Advocates of legal and subsidized abortion have for decades resorted to euphemism (“choice,” “reproductive rights,” etc.) to advance their agenda, a tactic that testified to the public’s ambivalence about their cause. Over the years, pro-abortion activists have grown more and more convinced that the tactic has been self-defeating because it has reinforced the idea that there is something other than glorious about abortion.
Hence today’s New York Times story about Joe Biden, who remains wedded to the old approach. A principal complaint of the activists Lisa Lerer quotes is that Biden avoids using the word “abortion.” What is darkly amusing is that the activists often work at organizations that have obviously made a point of not including the word “abortion” in their own names. (Lerer doesn’t quote anyone from the best example of this phenomenon: NARAL Pro-Choice America, which changed its name long ago to get rid of the word.)
They keep finding ways not to say the word themselves even as they accuse Biden of being coy:
“The level of the crisis calls for a stronger level of leadership,” said Kelley Robinson, the executive director of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. “We’re looking for them to be explicit champions for sexual and reproductive health care and to use that bully pulpit to make sure that’s a priority that’s expressed from the highest office in the land.”
I have no doubt that Biden is going to go along with this and start saying the word abortion. But he is an old guy, and based on the evidence this particular habit is hard for a lot of people to break.