Rich Wheeler's

Abortion Glossary

(Careful, don't slip on the soap!

Started: Sometime before 6 September 1996 - Last modified: 21 May 1999

[rosebud in pool of blood]

You may disagree with my definitions, and that's OK... as long as you try to interpret my statements in light of my meanings, not in light of your own. Those who adapt others' terms without identifying the variance practice deception.

For examples, pro-choicers have recently started calling themselves pro-life. They don't like the implication, when RTL supporters call themselves pro-life, that abortion supporters are anti-life. By calling themselves pro-life, they feel that they cleverly deprive RTLers of the moral high ground.

Nowhere has this rhetorical trick been more obvious than among liberal callers to the Rush Limbaugh radio show. The Democratic National Committee (or allies thereof) has, since '94, been conducting seminars and distributing manuals to instruct their activists in how to call conservative radio talk shows, get on the air, and oppose the hosts. The conversation usually starts out something like, " Rush, I listen to your show every day and love the parody songs and your sense of humor. I'm a lifelong conservative, but...." The callers then proceed to take radically leftist postions on the issue at hand and reveal their leftist positions when referring to other issues.

Such clever usurpation of standard meanings is dishonest and only creates more obstacles to understanding. Yes, I sometimes practice the same thing, but I do so openly, to make a point, to increase understanding, not to obscure it. Don't confuse being facetious with being deceptive. My use of satire while criticizing the dishonesty of pro-aborts does not consitute hypocrisy.

Mom used to tell me, "A wolf never smells his own scent" (a proverb which she amply demonstrated). I don't expect to catch all the confusing language I myself may use. Feel free to e-mail your comments. 

Winning a friend is greater than winning an argument;                        
and to learn is as great a victory as it is to teach...                           
especially for cliche-spouting liberals.                                   

--------------------------  Me

Abortion

The premature termination of gestation. Hate to correct my pro-life allies, but you don't abort a thing (a baby); you abort a process (gestation). Neither do you abort a condition (pregnancy). Therefore, abortion is the premature, violent termination (q.v.) of gestation which coincides with the death of the prenatal babe. Abortion is the name and the goal of various medical procedures -- which begs the rhetorical question: If you can't abort a thing, just what verb accurately describes what does abortion does to the prenatal babe?

A medical definition would include miscarriage due to natural causes, but popular usage focuses on willing intervention intended to change the mother's condition from pregnant to not pregnant by ending the life of the prenatal baby.

Ad hominem

Characterized by attacking one's opponent in debate. Legitimately used to weaken the opponent's credibility, but illegitimately used when one does not have supportive data or logical arguments. When used as a substitute for substance, ad hominem attacks are typically as devoid of substance as the rest of the arguments. Also used to motivate opposition to one's opponent by instilling fear and hatred. Example of how pro-aborts are much worse about this than are pro-lifers: Pro-aborts commonly say that pro-lifers "just want to control women's bodies." Pro-lifers could counter that pro-aborts "just want to destroy babies' bodies," but how many times have you heard that?

Anti-choice

An ad hominem term used to demonize pro-lifers.

Anti-life

A term rarely used to describe pro-aborts, usually used in reaction to being labelled anti-choice.

Choice

An attempt to obfuscate the pro-abortion position by exaggerating pro-lifers' opposition to a single option (abortion).

Feminazi

Feminazi, contrary to popular criticism of Rush Limbaugh, who coined the term, does not apply to all feminists. The strict definition is, "a woman whose sole purpose in life is to see to it that as many abortions take place as possible -- and there are less than a dozen of them in the whole country." (Rush was being charitable, I think). So you see, it does not even apply to the militant, storm-trooping feminists who have invaded the locker rooms of male professional athletes! (Funny, when I was a kid, it was the boys who did that to the girls. We used to call them "panty raids". Now it is the women who do it to the men, and they call it "equal rights".)

Fetus

A Latin term meaning the act of bearing young, being newly delivered, or being fruitful. The English term closest to the relevant Latin meaning would be neo-natal. Since Latin terms actively de-personalize anything so described, I choose to use the more awkward, but more descriptive, term, pre-natal baby. (Yes, natal is Latin-derived, but it is an adjective which modifies baby, which is the focus of the term. Pre-birth has an awkward feel to it, pre-born implies that the baby has been born previously, and unborn implies that the pre-born baby went back into the mother's womb.) Although one word is usually better than two, in this case the longer term is more honest because it avoids the religious idea that the essential attributes of something are changed when that thing moves from one location to another. (foetus, British spelling).

Libophrenic

[Liberal + -phrenia]: Having the tendency to arrive at positions based on intuitive, emotive, right-brained thinking (or feeling, as the case may be) rather than through deductive, rational, left-brained logic. Since libophrenic thinking cannot accomodate data which requires logical processing, true libophrenics react to such data either by ignoring it or by becoming belligerent. -- libophrenia noun: A disorder of the mind characterized by libophrenic tendencies. -- libomorph noun: An argument which makes sense to a libophrenic person.

Obfuscation

The practice of injecting confusion into a discussion by changing the focus of discussion; using nebulous, cryptic, foreign, or misdefined terms; or by using ad hominem arguments.

Partial Birth Abortion (PBA)

The medical procedure of terminating gestation by inducing labor and then aborting the birth by killing the baby while it is part way out of the birth canal. Since the procedure is part birth and part abortion, PBA is an accurate description. The term preferred by pro-aborts, dilitation and extraction (D&X), focuses on the method of the procedure rather than on the overall events of the procedure, and is therefore to be avoided as obfuscatory.

Pregnancy

The condition of being with child, starting at implantation of an embryo and ending at birth (q.v.). (See definition of abortion. You cannot "terminate" a condition; you terminate a process (gestation).)

Pro-abort

Anyone who supports the general legality of abortion. Sometimes used by pro-lifers to convey negative connotations, but also used as simply short, convenient term that has punch. In reaction to pro-choice, the term pro-abort is intended to return the focus of discussion to the nature of abortion.

Pro-abortion

The position that abortion is sometimes a responsible form of birth control and and should be legally protected. Avoided by pro-aborts because of the negative connotation that it favors the promotion and subsidizing of abortion, the term covers a wide range of political and moral positions.

Pro-choice

The opposite of totalitarianism. Pro-choice has been co-opted by pro-aborts to misrepresent the position that a particular option, abortion, should be available to pregnant women(though not necessarily promoted or subsidized). Pro-choicers favor the term to describe themselves because (1) it has the positive denotation of being for something good (freedom of choice); (2) it implies that opponents of abortion are totalitarian; and (3) it shifts the focus of discussion away from the nature of abortion. Using the denotative meaning of pro-choice, pro-lifers could apply the term to themselves with the caveat that they merely oppose one option; however, except for Rush Limbaugh, they have not done so.

Pro-life

In its literal meaning, so nebulous as to be useless, but within the context of the abortion debate, pro-life means valuing life above economic, career, social, emotional, and minor health concerns. Preferred by pro-lifers because of its positive connotations and because it implies an association between pro-aborts and death. Pro-aborts sometimes describe themselves as pro-life to obfuscate the issue and to dominate the terminology of abortion rhetoric.

Reproductive Choice

Grossly distorted by abortion supporters, reproductive choice refers to having options available to either prevent conception or to escape the results of conception. Application of the term to abortion is dishonest because the primary precondition to abortion is that reproduction has already occurred. Abortion, therefore, is not a form of reproductive choice, but of gestational choice. (See continued discussion under reproduction.

Reproduction

(As applied to the abortion debate:) The process of creating another human.

To what degree of accuracy is the offspring a reproduction of the parents? A perfect reproduction would be identical to one parent genetically (i.e., a clone), in personality, and in development. Since sexual reproduction produces a hybrid of two individuals -- not to mention spontaneous, accidental changes to genes -- the accuracy of physical reproduction is limited. Furthermore, a child cannot experience the environment in which the parents grew up, so reproduction of personality, skills, etc., is obviously impossible. Finally, the reproduction (that is, the offspring) is always a generation younger than the parent(s), so human reproduction is not accurate in any sense.

At what age can a human offspring be said to be a reproduction of the parents? Would we say that a 23-year-old woman has not reproduced until her child has reached the age of 23? Yes, of course that's a silly suggestion. What consitutes a reproduction of two human parents, then, is not dependent on its state of development.

Most people (including most pro-aborts) would agree that, when the mother has given birth to her baby, reproduction has been accomplished. But what about a few hours earlier, at the onset of labor? Is it the movement from within the womb to the obstetrician's hands that completes the process? The state of two of the child's systems change (respiratory and nutritional), but the essense of a child is not altered by a change in location. Some religions claim that a fetus becomes a baby upon its first breath, when the spirit is inhaled. If you support abortion, you probably want the pro-life Roman Catholic Church squelched because of so-called separation of church and state; so to be consistent, you cannot honestly propose the first-breath argument. Personally, I reject the idea that spirits are subject to physical activity such as respiration. Development is a continuum from conception to death, and birth does not instantly change the nature of a child, regardless of whether we play word games with what we call him or her.

My conclusion is therefore that reproduction has occurred prior to birth. When a fetus/baby has a spirit, reproduction has already occurred. When the prenatal brain is able to dream, to be calmed by the sound of its mother's voice, to feel the pain of the abortionist's scalpel, reproduction has already occurred. When the heart is beating and little legs are kicking, reproduction has already occurred. Reproduction has already occurred when a functioning zygote carries a full set of unique human chromosomes.

You cannot control what has already occurred: Calling abortion a "reproductive choice" is a lie.

Seamless garment

Used by the Seamless Garment Network to describe the position of being opposed both to general legalized abortion and to the death penalty. They feel this is more consistant than the position of moral conservatives, who oppose abortion but support the death penalty, although it does not take into account the contrast between the innocence of babies and the guilt of capital offenders. The seamless garment concept stands out because it links liberal and conservative positions.

Terminate (as in, knock off, liquidate, fry, fit with cement shoes)

The ending (either passive or active) of a process. A euphemism used by gangsters and pro-abortionists to indicate killing another human being. ("Nothing personal, it's strictly business.") Used incorrectly with respect to abortion: you terminate a process (gestation), not a condition (pregnancy). See abortion.

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