obviously, is the child. That ends the pregnancy. These word games fool no one’s conscience.
Fetus
The term fetus is Latin and it simply means ‘little one.’ That’s all. The pro-abortion side has ran with that word to describe the human baby growing inside the womb. They seem to think that word removes the humanity of the child.
Abortion
Even the term ‘abortion’ has become the code word for child killing. That’s what the word signifies.
We need to recover the language we use surrounding pregnancy and abortion. Only then will we regain ground in this cultural battle.
YOUR TURN
How do you feel about them trying to adopt this “voluntary miscarriage” nonsense?
Can you think of other euphemisms the pro-abortion lobby likes to use?
Have you had any conversations with abortion backers using these terms and have you called them out on it?
Please share your thoughts below.
(1) I found this quote inside the book, “What We Can’t Not Know,” by J. Budziszewski. The citation would be this: Wendy Simonds, et al., “Abortion, Revised: Participants in the US Clinical Trials Evaluate Mifepristone,” Social Science and Medicine, 46, no. 10 (1998): 1316.
