Abortion: Language belies Belief

I would like to weigh in briefly on the difficult issue of abortion from a different vantage point. What I have noticed is that our language all too often belies our societal “pro-choice” credo. Usually the media is very careful to express itself within the confines of pro-abortion orthodoxy. Thus, the entity carried in the womb is never a baby, but a fetus, lest we assign certain moral status that does not fit with the prevailing social policy. In unguarded moments, however, the media can slip into language that runs contrary to pro-choice sentiments.

The case in point today is the headline I just read “’Desperate’ Actress Becomes a Mother.” My first thought was “Gee, I didn’t know one of the stars of Desperate Housewives was pregnant,” assuming that one had given birth. On closer inspection, however, I discovered that one of the stars, Marcia Cross, who was recently married, has become pregnant.

Hold the phone.

If she is a mother, doesn’t that mean she has a child? To define her as such is to give a certain status to that which she carries. Certainly I recognize that the word can be used in a purely biological sense, such as with the “biological mother” of an adopted child. Yet even here the necessary modifier “biological” suggests that the word is laden with deeper significance. In common usage, “mother” indicates a relationship between a woman and her offspring, which is meant to entail love and nurture.

If a pregnant woman is a mother then that which she carries is her child. The term “fetus” merely indicates the stage of development such as “toddler” or “teenager.” The basic moral relationship is between the mother and child, not woman and fetus. And were she to have an abortion, then she is terminating the life of the child. And here, if she is killing her child we are in a moral world at odds with the prevailing notions of abortion.

Another instance of language belying belief is the anti-cigarette campaign a few years ago, in which pregnant women smoking was portrayed as not only the woman smoking, but the baby as well. (Although I cannot remember the exact language, the term “baby” was explicitly used, not “fetus.”) Further, the whole ad gave the sense that the pregnant woman who smoked was immoral, as it does all sorts of bad things to the baby. (And picture a moment coming upon a pregnant woman lighting up while sipping a margarita and then gauge your emotional response.)

But why is that inappropriate? What moral status does a fetus have that makes the woman’s actions immoral?

This all suggests one of two things to me:

First, the fetus has the status of child, together with the moral considerations implied, only to the extent that we, or perhaps more appropriately the pregnant woman, impute the status of child upon it. And when we give people the power to give or withhold the designation of personhood, we are getting into some pretty murky ethical waters. Either the fetus has a specific moral status or it doesn’t. To say that it does only when the parent or the California Dept. of Health says it does puts us on a slippery slope, the termini of which we have seen reflected in slavery, the Nuremberg laws, and apartheid. Sorry to be so blunt, but there it is.

Or else there is the second option. And that is that our common language of motherhood and children born and unborn reveals that in our heart of hearts we know the fetus is a child. And all the interesting linguistic constructs of the pro-abortion movement are, in the end, contrived obfuscation.