Beyond Life and Choice: A Call for Clarity

"Sometimes it is not what you say that matters but what you don't say," political consultant Frank Luntz wrote in the introduction to a list called "The 14 Words Never to Use."  Luntz specializes in emotional reactions and how they apply to political decision-making, and in particular, how the average person responds to the use of words.  Sometimes his polls discover markedly different percentages of the sample group supporting a particular course of action, based on the terminology used.  Far more people oppose a "death" tax than oppose an "estate" or "inheritance" tax.  "If you want to kill the estate tax," he advises his Republican readers, "call it a death tax."  The man on the street doesn't quite understand what "corporate transparency" even means, but everyone believes in "corporate accountability."  And the phrase "drilling for oil" conjures up images of "an old-fashioned oilrig that gushes up black goop," but there's something so clean and modern about "exploring for energy."

Perhaps no issue is more fraught with emotion than the abortion debate, and perhaps there is no argument in which both sides have engaged in quite so much verbal and ideological "framing" of this sort.  Both sides have been guilty of emotional appeals, selective use of evidence, red-herring arguments, and ad hominem attacks.  And each side seems to have its own language to describe what happens during an abortion, who and what is being acted upon, and even why it matters.  Sociolinguists have discovered that people feel more positively about an issue, whatever that may be, when it is framed in positive terms, so perhaps it's not surprising that both those who favor legal abortion on demand and those who oppose it most often prefer to refer to themselves as "pro-" something: "pro-choice" on one hand, and "pro-life" on the other.

I refuse to use either term.  I despise euphemism on principle; I believe in calling a thing by its name.  It's the words we're afraid to speak that have power over us.  Moreover, abortion is an issue that emcompasses both life and choice.  What's in dispute is the moral import of that life, and the moral significance of that choice.  To reduce the abortion question to a matter of either life or choice is an insult not only to well-meaning people on the opposite side of the issue, but to those who have been personally affected by it and didn't have the luxury of obviating the nuances with a neat turn of phrase.

I'm anti-abortion, but you won't hear me refer to myself as pro-life.  I believe that term is only correctly used by those who embrace a consistent life ethic, which, as I favor capital punishment in very select cases and euthanasia for those who thoughtfully request it, I cannot say I do.  In fact, there are many who lump opposition to euthanasia with opposition to abortion under the "pro-life" label, but relatively few of them take their belief in "life" so far as to oppose capital punishment, the slaughter of animals, or war, as a consistent life ethic would demand.  I've always considered it dangerous to lump issues together haphazardly in this manner (considering the number of Christians I've heard who always mention "abortion and homosexuality" in the same breath when discussing social evils, I'm not surprised how many gays and lesbians favor legalized abortion on principle simply because to oppose it seems somehow like being in bed with the enemy), and to slap a label on your platform that doesn't quite represent what it stands for is plainly dishonest.

I also despise the easy reversal employed by some self-identified pro-lifers (yes, I'm accusing people who share my viewpoint, on this issue at least, of low tactics!), dubbing the opposition "anti-life" or even "pro-death."  This is a gross reduction that aims to shut down thought by portraying a group of principled individuals, however misguided their principles might be, as cartoon villains, rejoicing in evil for its own sake.  I have a number of dear friends who identify as "pro-choice," and not one of them thinks of abortion as an innately good thing (though I know very well that there are people who do, which I have more to say about presently).

Using the term "pro-life," and denouncing the other side as murderous monsters, makes it easy for those of us who oppose abortion to rest smugly on our moral laurels, without taking it upon ourselves to promote and develop alternatives or work to change the societal norms that make abortion sometimes seem like a desirable choice.  How many folks are there who are positively aghast at the notion of teenagers being provided with condoms and taught to use them, who rant and rail against any family structure other than the traditional nuclear family presided over by a married husband and wife, then condemn the young woman who finds it easier to schedule an abortion than to let people she respects find out she's been sexually active?  Use of such weighted language makes it easy to demonize others, while doing nothing to examine our own attitudes.

I choose the term "anti-abortion" to describe my position.  Yes, I'm resigned to that politically off-putting "anti," because I think it's important to speak plainly about what I mean, and "pro-illegalization of medically unnecessary abortion" is just too wordy.  Ironically, even though framing one's position in "pro" terms is supposed to have a more favorable sound, I've never heard anyone object to being called "anti-abortion," even those who preferred to call themselves "pro-life" - but the moment I refer to the other side as "pro-abortion," I find myself in a heated debate over terminology.

"I'm not 'pro-abortion,'" I've been told, over and over again.  "I believe in a woman's right to choose."  I'm sick of hearing "choice" used as a euphemism for "abortion," as if that were the only kind of choice a person were ever faced with.  Whenever I hear someone say s/he believes in "a woman's right to choose," I always want to ask (and whenever possible, I do), "Choose what?"  "To choose" is a transitive verb, and "abortion" is the rarely-spoken object, the elephant in the room.

Self-professed pro-choicers often refer to their opponents as "anti-choice" or even "pro-coercion," and this is every bit as unfair as the use of "anti-life" or "pro-death."  I, for one, believe in choice.  I don't know anyone who doesn't.  I believe you have the right to choose soup or salad or spaghetti or a sandwich for lunch.  I believe you have the right to choose Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T, or to shun modern technology altogether.  I believe in school choice and cable choice.  I believe you have the right to choose if, when, and with whom you have sex, and what kind of sex (if any) to have.  If you're with someone of the other gender and both of you are of reproductive capability, you have the right to choose to conceive a new life together, or not.  If you choose not to, you have the right to choose the rhythm method, a barrier method, chemical contraception, permanent sterilization, or abstinence from any activity that could introduce semen into the vagina.  (I don't mean to state that all of these choices are equally wise, practical, desirable, or even necessarily in some cases ethical - just that they're legitimate choices.)  I also believe that some choices necessarily preclude other choices.  I choose not to go to jail, but if I commit a felony, that choice becomes meaningless.  Unwanted pregnancy is, in most cases, the direct and logical consequence of a person's choices.  (Fewer than ten percent of abortions, even according to the most liberal sources, are perfomed as a result of rape, maternal health concerns, or fetal abnormality; the actual number seems to be somewhere around two percent.)  I believe a pregnant woman has choices too.  I believe she has the right to keep her child or give it up for adoption.  I believe she has the right to be as involved in the adoption process as she wants to be, whether that means signing the papers immediately after delivery without ever looking at the baby, or cultivating a relationship with carefully selected adoptive parents who will encourage her to be active in the child's life.  If she chooses to keep her child, I believe she has the right to devote herself single-mindedly to motherhood or to pursue education and/or a career, and I believe she and her child deserve the social support systems in place that will keep them from falling through the cracks.

Abortion is just about the only thing I don't believe she has the moral right to choose!

Those who claim to be "pro-choice" surely don't believe that all choices are legitimate.  No one's speaking up for a thug's right to choose to make a living stealing cars, or a six-year-old's right to choose to have a beer with lunch, or a mother's right to choose to murder her ten-year-old child.  Granted, those are extreme examples - the equivalent of "But surely you don't believe a frail ten-year-old who was gang-raped by her father, uncle, and brother and ended up pregant with anencephalic quadruplets should have to carry that pregnancy to term?"  However, those who favor legal abortion often quite openly advocate restricting some kinds of choice.  For example, some of those who are most vocal about a woman's "right to choose" abortion staunchly oppose a pharmacist's right to choose not to participate in it by fulfilling prescriptions for chemical abortifacients.

"Pro-choice" sounds like a winning term, because in a society in which we are endlessly focused on individual rights, no one wants to be accused of limiting another person's freedoms.  The fact is, no one really believes there should be no limits on human behavior.  (Even the most flamboyantly nihilistic anarchist will take offense if you decide you have a right to steal his stereo or punch him in the nose.)  "A woman's right to choose" is simply a euphemism for "a woman's right to have an abortion."  If it really were all about personal freedom, pro-choicers would be as adamantly determined to make sure that no woman was ever coerced into an abortion as they are to keep abortion legal.  They would have been the first to express outrage when an undercover investigation by an anti-abortion group caught Planned Parenthood employees on camera offering advice to a man posing as a sex trafficker looking for confidential treatment, including abortions, for underage girls in his "care."  Instead, those who made the video were widely condemned for employing deceptive methods.

"But I don't believe women should be encouraged to get abortions, or anything like that," I'm told.  "So you can't say I'm 'pro-abortion.'  I just think they should be able to make the decision themselves."  To those who make this argument, I can only point out that to be in favor of something doesn't mean you believe it should be universal or compulsory, or even that it's right in every circumstance.  For example, I am pro-gay marriage.  That doesn't mean I believe that all gays should be encouraged to get married, or that any behavior is acceptable if it advances the gay-marriage cause, or that officiants should face legal repercussions if they refuse to solemnize same-sex weddings.  As a woman who was in an abusive relationship with another woman this time last year, and who is now very much in love with a man, I certainly don't believe that homosexual couples have any innate superiority to heterosexual pairs, or that only gays should be allowed to get married!  What I believe is that two people who want to spend the rest of their lives together, who happen to be of the same gender, should be able to get a marriage license - even though a same-sex marriage is not the right choice for me, or for a majority of the population.  If you believe that abortion is a valid option that should be available to those who feel it is right for them, you are pro-abortion, even if you'd never have (or encourage/support) one yourself.

Some who disdain the use of the term "pro-abortion" do so because they're well aware that there are people in this world who do view abortion as a fundamentally positive thing.  Radical feminists have repeatedly claimed that abortion is an empowering experience for women, a statement that is not only a slap in the face of every woman (I've known at least five personally) who has been tormented with guilt and grief in the aftermath of her "choice," but which also seemingly contradicts their professed intent to bring about a world in which abortion is "safe, legal, and rare" - if it's truly empowering, why should it be rare?  I've gotten into debates with trolls on an online anti-abortion forum who tried to persuade me that adoption is dangerous for the adoptee and for society as a whole; their arguments were transparently flawed, and it seems to me that if they really believed in women having choices, they shouldn't actively discourage an option that millions of women, unready for motherhood but uneasy about abortion, have embraced.  I'll never forget the time I brought the wrath of an entire college campus down upon my head (or so it felt at the time) for simply daring to suggest that abortion wasn't something to celebrate.  And then there's Ginette Paris, whose monograph The Sacrament of Abortion (later reissued under the much less offensive title The Psychology of Abortion) declares that abortion is a symbolic sacrifice to the archetypal principle represented by the goddess Artemis, and goes a long way toward making the absurd claims I've seen on some paranoid Christian anti-abortion websites sound almost plausible.

I can see why those whose support for abortion is much more reluctant, who've heard enough horror stories about wire coat hangers to conclude that legal abortion is a tragic social necessity, would want to distance themselves from adoption-bashers and Ginette Paris.  My knee-jerk reaction here - and yes, this is pure tu quoque with a hefty helping of overgeneralization on the side - is to tell "pro-choicers" that I will happily embrace their preferred terminology, so as to set them apart from the abortion-loving lunatic fringe, as soon as they learn to tell the mainstream anti-abortion movement apart from its lunatic fringe.  The overwhelming majority of abortion opponents soundly and unreservedly condemn any acts of violence against abortionists, abortion clinics, or the women who use them, yet regularly see themselves portrayed, in the mainstream media as well as in "pro-choice" propaganda, as murderous fanatics.  In my experience, there are more "pro-choicers" willing to use "celebrate" and "abortion" in the same sentence than there are "pro-lifers" who applaud the murder of a Barnett Slepian or George Tiller.  When you acknowledge that Eric Rudolph doesn't speak for me, I'd like to tell the indignant "pro-choicers," I'll acknowledge that Ginette Paris doeesn't speak for you.  Of course, this is an emotional response on my part, not a logical argument, and if that were all there were to it, I'd grit my teeth and leave the pro-abortion crowd to their euphemisms.

I'm not shy about my anti-abortion views - I believe abortion is a craven, irresponsible act that destroys a human life - which is why I'm sure what I have to say next would come as a shock even to those who know me well: I actually have more respect for some pro-abortion folks than I do for certain wishy-washy moderates I've known.  I'm not talking  about hypocrites, trolls, or Ginette Paris, who needs to be (figuratively! figuratively!) taken out and shot.  I'm talking about the likes of Camille Paglia, who embraces the "pro-abortion" label and scorns the use of "pro-choice" as "cowardly."  Although she supports "unconstrained access to abortion on demand," Paglia has, in her own words, "always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful" and "results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue."  Her contention that the individual's "absolute right to control his or her body" justifies making legal "the extermination of the powerless by the powerful" is contemptible, but I can't deny that Paglia has genuinely grappled with the ethical ramifications of what she believes.  Compare that to, say, my mother, who claims to believe that abortion is morally evil, but considers herself "pro-choice" because it's not her business to try to force anyone to agree.  On the surface, that may sound exactly like Paglia's position, but Paglia, an atheist who presumably doesn't conceive of "evil" as a moral absolute in the religious sense, is weighing innocent life against individual liberty, while my Christian mother is weighing innocent life against . . . the possibility of offending somebody.  Hiding behind the concept of "choice," she doesn't have to think too hard about the ramifications of her position.  She can vote for candidates who proudly proclaim their belief in abortion as a right, while distancing herself from the ugly reality of what happens in an abortion clinic.

What I want to say to her, and to everyone else who claims to be "pro-choice," is this: if you think it ought to be legal, why do you distance yourself from it?  Why is abortion too terrible a thing to admit outright you believe should be legal, but not terrible enough that it shouldn't be legal?  Are you ashamed of the word, or are you ashamed of the concept?  Are you afraid that if you were confronted head-on with the reality of that "choice" you believe in, you might not find it so easy to believe in anymore?  Why are so many of you offended when anti-abortion activists distribute pictures of aborted fetuses?  If you believe it should be legal, why can't you bring yourself to look it in the eye?

If you believe abortion should be legal - own it.  Take pride in it.  Get out from under that spineless euphemism of "choice."  Maybe you and I will never find common ground on this issue, let alone come to any sort of agreement.  But however much I may hate what you espouse, at the very least you'll finally have my respect.

How to Bark Abroad

When I was in elementary school, a teacher informed my class one day that in France, the sound a dog makes is written as "oua-oua."  One of my classmates raised her hand to ask: If a French dog came to the United States, would it learn to bark like an American dog?  Our teacher looked straight at the poor girl and sputtered, "Are you serious?"  Oh, the joys of onomatopoeia.

The only reference I could find online to this funny piece by Leslie Lieber and Charles D. Rice, which was first published in This Week Magazine in 1953, was a claim that it had been "widely anthologized."  Perhaps it has been, but I've only ever found it once, in one of my mother's old textbooks.  I reproduce it here for your enjoyment.

Leafing through a book in the Italian language the other day, we were suddenly brought up short by the following passage: "The little dog ran through the streets of Naples barking boo-boo, boo-boo, boo-boo at all the passers-by."

We expected the next sentence to announce that this dog who spouted boo-boo had been whisked away to the nearest canine psycho ward for observation.  But when the author failed to comment on this pooch's peculiar behavior, a disconcerting thought dawned on us.

Could it be that all the world doesn't see eye-to-eye on the fact that dogs say either bow-bow or woof-woof?  Could it be that roosters cock-a-doodle-do in one country and cock-a-doodle-don't in another?  We had always taken it for granted that even though the world was divided on many issues, at least everybody agreed that cows go moo and ducks say quack-quack.

Deciding that these questions merited a survey, we immediately phoned the Italian Embassy in Washington.  Our question as to how dogs bark on the Italian peninsula caused a flurry of embarrassment at the other end of the line.  A chargé d'affaires refused point-blank to bark over the telephone.  Finally, however, an underling agreed to bark.  It came through sharp and unmistakable: boo-boo, boo-boo (spelled in Italian bu-bu).

The news that 45,000,000 Italians are convinced that their dogs bark like Bing Crosby was provocative enough to warrant a full-scale investigation of the whole international barnyard.  So for the next few days, the telephone wires between us and foreign embassies, consulates, and U.N. delegations buzzed while diplomats alternately barked, neighed, mooed, roared, and meowed into the telephone.

We must admit that our hopes for world unity have not been greatly heartened by our findings.  Take the cow, for instance.  Here's a simple-minded galoot who has gone around for centuries uttering one measly word.  If you think people see eye-to-eye on what that word is, you're sadly mistaken.  Moo is American.  The French have the piquant notion that Bossy gives out with a nasal meuh (pronounced as "mur" in demur).

To give meuh a fair test, the writers eavesdropped on a shipment of Normandy cattle being unloaded from a transatlantic freighter.  All we can say is that these cows may have been saying meuh when they left Cherbourg, but they certainly were moo-ing like mad by the time they reached Hoboken, New Jersey.

In India, a country where cows are sacred, they never say moo.  Ganges cows say moe (rhymes with "schmoe").  This is pretty hard to believe.  In fact, if America had cows who said moe, we'd probably worship them, too.

Frankly, we don't know what to make of the rooster situation.  Maybe Americans are too sleepy at four o'clock in the morning to give a hoot what these squawky alarm clocks are shouting.  But we'll tell you one thing: The rest of the world is sharply opposed to us in the cock-a-doodle-doo department.  In fact, Europe presents a more united front on roosters than on any issue since Charlemagne.  Germany, Spain, and Italy are all agreed that what this brid is trying to say is kikiriki (kee-kee-ree-kee), quiquiriqui (kee-kee-ree-kee), and chicchiricchi (keek-kee-reek-kee), respectively.  In Spanish-speaking countries, young roosters say quiquiriqui, but the old ones go quiquiriqoooo.  France deviates slightly in favor of cocorico; Japan votes for kokekkoko - all far cries from cock-a-doodle-doo.

Most of the Western world goes along with the U.S. conviction that ducks quack.  But you can't argue a Chinese out of the certainty that Cantonese ducks say ap-ap.  Ducks in Japan go around spouting ga-ga; Arabic ones - bat-bat; Rumanian - mac-mac.  If you should ever go duck hunting in Germany and hear a quack-quack, don't be too quick to shoot.  In Germany, ducks go quack-quack all right - but so do frogs.

The cats of the world present a fairly solid front.  Should you, on a trip around the globe, be suddenly awakened in the middle of the night by a miaow, it would be pretty safe to throw a shoe at the back fence.  You would hit a cat.  This holds true everywhere except in Arabic-speaking countries and Japan.  A diplomat from The Land of the Rising Sun insisted that Nipponese cats say nyah-nyah.  In Arab territory. felines express themselves under ordinary circumstances with nau-nau.

The dog is supposed to be man's best friend.  That's why it's so flabbergasting how people have managed to garble this message this poor animal has been trying to convey all these years.  Spanish dogs, for instance, seem to have some kinship with American Indians.  In their native habitat, Spanish cockers say how-how (jau-jau written in Castilian).  French poodles in Alsace sit on the banks of the Rhine barking oua-oua (wa-wa).

As one goes progressively eastward, the ways of the dog become more and more inscrutable.  The Turks are under the impression that their hounds say hov-hov, hov-hov.  Nor is there any arguing with the Russians.  Wolfhounds invented barking.  And believe it or not, dogs in Moscow gather around the Kremlin at night and bay vas-vas, vas-vas at the moon.

It is in China, however, that the canine kingdom goes completely berserk.  We checked and double-checked our information.  In short, the people of China will swear on Confucius' name that their dogs say wang-wang, wang-wang.  Personally, the vision of settling down in any easy chair after dinner with a pipe, slippers, and a dog at our feet who looks up and says wang-wang does not appeal to our sense of domesticity.

We wouldn't want to conclude without mentioning one encouraging sign on the horizon.  The Nutka Indians of Vancouver Island claim that whales say hux under normal conditions, and peu-wu when excited.  Surprisingly enough, the Russian Eskimos living on the Siberian side of the Bering Strait are in perfect accord with the capitalistic Nutka tribe on this point.

From the mouth of a whale, then, comes our brightest promise of world accord.  The whale's hux is the only fact on earth regarding animal sounds which observers accept without a quibble.  If someday we could all attune our ears to accept hux as belonging to a whale - and not to the otter, the sloth, or the Afghanistan loon - it might be the rallying point for a glorious era of peace on earth and good will between men and all the animals in the zoos the world over.

Are You a Skid-Talker?

This article by Corey Ford appeared in 1954 in Reader's Digest.  I couldn't find it online anywhere, but it deserves to be available to a new generation of readers.  Enjoy.

"You can't blame me for making a mistake," my friend Bunny said the other day.  "After all, none of us are human."  I was trying to figure that one out when she added thoughtfully, "I may be wrong but I'm not far from it."

Bunny is a skid-talker.  Skid-talk is more than a slip of the tongue.  It's a slip of the whole mind.  In effect, it puts one idea on top of another, producing a sort of mental double exposure - and my friend Bunny is a master of the art.  When her husband, a prominent Hollywood director, completed a screen epic recently she told him loyally, "I hope it goes over with a crash."  She was very enthusiastic after the preview.  "It's a great picture," she assured everyone.  "Don't miss it if you can."

That's the insidious thing about skid-talk - you're never quite sure you've heard it.  Skid-language is like a time bomb; it ticks away quietly in your subconscious, and suddenly, a few minutes later, your mind explodes with the abrupt realization that something about the remark you just heard was a trifle askew.

"If George Washington were alive today," Bunny told me once, "he'd turn over in his grave."  On another occasion she opened a debate with this challenging sentence: "For your information, let me ask you a question."

The simplest kind of skid-talk consists of mixing words.  For example:

"Too many cooks in the soup."

"From time immoral."

"There I was, left holding the jackpot."

"It was so dark you couldn't see your face in front of you."

"I want some hot-water juice and a lemon."

A devoted mother added another gem to my collection: "I'm going to have a bust made of my daughter's head."  And a stranger whom I discovered feeding pigeons in Central Park explained to me with quiet dignity: "I believe in being dumb to kind animals."

Sometimes a skid-talker will turn an entire sentence inside out so effectively that the listener can't possibly set it straight again.  I keep wondering about a statement I overheard the other day at the station: "He tells me something one morning and out the other."  And I have yet to discover what's wrong with Bunny's advice to a young married couple: "Two can live as cheaply as one, but it costs them twice as much."

Bunny is a natural skid-zophrenic.  "I'm a split personality all in one," she describes herself happily.  She lives in a handsome country place of which she says dreamily, "Isn't it pretty?  The lake comes right up to the shore."  "I went to a wonderful party," she said of a recent celebrity-studded banquet.  "Everybody in the room was there."  She made sure to thank the hostess as she departed.  "Darling, that was the best dinner I ever put in my whole mouth."

Bunny's insults are equally bewildering.  "I never liked you, and I always will," she told a prominent screen star frankly.  And a perennially young starlet is still trying to decipher Bunny's candid appraisal, "You're old enough to be my daughter."

The best skid-talk fuses two thoughts together, creating a new short cut which speeds up the language.  I remember a New Year's Eve party when Bunny became fearful that the sounds of midnight revelry might disturb the neighbors.  "Don't make so much noise," she told the celebrants.  "Remember, this isn't the only house we're in."

I had an affectionate note from Bunny recently.  "Come see us again soon," she wrote.  "We miss you almost as much as if you were here."