4 June 2007 Vol. 9 / No. 20
Dear Colleague,
No one takes the world just as it comes. We need to explain the world to ourselves, and to others, and to do so we adopt a certain view of things, and a certain terminology. As we use these terms to record and understand our experiences, they take on a life of their own, and begin to shape our values. Nowhere is this more true–or more critically important–than in the Life issues.
Steven W. Mosher
President
Political Framing and the Pro-Life Mind
Every issue has its rhetoric—that’s the way human beings operate. After Roe v. Wade, the abortion debate was launched headlong into a bare-knuckle political struggle that has divided these United States in a way that only one other issue–slavery–ever has.
Unlike slavery, however, where those in favor of emancipation held the rhetorical upper hand, the pro-abortion movement has generally shown more terminological savvy. Here’s a quote from the Pro-Choice Connection: “For women who are genuinely pro-choice, and not savvy to word-politics, commonly used anti-choice terms can actually seem benign upon first impression. But as we become more aware of the words we use, we realize that language is a powerful tool for anti-choicers to color abortion in the public’s eye.”
Language is a powerful tool
It colors abortion in the public eye.
Now, more than three decades later, the pro-aborts dominate the very vocabulary that we use to discuss the issue. With opponents who often turn their size, power and media presence into weapons against us, some of us find that it is hard to maintain a clear-eyed view of the moral questions at stake. The pro-choice left works extraordinarily hard to “color abortion in the public’s eye,” and in doing so, they often make it difficult for even the most dedicated pro-lifer to see the issues clearly.
This is a case where, a rose by any other name does not smell as sweet. On an issue dominated by terminology and political framing, we cannot meet our opponents on their own terms. This is because their terms drastically misrepresent the situation, turning every pregnant woman into a feminist wanna-be, and every baby into a nonentity.
Here are just a few examples of this vebal sleight of hand:
Pro-choicers insist on calling the Mexico City Policy the “global gag rule,” which, according to www.globalgagrule.org, “hinders actions to end the tragedy of maternal deaths and injuries due to unsafe abortions.” Many pro-lifers get hung up on the issue of unsafe abortion, forgetting that we are not opposed to abortion because it is unsafe to the mother, but because it is deadly to the child. By framing the issue in terms of “safe abortion,” pro-choicers have done a bait-and-switch that distracts us from the real issue: abortion is murder, and murder is wrong.
NARAL has taken to calling the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act the “Federal Abortion Ban,” a term that baldly intimates that this relatively narrow law would place significant restrictions on abortion. In reality, the Ban does nothing of the sort, but that doesn’t change the fact that the pro-abortion left has effectively engineered the public perception of the event. 
Terri Schiavo’s case was one of many instances
where the anti-life lobby re-definined the debate
by controlling and defining the terms
USAID calls its pushy abortion tactics “reproductive health care,” insinuating that contraceptive/abortion services are intimately bound up in their other reproductive health care. In reality, contraception and abortion are USAID’s “reproductive health care.” Pro-lifers are often hesitant about opposing ostensibly beneficial programs that may involve abortion, simply because they don’t realize that USAID’s terminology is a ploy to get them to do just that.
Most of us are in favor of authentic choice. The UNFPA insists that its foreign sterilization campaigns “empower women,” putting them in control of their reproductive destinies. The truth is, the sterilization campaigns only empower the UNFPA, and the women often move from having complete freedom of choice to sterility, with no choice at all.
This list could go on and on.
After Terri Schiavo was murdered, her brother, Bobby Schindler, in an impassioned speech to a pro-life audience in Phoenix, Arizona, remarked that “It took just one generation to turn a war crime into an act of compassion." "Why has this happened?” an anguished Schindler asked. “The bottom line is, when apostolic grace and responsibility are abdicated, innocent people die.”
The crux of the matter is that innocent people are dying. At the end of the day, our movement is not about the laws, the judicial decisions, or the polls. Our movement is about human beings. Our hope lies in the fact that we are not just another interest group, using empty platitudes political posturing to mask our own vested interests.
So, let them talk about choice; we will continue to talk about children. Let them talk about “empowerment;” we will stress love and respect. Let them talk about “quality of life;” we will speak of human dignity.
Our convictions are what brought us to this fight, and we plan to leave the fight with them.
Colin Mason is the Director for Media Production at PRI.
