Kudos to Joe Hargrave ...

... for this post at both The American Catholic and Vox Nova: "Words Do Matter":

I have had it with the debate over the language used to describe abortion.

***
We have been hearing that ‘words matter’. Yes, they certainly do. The words of the pro-choice movement, the radical feminists, and the politicians that serve them, are partially responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent children. It is the words of that entire movement that have served to dehumanize the unborn child, to convince women that their children inside them are just ‘clumps of cells’, their chattel property, to dispose of the instant they don’t want it anymore.

Pro-choice words have helped to create disposable human beings. Instead of cowering at the onslaught of rage directed at us for simply telling the truth about abortion – truths that any textbook description of the procedure free of any political taint whatsoever would reveal – we ought to be responding with our own well-measured and justifiable anger at the language the pro-choice crowd has used to dehumanize the unborn.

Many of these same people, after all, object to dehumanizing language when it comes to war, when it comes to racism, when it comes to sexism. They object when the generals call massive civillian casualties ‘collateral damage’, they object when black people or Jews or any other group are described as parasites or vermin or sub-humans that need to be exterminated or enslaved [ED.: Or when torture is glossed over with the euphemism "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"]. Many of them are educated enough to understand full well the power of words, including the power of their own words. They know full well that abortion could not enjoy popular support unless people think of the unborn child as something less than human.

Maybe they even believe it themselves. Maybe they don’t care. Regardless, there are probably millions of women out there right now who, if not for the propaganda of the abortion lobby, of Planned Parenthood and other organizations, would hold their unborn children in high enough regard to at least put them up for adoption instead of having them butchered and thrown in the trash (which is exactly what happens to them).

So yes, words do matter. Their words have resulted in millions of deaths, have shattered millions of families, have robbed surviving children of the chance to know their siblings, fathers of the chance to know their sons and daughters, society of the chance to try and come to sensible and humane solutions to unwanted pregnancy, and women themselves of the chance of eventually coming to want a child that was, at first, and often in haste, ‘unwanted’. So let us take them to task for their words, and not vice-versa.

[Read the whole thing]

My Comments:
Way to go, Joe! Great post.

I'm not sure what to think (well, yes I do, but I'm being charitable) about the sort of Catholic who manages to consistently muster far more outrage over and condemnation of the alleged shortcomings of pro-lifers and their efforts than they EVER express toward "the pro-choice movement, the radical feminists, and the politicians that serve them" (for whom, more often than not, they make excuses), or even over the fact (and injustice thereof) of legalized abortion-on-demand itself.