Word games we play

[Editor's note. The following is excerpted from John Leo's December 6 column in U.S. News & World Report.]

Several columns ago, when I wrote that "students, disability activists, and pro-lifers" were demonstrating at Princeton, the copy desk here at U.S. News wanted to change "pro-lifers" to "abortion opponents." The proposed change was by the book. Like most news organizations, this magazine uses "abortion-rights activists" and "abortion opponents," not "pro-choice" and "pro-life." But in this case "abortion opponents" was clearly not an adequate term. The issue at Princeton wasn't abortion. It was infanticide. The university had appointed a professor who believes parents should be allowed to kill their severely disabled babies.

Here's the verbal issue, debated for years in newsrooms: Pro-lifers don't like the word "pro-choice" because it eliminates the noun that faces up to the violent act involved (abortion) and replaces it with a warm and toasty abstract word that always scores well in focus groups (choice). And pro-choicers don't like "pro-life" because it implies that supporters of the abortion option are pro-death.

But pro-lifers aren't one-issue activists. They strongly oppose euthanasia, doctor-assisted suicide, ordinary suicide, infanticide, and (often, but not always) capital punishment. Terms such as "antiabortion advocates" and "abortion opponents" fail to reflect this broad commitment to the "life" side of so many life-or-death issues. Out of fairness (and accuracy), the media should restore the "pro-life" tag or come up with something similar. Given the ideological makeup of the newsroom today, this change is unlikely. In fact, in editorial columns at least, there is a small but growing trend toward using the sneering term "anti-choice" to describe pro-life beliefs. The general newsroom tendency to let every group call itself whatever it wants to (gays, Native Americans, African-Americans) is suspended for right-to-life activists.