One of the ways in which the anti-choice forces have succeeded is by labeling themselves “pro-life”—thereby promoting the idea that those who support keeping abortion legal and available are “anti-life.” I think that all pro-choice politicians should stop referring to anti-abortion crusaders as “pro-life.” By accepting the language of the opposition, pro-choice Americans have already given a victory to those who harass women and doctors for exercising their right.
geez, we're not still on that, are we? you'd think that what was really at stake was euphemisms. this is a hangover from 1983, when people thought that the world was created by naming, back when we were all animists or were impressed profoundly with our supernatural incantatorial powers. how many policy disagreements have the republicans won by referring to their oponents as the "democrat" party?
anyway, for what it's worth, "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are equally empty. i usually go for pro-abortion-rights and anti, which at least makes some reference to the actual subject-matter. but we've had decades of "pro-life is misleading." or: "helpless little babies get no choice" or whatever. the idea that words are omnipotent forces in the material world, that "framing" a debate decides it etc: this artifact of primitive superstition must be expunged. have either of these sides actually gotten anywhere by insisting on their particular empty phonemes?
see the problem is that when your verbiage is obviously merely strategic, when the only question aboutr your choice of words is how it will affect your listeners/public opinion, then you have explicitly foresworn the relation of your words to truth. and then, ironically, you have not only sucked out the truth value, and repudiated your own possible status as a teller of truth, you have made your words completely unpersuasive. words can't just mean their effects on the people you're communicating with, and when they do, then they've just floated free of reality into some kind of pure syntax: they are a kind of pure form without sense or origin. we might all nod along, but there's nothing we're nodding along with. we might feel solidarity with those who proiduce similar sounds in a similar order, but it's no more than our solidarity with fellow shoppers at the gap or something: we recognize one another as people who wear similar shirts or emit similar sounds.
