Note to politicians: remember that voters think it’s fishy if you don’t take any blame for a bad economic situation, then six weeks later you take credit for an improving economic situation.
Talking Versus Thinking
Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines “euphemism” as “the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant.” For examples, see nearly all the rhetoric about abortion in the mainstream news networks, i.e., the pro-abortion perspective.
“Reproductive health care” is the most common and ingenuous one, though it runs in packs: “avoiding unwanted pregnancies,” “abortion havens,” or a new favorite, “regulat[ing] their reproductive situation.” This last one is courtesy of Janet Yellen, U.S. Treasury Secretary. (As an aside, why is the Treasury Secretary, amid 8% inflation, expressing her grave concerns about abortion rights in a Congressional hearing? Good to know the Cabinet is on top of their areas.)
I’ve been thinking about the manipulative ways that language can be deployed for many years. Even if you only halfway listen, it’s not difficult to notice. However, our four-second soundbite media environment makes it impossible for anyone to reason aloud about the moral entailments of certain cliches and slogans. This doesn’t begin to consider the biases and worldviews that crowd out judicious and fair-minded analysis from newsrooms.
Abortion is not only an emotionally charged issue, but one especially prone to poor reasoning. Call it the “conceptual problem,” with a Side A and Side B.
Side A of the conceptual problem includes those obvious, politically incorrect truths that dare not be spoken, lest one be confirmed as the Neanderthal that they are for being against abortion. These Neanderthals believe that abortion rights wouldn’t be such an obsession if people would just remember where babies come from. The Babylon Bee captured this one nicely.
The main problem with Side A is that we are seen as taking a debate with many layers and trying to reduce it to one simplistic answer, especially by those who take it literally: don’t ever have sex for the rest of your life and you won’t be concerned about abortion. It’s true that unmarried women overwhelmingly have more abortions than married women. Yet the majority of those who seek abortions already have at least one child. Clearly, they have a different take on the place of sex in adult life.
So while the 40-year-old, married mother of three might choose an abortion for various reasons concerning financial, emotional, and physical preparedness, this isn’t the profile of most abortion-seekers. Side A reasoning, while literally true, isn’t going to be taken seriously.
This leads to the second problem with Side A reasoning. It doesn’t begin to drill down on the larger ethical and cultural context in which pro-life arguments work. A culture built on radical personal and bodily autonomy, sexual liberation, and gender fluidity doesn’t readily accept arguments that target the very curtailment of such “freedoms.” [1]
A pro-life person, typically being more conservative socially, has a built-in appreciation for notions like nature, limits, and order. Their idea of liberty isn’t unfettered. Rather, it’s always subject to other rights, goods, and factors, the obvious one being the biological status of unborn life. No clump of cells there; a real, live person with unalienable rights.
Now consider, how well do our tools of public discourse—evening news, social media, blogs, and arenas of public discourse—universities, libraries, coffee shops, etc., lend themselves to reconsidering the prevailing worldview that makes the pro-life, anti-abortion position “draconian?”
So pro-lifers have a challenge in communicating their perspective in an environment unhospitable to careful reasoning and allergic to restricting any personal behavior, whether for married or unmarried persons, parents or non-parents.
Side B is where thoughtful pro-life people acknowledge the complexity to their position. By complexity, I mean personal and emotional difficulty. While abortions sought in cases of rape, incest, and the compromised health of the mother are exceedingly small compared to most cases, they are part of the discussion. It’s why the Babylon Bee post won’t prove too helpful.
If you thought it was hard to get traction on Side A, Side B feels impossible.
I think the place to start is to distinguish between two groups of people. First, there are the loud-and-proud activist class. They maintain the cause. They aren’t easily persuadable. That said, they do change their minds. Indeed, some of the most ardent pro-life activists today used to be pro-choice activists.
In my experience, there are two paths into the pro-life fold for group one. They either slowly have their worldview concerning abortion chipped away by some combination of kind, winsome, pro-life people and arguments, or they experience a major life event that turns them around (e.g., conversion to Christ, hearing their child’s heartbeat on an ultrasound).
We should rejoice in such stories. Again, there are more than you would imagine if you’ve only watched mainstream news coverage! But these individuals aren’t the most persuadable concerning abortion. Side A arguments don’t work because something like free contraception proposals, from their perspective, should include abortion as a contraceptive method. Side B arguments don’t work because agreeing to allow abortions only in the difficult cases above concedes the fundamental conviction of the activist class. Why concede something that’s a fundamental right? If bodily autonomy is everything, then why only invoke it on “the hard cases”?
The second group of people is where I think most pro-life persons, especially Christians, should focus most of their attention. They’re pro-choice, but they are uncomfortable with it. A remarkable study conducted by the McGrath Institute for Church Life of the University of Notre Dame found this to be overwhelmingly true. In fact, no one in the study identified abortion as a good or desirable thing.
It's fascinating that people were so candid in acknowledging this. I think this reveals the crack in the pro-choice mind that pro-lifers need to explore, thoughtfully and kindly. We need to ask the next logical question, “What makes it undesirable, less-than-ideal, or problematic?” And, “Why would you feel it important to preserve the ability of nearly a million Americans a year to have an abortion?” (Based on 2021 estimates.) We don’t need to attack or insult, but patiently ask with the interest of someone who is committed to both life and truth.
We should also call attention to the fact that institutions and individuals exist in nearly every community whose commitments render phrases like “unwanted children” or “at-risk mothers” null and void. Pregnancy resource centers, churches, affordable daycare, adoption agencies, and similar organizations show wavering pro-choice advocates that the tired old trope about pro-life people only caring about human life for nine months is laughable.
Finally, it’s crucial to remember that these conversations best grow out of the context of relational trust. Plenty has been written about the fragile and increasingly non-existent state of social trust in American society. Many point to how issues like abortion inevitably erode such trust further, but I demur. Is it conceivable that Christians who show themselves to be kind, compassionate, convictional, wise, and generous over a period of time become the people their unsaved, often pro-choice friends will open up to? I can’t see why not.
I know there’s a desire among some readers to “move on” from a topic like this. There are others who want to ride it like Seabiscuit. But shouldn’t we just acknowledge (1) that this subject has mattered all along, and (2) it’s what’s on so many of our neighbors’ minds? Therefore, we need to be equipped for conversations now so we’re faithful later. The church owes the world that much.
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[1] I always find it interesting (and inconsistent) how communitarian and collectivistic many want to be on economic issues, but individualistic on every other matter of social consequence.
Currently Reading:
Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
Quote of the Week:
I entirely believe all of the women who say that abortion is a “difficult decision.” And one hears that all the time in these debates. But the difficulty speaks to the basic reality of abortion: It’s not a happy thing. If it were, why would the decision be so difficult for so many?
I often think of it this way: A miscarriage and an abortion are different things, medically and otherwise, but the meaningful differences and similarities for our purposes have to do with intention. Miscarriages generally refer to babies that people—mothers and fathers—did not want to lose. Abortions refer to babies lost on purpose, for a host of different reasons to be sure. That’s an important difference, but no compassionate person would dismiss a miscarriage by saying, “Well, it was just a bunch of cells.”
The point here is that most people understand that the objective entity, whether we call it a fetus or an unborn baby or “Junior,” doesn’t cease being what it is simply because we give it another dehumanized, medicalized, or otherwise euphemized label.”
(Jonah Goldberg, “Why Joe Biden Hates Saying the A-Word.”)