By Judie Brown
A recent email suggested that pro-life people could start “winning” by simply changing our message. Of course that would mean ending our relationship with politicians and renewing our friendship with Christ, the Lord. After all, the record shows that political figures base everything they do on the art of compromise, and innocent babies, not to mention the impaired and the elderly, deserve much more. Language often makes the difference in how a stranger understands what we are saying.
But society is more concerned with words that misguide and otherwise skew someone’s perspective. When animal rights activists, for example, are striving to change attitudes, they talk about no-kill shelters or second chance options for animals.
Yet human rights activists, especially those defending the preborn, are victims of media distortions. There are terms used to describe what we do that are downright erroneous. They include the “abortion debate” or undoing “abortion rights,” not to mention striving to attain “abortion restrictions.” Such phrases make it sound like there is no baby in the picture, only a word that can mean whatever the individual wants it to mean.
Our culture, with the media leading the way, has deemed it acceptable to discuss a woman’s “right” to kill her baby without ever acknowledging the wrongness of the act. The silent but real person who lives and grows once her life begins with that first cell has all but been buried in rhetorical mumbo jumbo. But it is much more than that.
It is as though a baby who is preparing to be born is a deadly enemy who must be eradicated because the world no longer wants to consider, let alone accept, the fact that sexual intercourse has results that can present a couple with their parenthood, whether they have planned on it happening or not. In other words, sex without consequences, no matter who must die, is the bottom line.
As Matthew Archbold explained years ago, “The myth of consequence-free sex has led to millions of abortions, heartbreak, single parent families, rampant disease, and other calamities.”
The media disagrees, telling the public that “most women in the US worry that abortion bans could put them or a loved one in danger.”
Close your eyes and imagine a little baby holding a pistol to the head of her mother and you get a graphic image of what the media is trying to do with those words.
While common sense suggests that a female is only capable of getting pregnant in the first place if she has sexual relations with a male (or intentionally through IVF), the press finds nothing credible in those words. They prefer to make the baby the aggressor!
Obviously, that is what happens when words are used to create an image rather than to tell the truth.
My friends, not much has changed in that regard. Nearly 20 years ago I wrote, “In reality, pro-lifers are all about choice, legitimate choices that harm no one and may even help to advance our civilization. For pro-lifers, real choice is defined in ‘the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’”
And today I would add that in our time, this begins with a simple act of defending the voiceless.
Over the last 20 years, millions more have died, have been put in harm’s way, and have been denied their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
In a word, they are dead—killed under the aegis of choice in a society that has forgotten the word respect.