“Reproductive health” = abortion
Commenter “Another Mike” has a question:
Does it seem odd to anyone else that the pro-abortion crowd uses the term “reproductive health” when abortion is actually anti-reproduction?
It doesn’t seem odd. It seems rather typical of the left, which likes to call things by names that are at least somewhat Orwellian if not full Orwellian and that mean something different than their titles would imply.
For example, the term “reproductive health” is similar to the term “Planned Parenthood” in some ways. That latter organization’s name has an interesting history. It was initially called the more straightforward, “American Birth Control League,” but:
Some found the ABCL’s title offensive and “against families”, so the League began discussions for a new name. In 1938, a group of private citizens organized the Citizens Committee for Planned Parenthood to aid the American Birth Control League in spreading scientific knowledge about birth control to the general public. The BCCRB merged with the ABCL in 1939 to form the Birth Control Federation of America (BCFA). In 1942 the name of the BCFA was changed to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
The emphasis became parenthood, as though it was some sort of fertility clinic rather than a dispenser of birth control (and later also of abortion). And yet the name wasn’t exactly a lie, because most people who use birth control do intend to become parents some day and that day will hopefully be planned.
The term “reproductive health” for the pro-abortion crowd is something like that. It’s at least half true in that the death rate for women who undergo legal abortions is lower than the death rate for women who give birth. Obviously, that statistic only focuses on the pregnant woman and ignores the enormous fact that the woman’s fetus is being killed in the process, a fetus which had the extremely likely potential to be born as a baby and whose life is being snuffed out instead. But I think that the different death rates for women undergoing abortions versus those who give birth would almost certainly be the core of an argument someone might mount to justify the term “reproductive health” for abortion.
But, as “Another Mike” points out, what’s “reproductive” about it? Well, nothing really, no more than birth control is about “parenthood.”
But the term “reproductive health” also has the advantage of being quite generic and non-specific. Listeners may not even realize that it’s abortion that’s being discussed. In their minds, it could certainly include birth control, and they may even believe that implies that a person who’s against abortion would be likely to be against birth control, although that combination presently applies only to a small minority. But hey, what kind of monster would be against something as innocuous as “reproductive health” for women (or pregnant people, or whatever nomenclature they’re promoting to replace the word “women” these days)?
The term “reproductive health” for “abortion” is also akin to euphemisms such as “undocumented” for “illegal,” and so many other such labels that seek to soften and reframe the thing that is actually being described. The left doesn’t consider this a side issue of little importance, it considers the naming of things to be extremely important in shaping perceptions and in leading people to support the left’s desired political and policy decisions.
In fact, all political parties are interested in what things are called; it’s certainly a common propaganda tool. I think the left is generally far better at it than the right, though, and far more duplicitous.
Characteristically insightful post. My own (recent) view of the name “Planned Parenthood” is “Planned Un-Parenthood” because the organization seems to devote so much effort to limiting or preventing the creation of families.
But “Planned Un-Parenthood” lacks the slick anodyne quality at which the Left excels.
I suspect that many people don’t really know what Planned Parenthood does.
About ten years ago, I was talking to my officemate at work, a dear friend. She was pro-life. I said something like, “I’ll bet [fill in name of person here] doesn’t even know that Planned Parenthood is the biggest abortion provider in the US.” My friend said, “I didn’t know that.” She was a pro-life Democrat and probably never saw any news stories that did not come from Democrat outlets, so she had no idea of what was really behind the name “Planned Parenthood.”
Propaganda is very effective. And that’s why “reproductive health” is the preferred term in pro-choice circles.
“Pro-choice” itself is a brilliant example of propaganda, too.
Even “birth control” is an example. It used to be that Catholic apologists called it “birth prevention.”
Don’t forget “returning citizen” as a euphemism for x-con.
“But I think that the different death rates for women undergoing abortions versus those who give birth would almost certainly be the core of an argument someone might mount to justify the term “reproductive health” for abortion.”
How do you know the death rates for women undergoing abortions?
The slippery “health of the mother” exceptions written into most if not all and every abortion control legislation appear to me also to be entangled in this “reproductive health” rhetoric, a sort of back and forth (mutually reciprocal) reinforcement.
Joe:
Perhaps you missed the fact that I included a link there.
“There are two phases of life that Communists take over. One is control over money, and two is control over words/language. They are fast taking over all the nice words, all the nice language of the Christian world, and they are taking them to themselves and giving them new connotation so that when they talk to the world they are saying one thing which is understood by their followers, but to our ears it sounds like the things which we should be saying.” — Dr. Bella Dodd (lawyer, union activist, USA communist)
***
Does better marketing mean we should ignore the purpose and actions of an organization/ concept because the new name sounds “beneficial”?
• Eugenics = American Birth Control League = Planned Parenthood Federation of America
• Anarchist = Weatherman = Antifa
• Marxism = Black Lives Matter
• Balkanization = Diversity
• Anthropogenic Global Warming = Global Warming = Climate Change
• Citizen/ Social Score = Credit Score/ Rating
• New World Order = Great Reset = Build Back Better
• Govt Papers = Passport = QR Code
Planned Parenthood started out providing birth control products, which I think is fine. Then they began doing abortions and have been successful in stopping local authorities from requiring the abortion doctor have hospital privileges in the area. This implies that there are no complications to abortion, which is a lie. Then, they started selling the corpses of the aborted fetuses and it became big business. The money is there and they are a huge contributor to Democrats.
I am actually pro-choice with limits. The 15 week limit sounds about right, I agree that “health of the mother” has been grossly abused.
I saw a bit of Treas. Sec. Janet Yellen’s testimony to congress on TV. Here is the clip.
She does mention “reproductive health” but her bigger point is that the pending Supreme Court decision threatens women’s and the nation’s economic health.
This line caught my ear.
We believe that eliminating the right for women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades.
To Neo’s point about the importance of language, I noticed that Yellen is reading her script extremely carefully. “Eliminating the right for women to make decisions” is semi-accurate at least in terms of a national right. Or course, it is only a right to some particular decisions that a woman might make concerning that topic.
______
Mike K.
I’m not strongly anti-abortion in terms of early terminations, though the slippery slope argument applies here. However, …
My understanding is that Planned Parenthood began with Margaret Sanger who was infamously in favor of extreme forms of eugenics. See this. I had seen a documentary a very long time ago purporting to document the forced sterilizations of Latin American women by US activists or agents in the first half of the 20th century because of their supposedly substandard racial heritage. Or perhaps it was an economic argument. I can’t find a quick confirmation of that online, although the linked article does mention forced sterilizations in other contexts.
}}} It’s at least half true in that the death rate for women who undergo legal abortions is lower than the death rate for women who give birth. Obviously, that statistic only focuses on the pregnant woman and ignores the enormous fact that the woman’s fetus is being killed in the process, a fetus which had the extremely likely potential to be born as a baby and whose life is being snuffed out instead.
Indeed, pretty certain that the “death rate for humans involved” for abortions is well above that of live births, @ 50%+ “for a given value of ‘human'”.
}}} It doesn’t seem odd. It seems rather typical of the left, which likes to call things by names that are at least somewhat Orwellian if not full Orwellian and that mean something different than their titles would imply.
Indeed, the better example of how The Left does things is to consider the Soviet-Marxist tactic:
“East Germany” had the official name of “Deutsche Demokratische Republik“, aka, the “German Democratic Republic”. Even the most partisan examination made it blatantly obvious that it was neither Democratic nor a Republic. But the PostModern Left and their progenitors, Soviet-Marxists, attached far more importance to the usage of words than the validity of their applied meanings in any given case. For them, the word used meant the actual thing… regardless of its inappropriateness.
Hence Orwell’s
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
The precedent and antecedent are usually diametrically opposed, and if not, at least harshly disconnected and generally mutually exclusive… but the use of “is” necessarily equates them directly, which a rational mind grasps is impossible and thus rejects… To the PostModern Left, however, The word is more important than the validity of its application. Rationality is subsumed to the favor of using words to confuse and create issues in the mind of the opponent. Power over the opponent is the goal. The error of the opponent is not rejecting their idiotic word games at the start. The end is always “Four Lights”, because you’re always playing their game, with their endlessly variable “Calvinball” rules. The only way to win is not to play.
The Democrat bill to “codify” Roe failed its procedural vote today, 51-49, with Joe Manchin voting with the Republicans. Manchin pointed out, correctly, that this would not “codify” Roe as it stands, but would expand it, invalidating any state law restricting abortion before 24 weeks and providing for a “health” exception later than that, which is a loophole allowing the procedure at any point.
For commenter Mike K, and others, who are limited pro-choice, there is (in my opinion) really nothing unreasonable about a twelve to fifteen week limit, with a provision for severe medical emergencies thereafter.
So all Chuck Schumer has accomplished with this vote is to label all Dem senators other than Manchin as pro-abortion extremists, ahead of an election which is likely to be very negative for his party.
There’s also the very similar term “reproductive justice”, which is essentially a code phrase for abortion. But it’s more “equity” flavored than “reproductive health”.
@Mike K, @ TommyJay
Does better marketing mean we should ignore the purpose and actions of an organization/ concept because the new name sounds “beneficial”?
• Eugenics = American Birth Control League = Planned Parenthood Federation of America
***
1917 – Margaret Sanger’s journal The Birth Control Review was primarily devoted to the legalization and spread of voluntary birth control. However, the main theme running through the journal was eugenics.
1920 – Margaret Sanger’ Woman and the New Race: “I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization.” “The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”
1923 – Margaret Sanger founds American Birth Control League and Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau, which later become Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
1932 – Margaret Sanger’ “My Way to Peace” presents Sanger’s essential eugenics platform. It argues that to preserve racial hygiene, the government should enact three coercive measures. (see link provided by @TommyJay)
1932 – Margaret Sanger’s journal The Birth Control Review: “THE AMERICAN BIRTH CONTROL LEAGUE. Its Aim: To promote eugenic birth selection throughout the United States so that there may be more well-born and fewer ill-born children ? a stronger, healthier, more intelligent race … and in order that those who are physically and mentally unsound may use birth control to have fewer or no children”
1960 – FDA approves birth control pill
1970 – Abortion was legalized in New York (NY) – American Birth Control League was founded in 1923
2017 – The overwhelming majority of Planned Parenthood businesses, almost nine out of ten (88%), are in urban areas as defined by the US Census Bureau
1966 – Margaret Sanger dies
Kate:
Yes, originally when I wrote my post about “codifying” Roe, I was going to put in a part that pointed out that even that phrase was an attempt to soften what they were trying to do in that bill.
I think Schumer felt he had to do this to play to his base. Without them, the Democrats have no chance. But they have plans beyond this, I believe – maybe I’ll write a post about that tomorrow.
“The term “reproductive health” for “abortion” is also akin to euphemisms such as “undocumented” for “illegal,” and so many other such labels that seek to soften and reframe the thing that is actually being described.” neo
Euphemisms are indeed employed by the duplicitous, by skilled liars. To lie is to knowingly tell an untruth. It is literally to oppose truth and that is the first step toward the embrace of evil.
Sir Walter Scott’s truism, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive” most fully applies to the weaver. For lies beget lies and inevitably draw the liar into evil’s web.
I missed mentioning a somewhat obvious point about that Janet Yellen clip in my above comment. Any possible negative economic effects of the sort she blathers on about could only happen if significant numbers of women who want abortions won’t be getting them under an Alito decision. I just don’t see that happening, especially if Lori Lightfoot has the Chicago taxpayer paying all their bills.
human sacrifice, something out of babylonian horrors, it’s not too far to say that they desire the dissolution of this nation, and some slouching beast rising from the mire, like cloverfield,
Rush Limbaugh was the first Republican I recall who turned the name game back on the Democrats, and he was brilliant at it. And the fact that Rush’s terms typically had a bit of humor in them made Democrats even more apoplectic.
By the way, for those of you unaware, Rush’s long time producer, James Golden (a.k.a. Bo Snerdley) has a daily radio show on WABC in New York and he’s very talented. The show is also available as a podcast.
https://wabcradio.com/podcast/bo-snerdley-james-golden/
Every Tuesday he does 15 to 20 minutes with Mark Steyn and I highly recommend taking 1/672nd out of your busy weeks to give that episode a listen. It’s typically quite amusing.
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
@ Wesson >
In 1974, at the height of Watergate, I was part of a production of “Alice in Wonderland” for which the script was literally an abridged copy of Carroll’s book.
When we got to this segment, the actor playing Humpty Dumpty made the iconic V-for-victory sign familiar from Nixon’s campaign appearances, and intoned, “Let me make one thing perfectly clear…” before continuing with the lines you quoted.
Always brought down the house.
Nixon on Laugh-In:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e9iWizfsm8
“Reproductive health” is the normalised version. When brandon commented on the Texas law he referred to women being denied “reproductive care”, which is a much more offensive euphemism for abortion.
From the “death rate” link:
>> The pregnancy-associated mortality rate among women who delivered live neonates was 8.8 deaths per 100,000 live births. The mortality rate related to induced abortion was 0.6 deaths per 100,000 abortions
I’m left wondering what “pregnancy-associated” and “related to induced abortion” each means. Are they truly comparable statistics?
As someone who was dual trained (nurse/midwife) as part of my medic specialty (regularly delivering health-care in rural, back-water third-world conditions), and working as such ‘at home’ for about ten years post ‘retirement’ I can honestly state of the thousands of births I attended (including many with complications from severe other health issues, as well as birth complications and literally hundreds assisted/supervised/supported in Sub-Saharan Africa) I never, not once, had (or heard of locally or regionally) a mother die. Okay, so those with major issues (in the first world) would have been admitted to hospital but …
Death rates during pregnancy are much like covid deaths. Here’s the definition:
“However, a maternal death is defined internationally as a death of a woman during or up to six weeks (42 days) after the end of pregnancy (whether the pregnancy ended by termination, miscarriage or a birth, or was an ectopic pregnancy) through causes associated with, or exacerbated by, pregnancy (World Health Organisation 2010).”
Mealy mouthed, allowing for ‘interpretation’ and manipulation much!
Whereas the totals from abortion are for during the procedure and immediate (days) later only (directly related to the ‘procedure’).
You might also consider that abortion is an almost exclusively first-world issue, so that’ll skew the figures ‘a bit’ too.
Comparing apples to oranges and oh so convenient, you think?
Reproductive health/choice/freedom/etc. are all deadly, Orwellian terms. Every abortion kills a child who has already been reproduced. If two humans hadn’t reproduced the child, then would be nothing for the Molech-worshipers to kill.
I have an idea: Instead of calling it Planned Parenthood, we should start calling it Planned Barrenhood. That would be more accurate and descriptive.
May I suggest, dear readers, that many birth control methods are actually abortifacients. If you consider that life starts at conception, pharmaceuticals and hardware prevent implantation and thus cause the death or abortion of the fertilized egg. In other words, women using birth control are participating in an abortion. Same goes for couples or individuals destroying frozen embryos which were saved to circumvent reproduction problems. If you believe that abortion is murder, you would be wise to renew your own birth control usage.
that many birth control methods are actually abortifacients. If you consider that life starts at conception, pharmaceuticals and hardware prevent implantation and thus cause the death or abortion of the fertilized egg.
The IUD prevents implantation. I think there are contentions that certain types of b/c pill make the endometrium less hospitable to a zygote and are thus abortifacient even if their main function is to suppress ovulation. Do not know what a literature review on the question would reveal.
Wayne:
Never heard that before.(not) Thanks for sharing.
Killing a unique human regardless of age is murder. Period.
And we are all unique! See the DNA.
A new—and inspired—twist to the abortion “argument”:
“Inflation reinforces the need for abortion.”
https://instapundit.com/519890/
Almost funny…
Proudly perverse!
Cutting edge of deviant…
But that’s just another reason why inflation is a feature, not a bug (isn’t it?)….
AesopFan,
You have an interesting past.
This discussion brings to mind the Bill Clinton impeachment quote “It depends what the definition of ‘is’ is.” Which actually was a reasonable response to a lawyer’s imprecise question. Taken out of context the quote was misleading.
Slick Willy, ever the stickler for the finer points of law and sex.
What another Arkencide?
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/05/12/former-clinton-special-adviser-who-admitted-epstein-to-wh-seven-times-dies-n563815