Neil Steinberg in the Chicago Sun-Times:

He who sets the terms wins the debate. Take the anti-abortion crowd. They’ve had much success restricting a procedure that’s safe, legal and morally accepted by a solid majority of Americans because they’ve been able to deploy the concept of “babies.”

They are not restricting the rights of women, but “saving the lives of babies”—fat-cheeked, giggling Gerber babies. That’s what they’re doing, in their minds, and people accept it over the view that they’re dictating how adult women must deal with a fetus the size of the period on this sentence.

As happens when twisting language, the “saving babies” metaphor leads to ironies. For instance, if health-care reform sinks—as it seems to be—part of the scuttling will be due to timid politicians loathe to do anything that seems to support abortion. The result? Millions of actual children living in the real world right now will continue to be denied basic health care—some fatally—in the name of protecting embryonic potential children. It’s like letting a forest burn down for the sake of a bag of acorns.

In addition to being a nationally syndicated sex advice columnist, the author of several books, and the host of the Savage Lovecast, Savage is “a deviant of the highest order” (Daily Caller)....

3 replies on “What He Said”

  1. Look, I completely support safe, legal abortion for a number of reasons, but I still think it’s petulant to accuse the other side of nefariously “twisting language.”

    Ordinarily, a fetus becomes an adorable baby. Abortion kills that fetus, thus that adorable baby. There really isn’t any way to “finesse” that one, other than to say “I’m OK with that for the following very important human rights/public policy reasons.”

    I think someone is well within their rights to consider abortion as murder, and to protest it accordingly – it all comes down to how you view humanity (where we come from, what we’re doing here, what we’re worth). As I said, there’s no intellectually honest way to say that abortion DOESN’T ordinarily prevent that fetus from becoming a baby, and then eventually a full adult individual with full citizenship rights. That fetus could become Tim Tebow, or the next Jonas Salk, or Son of Sam, but it won’t if it is aborted.

    As proponents of choice, I don’t think we can shy away from that reality in the name of PR. Just because it’s more difficult to convince people at a visceral level of our position doesn’t mean that it’s not the best position.

  2. And to hold off any viability/embryonic vs. fetal v. late-term etc. talk, I’m just being general when I say that the natural course is fertilization -> baby. In almost every non-medical emergency case, the whole point of having an abortion is to make sure to disrupt that course.

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