WHO FRAMES, MAIMS: partial-birth abortion and the manipulation of language.

Those who win policy debates are often the ones who use language to frame them in ways that connect them to their side on very polarized emotional issues.

There's a terrific must-read article on the larger subject of language manipulation in the September 2003 issue of The American Prospect, entitled "How Republicans Hijack Language" by Deborah Tannen (yes, she of 'You Just Don't Understand' fame).

Ms. Tannen begins by talking about the estate tax. The brilliant Republican strategists managed to change the language and thus frame the debate around the "death tax." She points out that only the largest 2% of estates were subject to this tax, but "change the name to 'death tax' and many more Americans become sympathetic to repeal," she says. "After all, everyone dies. Death is bad enough without being taxed."

The next example Tannen uses addresses 14 or so procedures that these word wizards have clumped together under the term "partial-birth-abortion." "How many would get all worked up about an exceedingly rare abortion procedure...that represents less than one-fifth of one percent of all abortions performed in the United States in 2000? But attach the name "partial-birth abortion" and a second-trimester fetus becomes a half-born baby."

But have we not had enough of the manipulation of language, let alone data, by the opponents of sane medical and reproductive policy?

Nope.

The most obvious rightwing example of language manipulation that even our best progressive journalists fail to consistently expose is "pro-life." Many of us will not use this term, since it of course implies that if one does not agree with the position of the users of this term, then by default one is "anti-life." Tannen asks, "Who among us wants to call ourselves anti-life?"

"Win the name game and you're more than halfway toward winning the battle. Win enough naming battles and you're on your way to winning the war," Tannen notes.

We want to use a much more accurate term, "anti-choice." Many of us do. But we haven't won the battle.

The cynical nature of these ploys becomes more evident when one recalls how few of these demagogues march, protest against, or even mention capital punishment, or war, or the World Bank, or the IMF, or Republican and neocon environmental policies, or 45 million uninsured Americans, or the out-of-reach cost of AIDS anti-virals controlled by Big Pharma in developing countries. What's the ratio of the number of deaths caused by these policies and institutions to the number of pregnancy terminations?

No, the only way they want to demonstrate their "pro-life" bonafides is regarding abortion. At last, have they no shame?

Apparently not, since, as Tannen seems to predict when she wrote that piece last summer, it appears (pending a Planned Parenthood legal challenge) that the language-manipulators have won again, this time those procedures collectively called "partial-birth abortion."

The medical community and many laypeople know that there is no such thing as partial-birth abortion. As William Saletan said in a recent article titled, "The "Partial-Birth" Myth --No, it's not a birth,"...(the procedures) can be particularly disturbing when they're done by extracting the fetus intact, in a manner that looks like birth. But they aren't births.

It's easy for journalists who have covered the abortion debate (and in my case, written a book about it) to gloss over this fact when we talk about the ban the Senate just passed. We know the procedure in question is an abortion that sort of looks like a birth, not a birth interrupted by an abortion. But it's far from clear that we've adequately conveyed this distinction to the public.

I watched the whole Senate debate yesterday. I lost count of how many times pro-life senators used language implying that the procedure they were banning was a birth interrupted by an abortion. The bill's sponsor, Sen. Rick Santorum, opened the debate by saying, "The term 'partial birth' comes from the fact that the baby is partially born, is in the process of being delivered. Â… Here is this child who is literally inches away from being born, who would otherwise be born alive." Majority Leader Bill Frist, the Senate's only doctor, concluded the debate by describing the procedure as "destroying the body of a mature unborn child."

President Bush exploits the same illusion. In his State of the Union address this year, he said the bill would "protect infants at the very hour of their birth."

That's just false. This procedure doesn't take place anywhere near the appointed hour of birth. If you paid close attention to the Senate debate, you might have noticed the part where Santorum said the procedure was performed "at least 20 weeks, and in many cases, 21, 22, 23, 24 weeks [into pregnancy], and in rarer cases, beyond that." He didn't clarify how many of these abortions took place past the 20th week. A full-term pregnancy is 40 weeks. In 1992, the Supreme Court mentioned that viability could "sometimes" occur at 23 or 24 weeks. Santorum described a 1-pound fetus as "a fully formed baby," noting that while it was only at 20 weeks gestation, it had a complete set of features and extremities. But according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the survival rate for babies born weighing 500 grams or less—that's 1 pound, 1 ounce or less—is 14 percent.

Initial reports on the bill passed yesterday don't convey these distinctions. The New York Times says, "The bill defines the procedure as one in which the person performing the abortion 'deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus ...[ellipses mine] for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus.' " The Washington Post says, "As described in the bill, the procedure, generally performed during a pregnancy's second or third trimester, involves a physician puncturing the skull of a fetus and removing its brain after it is partially delivered."

If you haven't been following the debate closely, it's easy to walk away with the impression that the "delivery" is a nearly full-term birth, as the bill's name implies. It's easy to say yes when a pollster asks you whether you favor a "law to make it illegal to perform a specific abortion procedure conducted in the last six months of pregnancy known as 'partial-birth abortion,' except in cases necessary to save the life of the mother." That's the question the Gallup organization asked in January. Based on responses to that question, USA Today reports this morning that the poll "showed that 70% of Americans back the ban."

I'd like to know how many of the people who answered that question understood exactly what they were being asked about."

And that's the point. The opponents chose a term, as ignorant and wrong as it is, that can't help but cause one to cringe--unless one knows the truth. And framing the debate in such a way is intended to obscure that truth.

As to the procedures itself, language aside, there are other angles.

Here's a letter my daughter wrote to the Boston Globe, which was printed in a slightly edited form last week:

"On Tuesday, a ban on "partial-birth" abortion was passed in the Senate. The bill is significantly flawed in that it only allows the procedure to preserve the life (not the health) of the mother, because sponsors of the bill decided that it was never needed to protect the health of the mother. Never? Many Americans would probably consider being forced to carry a stillborn infant to term as jeopardizing the health of the mother. As Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif, said "This is indeed a historic day, because for the first time in history Congress is banning a medical procedure that is considered medically necessary by physicians." The passage of this bill makes me wonder what country I woke up in this morning. For all their rhetoric about shrinking government, Senate republicans (and a surprising number of Dems. too) sure are eager to use government to forcefully micromanage the personal lives of U.S. citizens. I thought we were busy risking Americana lives and spending billions of dollars fighting against that kind of thing?"

If this ban on medically necessary procedures stands up against the legal challenges, how many women will be maimed by the frame?