I dived down Alice’s rabbit hole after seeing this head-exploder on Twitter/”X”. Planned Parenthood really is evil. It wants to kill as many unborn human beings as possible by bombarding vulnerable women with lies and euphemisms. I went to its website and couldn’t find the illogical nonsense above anywhere on that promotional and fundraising site, but there are many almost as absurd assertions:
- “The U.S. Supreme Court is now dominated by justices hostile to our freedom.” If anything, this Court is more determined to preserve individual liberty than any preceeding court in memory, notably by reining in the power of federal agencies.
- “[I]n June 2022, the court took away our federal constitutional right to abortion.” There never was a constitutional right to abortion, because Roe was a legally indefensible exercise of judicial activism and legislation.
- “[I]t goes against the will of the American people, 80% of whom believe that abortion should be legal.” The Court didn’t say abortion was illegal. The Court says it isn’t a right. The public is too ignorant to grasp the distinction, but Planned Parenthood is deliberately trying to make it dumber: they can have more babies killed that way.
- “This ruling robbed us of our power to make personal decisions about our own bodies, and gave that control to politicians.” No it did not. Women have the power not to get pregnant. No American has the power to take an innocent human life because it is inconvenient or its existence is badly timed. In a republic, the people delegate their lawmaking to elected representatives. That is the Constitution.
- “Reproductive freedom means every person gets to decide what’s right for their own body. No exceptions.” Ah yes, the big lie. “Every person”…except the vulnerable, genetically unique, innocent and powerless person who others get to decide that being dead is what’s “right for their own body.”
But “Abortion is gender-affirming care” is worst of all. Planned Parenthood is just parroting a deliberate euphemism for the ugly process of distorting an individual’s mind, organs, hormones and secondary sex characteristics to conform with the current social pathogen of gender-warping, the opposite of “gender affirming.” How could an abortion be gender-affirming? I guess the theory is that if you have an abortion you are female, so congratulations? But being pregnant (without some weird zygote implantation process worthy of Dr. Frankenstein) is also gender-affirming. Is Planned Parenthood saying that a woman who really wants to affirm her womanhood should have an abortion? It would be in character for the group, which is Machiavellian.
Lisa Carr, an abortion opponent writes in part at Victory Girls:
“The language is Orwellian, really. The language has gone from “women’s healthcare” to “choice”, to “bodily autonomy”, to “reproductive freedom” through the years. Now, abortion is “gender-affirming care”. Everything BUT what it actually is.Mutilation of body parts is “gender-affirming”. Murder of an innocent and perfectly-formed CHILD is also “gender-affirming”. Planned Parenthood is not only mutilating lives but language here and this is very dangerous and indicative of the depths to which we’ve lowered. May God help us.”
I think PP is playing cognitive dissonance games. It is working hard to find an metaphor for abortion that leaves out the icky unborn baby-killing part and paints a positive, appealing picture for the Woke and easily indoctrinated. Apparently the little matter of some actual connection to abortion is now dispensable, which is great for abortion promotion. Abortion is a romantic walk on a warm Hawaii beach! Abortion is a basket of golden retriever puppies! Abortion is sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows!
Meanwhile, according to the US Abortion Data Dashboard, the number of abortions—that is, deaths of human beings who would be alive today if given the chance—has increased each year from 2023. Last year’s total: 1,129,650. Oh, but if only it could have been more! (I’m channeling the ghouls at Planned Parenthood.)
If women want to keep killing the unborn, there’s nothing more that can be done about it, is there?
Another discouraging note: approximately 40% of abortions eliminate black babies, in a U.S. population that is less than 14% black.
Ethics Alarms 
Where are the shrill cries of genocide?
Such a sorrowful state of family in America.
“Another discouraging note: approximately 40% of abortions eliminate black babies, in a U.S. population that is less than 14% black.”
Isn’t Planned Parenthood a eugenics outfit? Isn’t keeping the number of little nappy-headed children as low as possible part of the plan?
“Isn’t Planned Parenthood a eugenics outfit?”
Margaret “Human Weeds” Sanger, with whom HRC is AWED, would prefer you soften that up a bit…
PWS
AWED
Raw numbers have increased, how does that track per capita though? Maybe there’s a hidden decrease.
The culture war won’t be won overnight. Abolitionists didn’t get the slaves freed in a day.
Yeah, but when we’re talking about living human beings, I think the raw numbers are the most meaningful.
No doubt it’s hideous and I don’t downplay the horror.
I really don’t know why the Pro-Life people do not use the linguistic methods of the Left.
Label liberal white women as advocates of eugenics and associate them with Dr Mengele.
Promote abortion for black women by giving the special body affirming rights to kill their offspring and watch how fast the activist groups claim racism and genocide.
If you want to stop or substantially something tie the activity to something the Left hates. If Trump came out tomorrow and promoted abortion the numbers would fall dramatically.
This is the biggest hypocrisy of the Left. They tie themselves into knots over origins, claiming that “Rule of Thumb” shouldn’t be used because it apparently used to be the measure of how a wife could legally be beaten. They equate “Cotton Pickin'” with slavery. They call words, such as “buck” or “master” racially insensitive despite their other meanings.
We’ll never reach the “Star Trek”-level of enlightenment (and I’m not sure we should), but that terrible episode “The Savage Curtain” in which Abraham Lincoln shows up has a gem of an interaction between Abe and Uhura. Upon receiving an apology from Lincoln who initially called her a Negress, Uhura explains that there was no offense because “In our century, we’ve learned not to fear words”.
Yet, these same people, who do indeed fear words, regardless of the intent or context, have allowed generations of life to be wiped out, including significant numbers of black lives because of their devotion to organization formed by a woman whose goal was limit the number of black people in our country.
I guess black lives in the womb don’t matter.
To Chris and AM, the thing to keep in mind is that the word games are about deception and control. Abortion is “reproductive rights” so that the horror of abortion can be disguised, and opponents of abortion can be labelled as against “women’s right.” Once that derision sticks, opponents can either grovel or stand firm, and in the latter case, that means a mob can be raised against them.
As Instapundit keeps re-posting, they don’t try to kill you because you’re a Nazi. They call you a Nazi so they can kill you.
I’m sure there’s an actual body of people who get bent out of shape over what they are actually called (I’m thinking of some of the videos of some trans person going spare over being misgendered). But most people are not going spare the time and energy worrying about being called something, especially if it has been in the common lexicon as unoffensive until five minutes ago. No, the real reason these “snowflakes” are up in arms over words is try to beat down anyone they can, trying to control what they think and what they say. After all if they can get you to call it “reproductive rights,” “gender-affirming care,” “undocumented immigrants,” “person who menstruates,” then they have already won a battle over how you think and act.
The Right in general doesn’t use those tactics, because the Right in general does not want to control other people. (Which is funny, because opposing abortion is recast as “wanting to control women’s bodies”…) What I have seen opponents of abortion do is continually draw the conversation back to the fact that abortion ends a unique human life. That’s the fundamental horror of abortion, why abortion should be made illegal, and what abortion advocates can’t really defend against.
Tying abortion to eugenics is not really a winning argument. Whatever the racist motivations Margaret Sanger had in founding Planned Parenthood, I certainly don’t see evidence that that is Planned Parenthood’s goal today. No, PP would like there to continue to be enough people around to continue having abortions, since providing abortions (and potentially profiting from the harvesting of fetal remains, if you believe the undercover videos that came some years back) is so lucrative for them. And, if abortions are meant to be genocidal, they aren’t working very well. The black population, for all the self-destructive behavior going on in certain subgroups, has continued to rise. Census data shows that the black population has almost doubled since 1970, and has even seen a modest uptick in proportion of the population (from 11% to 12%).
As for tying abortion to Trump, such as were Trump to decide to promote abortion, I would wager dollars to donuts that people’s appetite for consequence-free sex is stronger than any amount of Trump derangement.
Once again a well reasoned rebuttal to my sentiments.
However, I will disagree somewhat about using words to control; such that the Right does not wish to control. If you believe that persuasive language is synonymous to control then there is no point trying to change minds if we do not wish to change or otherwise control albeit indirect control behaviors.
To change minds you must attach meanings the other side understands. In this case the verbiage should be simply some women want the right to choose to kill unwanted babies. In addition, simply say that men who favor a woman’s right to choose to kill unwanted babies do so to avoid responsibility themselves. Say it often enough and loud enough it will counteract the euphemisms espoused by the pro choice crowd.
Chris,
I think I follow your argument, but I disagree that persuasive language in the hopes of changing minds is akin to the rebranding we continually see from the Left. Specifically, using persuasive language, argumentation, and calling attention to what is actually behind the euphemisms engages critical thinking, whereas the rebranding is meant to bypass critical thinking with direct appeals to the cognitive dissonance scale. Call abortion “reproductive rights” so that fight against abortion can be rebranded as “taking away women’s rights”, and everyone knows that taking away rights is bad.
But you are right that the pro-life movement needs to keep vocalizing what is going on to break through the pro-abortion euphemisms. Abortion is the deliberate killing of a human being. Abortion is choosing to kill for expedience.
To be fair, “Pro-Life” is as deceitful as “Pro-Choice.” I’ve noted this in many posts. Everyone is “pro life,” it’s like “black lives matter.” The honest term is “anti-abortion.”
Jack,
I have one quibble with saying the honest term is “anti-abortion,” because the Pro-Life movement covers more than abortion. It is also usually opposed to euthanasia, and there’s an extensive debate on whether one should be anti-capital-punishment to qualify as Pro-Life. There’s also a focus on adoption and resources for struggling mothers, which is related to the abortion issue, but is more expansive because it addresses the common complaint that conservatives don’t care about babies after they are born.
I guess I have second quibble, in that while I’ll concede that “Pro-Life” as a term has that tautological feature that “black lives matter” and other slogans have, it at least is a direct address to what is at stake, whereas “Pro-Choice” is deliberately obfuscating what is at stake, namely a human life. I think this is sufficient to prove that “Pro-Choice” is more deceitful.