{"id":6704,"date":"2006-02-24T13:00:32","date_gmt":"2006-02-24T18:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6704"},"modified":"2006-02-24T13:00:32","modified_gmt":"2006-02-24T18:00:32","slug":"debating-abortion-through-choice-of-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/debating-abortion-through-choice-of-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Debating abortion through choice of words"},"content":{"rendered":"

Particularly over the last week or so, there have been several national news stories about abortion, spurred by the Supreme Court’s announcement<\/a> on Monday and the South Dakota legislature’s activities<\/a> all week. AlterNet’s Deanna Zandt makes a good case<\/a> that, at least as far as the politics goes, choice of words matter.<\/p>\n

It’s been frustrating for many of us to see a number of progressive folks referring to the type of abortion the ban deals with using a certain phrase that won’t be repeated here. Why? Lesson #1 in sociolinguistics: using the term reinforces the frame. Sure, that’s what the Republicans named their law, but it is grotesquely misleading and skews the debate away from what this ban is about: human rights, and more specifically, reproductive rights.<\/p>\n

A slightly better alternative to the conservative, misogynist frame that has been used by some is “late-term abortion.” Amie Newman noted in The Mix yesterday that this is also misleading, since “late” could also mean a blanket ban on whatever the speaker defines as “late.” Too much gray area here: “late” could mean anything after the first trimester, for example.<\/p>\n

Others have suggested that progressives should refer to the actual medical procedure that conservatives are seeking to ban — without provisions accounting for a woman’s health, which is often the only circumstance under which this procedure is performed — called dilation and extraction, or D&X. My own opinion lies here, since referring to the acronym would free up linguistic context for talking about the woman’s rights. However, a quick informal poll among friends showed me a few wrinkled noses at the word “extraction,” some saying that it conjured up something just as gruesome as the forced-birth side’s frame.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think Deanna is largely right here, but her column is open ended. A handful of conservative members of Congress and some far-right allies came up with the phrase “partial-birth abortion” because they saw political benefits to it. It’s not a medical term; it’s propoganda. Now, the phrase is ubiquitous, though most reporters at least use qualifiers such as “a procedure opponents refer to as…” or “so-called” in their news accounts.<\/p>\n

The problem, as Deanna touched on, is that abortion-rights advocates don’t have poll-tested phrases of our own when it comes to this controversy. Anyone have any ideas?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Particularly over the last week or so, there have been several national news stories about abortion, spurred by the Supreme Court’s announcement on Monday and the South Dakota legislature’s activities all week. AlterNet’s Deanna Zandt makes a good case that, at least as far as the politics goes, choice of words matter. It’s been frustrating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6704\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}