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Night and Fog: Obscuring Abortion’s Toll

by Kirt Wiggins, President of Caring Network

At Caring Network, we seek to eliminate the suffering from desire and desire for abortion by the women we have the privilege to help. We come alongside women who are facing unexpected pregnancies, to help them work through challenges before and after their babies are born.

And we seek to advance the truth.  That’s why it concerns us when individuals and groups lie to these women and their families.  For instance, when euphemisms are being used to mask the truth.

Euphemism is a word derived from the Greek word, eúphēmos, or good-speech. Euphemisms are words or phrases that sound good but refer to things that don’t. We can be thankful for many of them. It’s okay to say someone got “let go” rather than “fired” or “terminated.” It’s probably best that we say, “I’m going to the bathroom” even though that’s not necessarily the only thing we plan to do. Scripture even speaks about Saul “covering his feet” in a cave (1 Sam. 24:3). That’s what your robe would do to your feet when you squatted to “relieve” yourself.  Here are some others:

Telling stories is lying

To lose your lunch is to vomit

He’s lost his marbles is someone who has mental illness

Adult beverages are alcohol.

Early retirement, company down-sizing, and being let go all mean you’re being fired.

Big boned is a gentle way of saying someone’s overweight

Correctional facility means prison 

Kicked the bucket is when someone died

Time of the month refers to menstruation with more delicacy

Over the hill is a way to say someone is old

Euphemisms can be a matter of common decency and politeness, communicating in shorthand, often without burdening the hearer with something unnecessarily unpleasant. But not always.

In the case of abortion, euphemisms direct our attention away from one thing to another. It’s a sleight of hand where the magician wants you to focus on the one hand so that you do not see what he is doing with the other hand. Abortion advocates de-emphasize the God-given status of the unborn by directing your attention to just the mother. Over time, this is how abortion euphemisms have moved the “Overton Window[1]—that range of beliefs that a society deems acceptable at a given time.

One pro-life group wrote: “Euphemisms, words to diminish or withhold objectionable information, have existed throughout human history. The use of most euphemisms has been benign. However, some have been lethal, including abortion, euthanasia, and the Holocaust. Abortion and euthanasia are often justified using the same principles as the Holocaust. Arguments for all three were founded upon eugenics, a philosophy that classified people as superior or inferior to one another, denying reproductive choice to the latter.”[2]

Individuals at risk for abortion or euthanasia today are labeled more than unfit for reproduction; they are considered unworthy of life itself. The parallels with Nazism are terrifying.

“The term “Final Solution” was a euphemism for the extermination of the Jewish people,” the Jewish Library explains. “The Nazi killing machine was shrouded in bureaucratic euphemism. The doctors and administrators charged with murdering ‘incurables’ were the ‘Public Ambulance Service Ltd’; the motorized death squads which first went into action in Poland in 1939 were ‘task forces’; the massacre of nearly 34,000 Jews in the ravine of Babi-Yar after the capture of Kiev in September 1941 was a ‘major operation.’ People identified for extermination in official Nazi documents were listed as those to be given ‘special treatment,’ and from roughly mid-1943 the term ‘special lodging’ was also used.  Dispatching was a euphemism for killing. Nacht und Nebel – “Night and fog” was code for some prisoners that were to be disposed of, leaving no traces. [3]

Don’t get me wrong.  I am not saying abortion advocates are Nazis.  However, they are employing the same rhetorical tactics to make that which is evil sound virtuous. Words matter in the abortion debate.  Let’s look at the euphemisms that the abortionists employ.

Planned Parenthood.  Its name is the opposite of its mission (they plan to stop your parenthood).  Its promotion is a virtual glossary of abortion euphemism.

Women’s Health Care. This euphemism also directs our attention away from the child and onto the woman. Pro-Life obstetrics have called this perspective “forgetting the second patient.” This is correct, for all instances of obstetric care involve two patients.

Women’s Reproductive Rights. This language directs our attention away from the unborn child and onto the rights of a woman; away from the destruction of the unborn and onto the more general idea of reproduction. This assumes that the unborn child does not have rights. 

Family Planning. This promotes the assumption that we can design our own plan for our family by removing unwanted members. 

Trusted care, every step of the way. We talk with women who have been to abortion facilities, and they describe the cold, conveyer-belt treatment of these abortion factories. It’s not care!

These are linguistic sleights of hand.

Actor and director Kevin Sorbo said: “Referring to abortion as ‘healthcare’ is like calling slavery ‘human resources.’ It’s dishonest and wrong.”

As George Orwell famously said, such language “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Or, as Scripture puts it, “woe to those who call evil good and good evil.” (Isa. 5:20)[4]

Euphemism is good in polite society when it makes more pleasant things that are otherwise difficult, unsavory, or just plain gross. But euphemism is wrong when it hides the truth. 

We know what you are doing, purveyors of abortion. By any other name, abortion still ends the life of a living baby.



1 https://www.mackinac.org/OvertonWindow

[2] https://nhrtl.org/euphemisms-danger-disguised/

[3] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ldquo-final-solution-rdquo-euphemisms

[4] https://christoverall.com/article/concise/abortion-or-feticide-words-matter-when-life-hangs-in-the-balance/

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