REFORMING HOW WE SPEAK...
... about pregnancy and abortion.
As someone who is staunchly pro-life and has a journalist's passion for communication, I have become fascinated with how people speak about pregnancy and abortion. I recall talking to my wife about this when she was pregnant with our first child. I remember telling her that I found it interesting that we refer to ourselves as being X years old when, in fact, we are X years old plus the additional amount of time we spent in the womb between conception and delivery.
Many may this as just another classic example of my nitpicking, but I think it reveals something quite profound. Many, if not most, people (including pro-life advocates) speak of the pre-delivery child in a different manner than the post-delivery child. We do this all the time. We may not realize it, but the way we speak of the pre-delivery child and those in relation to the child may cause very subtle, yet real, difficulties in how we try to speak to those who support the "right" of abortion.
Take for example the phrase “She is expecting a child.” How many times have we heard this phrase? Sure, it is innocent enough, and most of us know that people are implying nothing more than that the mother is expecting that what is currently in her womb will one day be in her arms. But the fact remains that the mother is already with child. She is not "expecting child," she is expecting one day to embrace with her arms the child that is currently within her.
Similar phrases would include “she is going to be a mother” and “she has a child on the way.” Problem is, the woman is already a mother. There is no “going to be” about it. She doesn’t have a child “on the way,” the child is very much here already.
So, Jeremiah, why all the fuss over something that most people generally understand? Simple: it all boils down to the fact that words, regardless of how subtle they may be, play a huge role in the formation of one's understanding of an issue as well as the framework of a debate. On a very subtle level, we have allowed many people to distinguish a post-delivery baby (child) from a pre-delivery baby (fetus). This has taken place gradually, and the way we speak about it reflects this fact.
It is my contention that unless we speak in a manner that better reflects the reality that what is in the womb is already a child, that the pregnant woman is already a mother, and that the baby is already here rather than on the way, the pro-abortion advocates will have a very real, yet subtle, leg to stand on. Rather than “killing a child the woman has,” they will continue to insist that abortions merely extract a fetus from a woman who "had a child on the way" and, were she not to have aborted the child, "would have become a mother."
Do I think that making radical changes like adding 9 months to what we refer to as our age is the answer? No. But I think we should seriously reflect on how we phrase things and the impact our words may have on setting the framework for the battlefield where the "culture of life" and "culture of death" come face-to-face to wage war over the lives of the unborn.
Read xanga comments regarding this post HERE.
As someone who is staunchly pro-life and has a journalist's passion for communication, I have become fascinated with how people speak about pregnancy and abortion. I recall talking to my wife about this when she was pregnant with our first child. I remember telling her that I found it interesting that we refer to ourselves as being X years old when, in fact, we are X years old plus the additional amount of time we spent in the womb between conception and delivery.
Many may this as just another classic example of my nitpicking, but I think it reveals something quite profound. Many, if not most, people (including pro-life advocates) speak of the pre-delivery child in a different manner than the post-delivery child. We do this all the time. We may not realize it, but the way we speak of the pre-delivery child and those in relation to the child may cause very subtle, yet real, difficulties in how we try to speak to those who support the "right" of abortion.
Take for example the phrase “She is expecting a child.” How many times have we heard this phrase? Sure, it is innocent enough, and most of us know that people are implying nothing more than that the mother is expecting that what is currently in her womb will one day be in her arms. But the fact remains that the mother is already with child. She is not "expecting child," she is expecting one day to embrace with her arms the child that is currently within her.
Similar phrases would include “she is going to be a mother” and “she has a child on the way.” Problem is, the woman is already a mother. There is no “going to be” about it. She doesn’t have a child “on the way,” the child is very much here already.
So, Jeremiah, why all the fuss over something that most people generally understand? Simple: it all boils down to the fact that words, regardless of how subtle they may be, play a huge role in the formation of one's understanding of an issue as well as the framework of a debate. On a very subtle level, we have allowed many people to distinguish a post-delivery baby (child) from a pre-delivery baby (fetus). This has taken place gradually, and the way we speak about it reflects this fact.
It is my contention that unless we speak in a manner that better reflects the reality that what is in the womb is already a child, that the pregnant woman is already a mother, and that the baby is already here rather than on the way, the pro-abortion advocates will have a very real, yet subtle, leg to stand on. Rather than “killing a child the woman has,” they will continue to insist that abortions merely extract a fetus from a woman who "had a child on the way" and, were she not to have aborted the child, "would have become a mother."
Do I think that making radical changes like adding 9 months to what we refer to as our age is the answer? No. But I think we should seriously reflect on how we phrase things and the impact our words may have on setting the framework for the battlefield where the "culture of life" and "culture of death" come face-to-face to wage war over the lives of the unborn.
Read xanga comments regarding this post HERE.
Labels: abortion, activism, baby, Bannister and Sutherby, Battle Creek, Bob Sutherby, culture, Jeremiah Bannister, Michigan, politics, pro-life, television
posted by Paleocrat at Friday, June 15, 2007
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