06/15/2004: " Just don't call it abortion"

Rich Lowry on NRO asks why abortion advocates seem to be so embarrassed to speak clearly about the right they insist is the essence of human freedom:

In three lawsuits challenging the partial-birth-abortion ban after it was signed, abortion-rights advocates refused to say "partial-birth abortion." They preferred the terms "intact dilation and extraction" and "dilation and evacuation," better to keep anyone from understanding whatever they were talking about: Namely, the partial-breech delivery of a baby, until a doctor can pierce its skull with a sharp instrument and vacuum out its brain. Shannen W. Coffin, a former Justice Department official who fought in defense of the ban, recalls one pro-choice lawyer letting slip the phrase "partial-birth abortion," only to correct herself. The judge chided her, "You won't get sick if you say the words."

Actually, you might get sick if abortionists don't use euphemisms. According to Coffin, a doctor in one of the trials described crushing an infant's skull as "reduc[ing]" the "fetal calvarium" to facilitate "completion of delivery." The completed delivery, of course, of an infant with a crushed skull. Another doctor said he "separated" the "fetal calvarium" from the infant's body. Yes, and Abu Zarqawi separated Nick Berg's calvarium from his body too.

Yet another abortionist described what he does as seeking to "safely and efficiently empty the uterine cavity, rendering the woman unpregnant." For the layman, the state of "unpregnant" is what you achieve when you kill your baby. Sorry. Did I say "kill"? I meant "vacuum the uterus," or "disarticulate the fetus."

One more piece of evidence regarding "the right that dare not speak its name": the National Abortion Rights Action League recently changed its name to NARAL Pro-Choice America.

It is to barf.