How incapable of self-awareness must an extreme abortion advocate be to accuse abortion opponents of manipulating the language to mislead the public about what they are really talking about? The entire pro-abortion movement has been built on linguistic deceit of the most flagrant kind for decades, with abortion being referred to as “choice.” This is deliberate deception, as if proposals to prevent the killing of nascent living human beings have as their objective a broad rejection of autonomy, rather than an ethical respect for human life, no matter how early in that life an individual may be.

“Choice,” of course, could be used to misrepresent the target of any criminal law. People choose to murder other people. They choose to steal. The objective of all laws is to limit the choices citizens have that will cause harm to others or society.

Jessica Valenti publishes the newsletter “Abortion, Everyday”.” and was recruited by the New York Times to criticize the Republican Party for testing “out constantly changing talking points and messages on abortion in an attempt to make its anti-abortion policies sound less extreme.” From an ethics perspective, anti-abortion policies are not intrinsically “extreme” because it is abortion itself that embodies extreme utilitarianism—the end justifies the means, with the end being fulfilling women’s desire to escape the limitations imposed by their biological function in the continuation of the species by being able to exercise the “choice” of eliminating children in the womb before they impose responsibilities and obligations their mothers prefer to avoid. Naturally, an abortion activist cannot be expected to acknowledge the dishonest rhetoric of her own position, but she should not be the one to chide her opponents for doing exactly what has been standard operating procedure for her own allies.

That does not mean that she doesn’t make valid points in her essay, “Abortion Bans by Any Other Name Are Still Abortion Bans,” though the title itself is manipulative: “bans” is a pejorative term for limits, regulations and restrictions, and currently au currant in the mainstream media to make efforts to place rational restrictions on the kind of books included in school libraries seem like government censorship, which it is not. Valenti properly flags the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists in its “Glossary of Medical Terms” for suggesting that doctors tell a woman whose fetus has a fatal anomaly that the condition is“life limiting,” and that a woman whose pregnancy is nonviable should be told that it is “pre-viable.” Similarly, it is offensive that Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently signed signed a bill referring to “the provision of certain medical treatment to a pregnant woman” to avoid using the term “abortion.” However, I don’t want to hear such complaints from an enthusiastic representative of an unethical movement that has meticulously hidden what its cause is really about: sacrificing human life for “the greater good.” Abortion is indeed an ethics conflict and a difficult one to resolve, but it seems easy to resolve to those trusting the rhetoric of advocates who are not honest about the legitimate interests and concerns of its adversaries.

Indeed, Valenti frequently lets the mask slip in her diatribe, with such statements as “Consider the expression “postbirth abortion” — the idea is that abortion involves killing newborns. This is, to be clear, a lie, but that hasn’t stopped candidates like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis from repeating it.”

No, the expression “postbirth abortion” accurately describes a long-common and seldom-discussed medical practice of allowing sick or sometimes seriously deformed newborns to die without any medical intervention, and sometimes putting them out of their misery more quickly—yes, killing newborns. As a friend of mine, a doctor of pediatrics, once told me: “When a seriously deformed baby was born, the phrase you sometime heard was “Get the bucket,” meaning a bucket of water in which the newborn would be tossed for a quick and painless death. Valenti’s claim that “this is, to be clear, a lie” is itself a lie, unless she believes that Virginia physician Ralph Northam, then Governor of Virginia, was lying when he said of severely deformed babies, “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother”? What else could he have possibly been describing other than a “postbirth abortion”?

I can write about Republicans, conservatives and anti-abortion advocates misleading the public or trying to by using euphemisms and cover-phrases. Jessica Valenti can’t, not until she acknowledges her own similar deceptions and promises to be transparent and honest in the future. That’s how ethics estoppel works. Until she does that, her real message is “this practice is ethical when I do it, but it’s wrong if it is done in pursuit of goals I oppose.”

Got it.

Shut up.