Anti-abortionists' poor grasp of English

It seems as if many people in the anti-abortion movement persist in redefining words to suit their purpose. The most common example is, that you rarely hear them call a fetus a fetus. It's always a "baby" or "child." The fact that it hasn't been born yet seems to be one of those annoying facts to them that's best swept under the carpet, much the same way Bush thinks of the Constitution's limits on gov't power and protections for individuals.

The idea behind this anti-abortionist propaganda technique, of course, is that they want to humanize something which is, at best, a future human. This is also why they're fond of showing pictures of fetuses that have been airbrushed to make them look more human and more developed.

But when you stretch the meaning of words beyond all reason, you lose the definition altogether. I mean, if calling a fetus a child is legitimate, then why not call a sandwich a child? If a kid eats a sandwich, it will be digested and some portion of it will become a part of him, used as material for building more cells. And, in a whole lot less time than a fetus takes to become a child, too.

Of course even the anti-abortionists know you can't go as far as calling a fetus an adult. They know that doing so would stretch credulity too far. Besides, it might remind people that many anti-abortionists also are strong supporters of the death penalty. And anyone who's anti-abortion but pro-death penalty is lying if they call themselves pro-life.

So yesterday I'm driving around town, and I see a minivan with the following bumper sticker on it:

"If it's not a baby, then you're not pregnant!"

What an example of abusive wordplay! Here, they are being quite explicit in equating a fetus to a baby in the present tense. Never mind that everyone else defines a baby as having already been born. So I would argue, that if it is a baby, then you're not pregnant, at least not with the same baby in question.

It's a pity that anti-abortionists feel the need to be linguistically deceptive in order to get their point across. Perhaps they don't realize that others are on to their word games, and that persisting in doing that only turns people (smart ones, anyway) away from their cause. Does the anti-abortion movement care more about having sheer numbers on their side as opposed to having smart proponents who can make valid arguments? Perhaps; as most anti-abortion efforts have had a legislative focus, it could be that they simply want enough numbers to pass a ban by law, without the bother of having to justify their views on a rational basis. Now this is not to say that anti-abortionists have no rational basis for their beliefs, maybe they do, but they don't seem to put forth anywhere near the effort they do in emotional propaganda.