The abortion issue is more beset by the Orwellian use of political language than perhaps any other controversy in American politics. As an example, we have witnessed decades of verbal dueling over the nomenclatures of “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” Following lines suggested by the thought of Alasdair McIntyre, neither side is willing to grant anything about the other’s premise. But why is it so hard to get into the truth of the issue, and what is the truth?
If you read the literature of the controversy spanning the past half century, it becomes clear very quickly that the battle is fought in part by assigning motives to those who have resisted the liberalization of abortion. Team pro-choice finds it very difficult to accept the most obvious explanation for the opposition of pro-lifers to abortion, which is that they are determined to protect innocent life from being extinguished. Instead, advocates of legal abortion doggedly insist that pro-lifers are obsessed with controlling women’s bodies and that the denial of abortion is simply a way to turn back the clock and return to a kind of domestic imprisonment.
The abortion issue is more beset by the Orwellian use of political language than perhaps any other controversy in American politics. As an example, we have witnessed decades of verbal dueling over the nomenclatures of “pro-choice” and “pro-life.” Following lines suggested by the thought of Alasdair McIntyre, neither side is willing to grant anything about the other’s premise. But why is it so hard to get into the truth of the issue, and what is the truth?
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