[ In the year since Roe v. Wade was overturned, the Republican
Party has tested out constantly changing talking points and messages
on abortion in an attempt to make its anti-abortion policies sound
less extreme.]
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NOW REPUBLICANS ARE TRYING TO REDEFINE ABORTION ITSELF  
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Jessica Valenti
October 2, 2023
New York Times
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_ In the year since Roe v. Wade was overturned, the Republican Party
has tested out constantly changing talking points and messages on
abortion in an attempt to make its anti-abortion policies sound less
extreme. _

Idaho doctors can be arrested for performing emergency abortions,
Photo credit: Abortion, Every Day

 

Conservatives are even considering moving away from the term
“pro-life,”
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that voters have newly negative associations with the label.

With post-Roe outrage showing no sign of waning, strategists are
pushing a new lexicon on abortion — medically, legally and
culturally. Some Republicans have abandoned the term “ban” when
speaking about anti-abortion legislation, for example. Now they’re
pushing for a 15-week “standard” on abortion — which, to be
clear, would be a ban. Americans overwhelmingly oppose strict abortion
bans, so Republicans are moving away from the term.

Republicans hope that by changing the way Americans talk about
abortion, it might help change the way they feel about abortion —
which is, right now, very pro-choice. A record 69 percent of American
adults
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abortion should generally be legal in the first trimester, and anger
over bans has Republicans losing election after election, from ballot
measure initiatives in Kansas and Kentucky to the State Supreme Court
in Wisconsin.

It makes sense. After all, Americans have now seen a woman vomit
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testifying about watching her newborn take pained last gasps for air
— the result of being forced to carry a doomed pregnancy to term in
Texas. The cruelty of abortion bans
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revealed with every new story of a woman being allowed to slip into
sepsis or a raped child being denied care.

But rather than change the policies that are causing so much
suffering, conservatives seem to believe they can talk their way out
of the problem not just with political messaging but also by
manipulating medical and legal language.

This summer, for example, the American Association of Pro-Life
Obstetricians and Gynecologists published a “Glossary of Medical
Terms
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instructing doctors on what “life affirming” language to use.
Under their guidance, a woman whose fetus has a fatal anomaly would be
told not that the condition is terminal but that it’s “life
limiting.” Similarly, if someone’s water breaks months before her
due date, she would be informed not that the pregnancy is nonviable
but that it’s “pre-viable.” The goal is in part to persuade
women to carry doomed pregnancies, which can be emotionally and
physically catastrophic.

Republicans are even trying to redefine abortion itself
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claiming that they are doing so to clarify matters for doctors and
patients. In truth, these are deliberate efforts to ensure that
fetuses’ rights trump women’s rights, no matter the cost to women.
And increasingly, that cost is very high.

If a woman in Idaho has a life-threatening pregnancy, state law
dictates that the doctor must end the pregnancy in a way that provides
“the best opportunity for the unborn child to survive,” which the
State Supreme Court has interpreted to include performing a cesarean
or vaginal delivery. Similarly, a bill proposed in Wisconsin this
summer stated that a procedure performed during a medical emergency
isn’t an abortion if a doctor “makes reasonable medical efforts”
to preserve “both the life of the woman and the life of her unborn
child”; legislators mentioned using a C-section and early labor,
specifically.

In Idaho, the only exception to the trauma of unnecessary labor and
delivery or C-section is if the woman’s life would be more at risk
that way. In other words, instead of having minutes-long abortions,
women will be forced by the state to endure major surgeries or
traumatic vaginal deliveries, even if that seriously affects their
physical and mental health.

That’s what happened last year
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a Louisiana woman whose water broke 16 weeks into her pregnancy, long
before a fetus is viable. Because the hospital was concerned about
violating the state’s laws, which ban abortion at all stages of
pregnancy, the patient was denied a dilation and evacuation, a
standard abortion procedure. Instead she was forced to spend hours
delivering a nonviable fetus. Her doctor reported in an affidavit,
“She was screaming — not from pain but from the emotional trauma
she was experiencing.” When it also took hours to deliver the
placenta, the woman hemorrhaged and lost close to a liter of blood.

To anti-abortion groups, mandates like this aren’t just acceptable;
it’s what they lobbied for. The American Association of Pro-Life
Obstetricians and Gynecologists even recommends
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in cases of dangerous pregnancy complications, like a massive
placental abruption, women should be made to labor for up to 24 hours
— even if they must be treated with blood transfusions in intensive
care — in lieu of being given an abortion, in order to deliver “an
intact fetal body.” In situations like this, women’s health and
lives are endangered the longer they remain pregnant. To groups that
seem to value a fetus’s survival above all else, that’s a risk
they’re willing to take.

But anti-abortion organizations like the Charlotte Lozier Institute
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long claimed that few, if any, pregnancies — no matter how ill fated
— require abortions. Instead, the group says, patients with
life-threatening pregnancies should be treated with a “separation
procedure,” or what the association calls a “medically indicated
maternal-fetal separation.” These nonsensical terms, which have made
their way into Republican-backed legislation, seek to decouple
abortion from its medical context
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After a group of women whose lives were upended or endangered by
Texas’ abortion ban sued the state
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Gov. Greg Abbott signed
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health exceptions referring to “the provision of certain medical
treatment to a pregnant woman” — in other words, an abortion
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Of course, politicians’ using deceptive talking points isn’t new,
but when it comes to an issue like abortion, even just a handful of
words can have dire consequences.

Consider the expression “postbirth abortion” — the idea is that
abortion involves killing newborns. This is, to be clear, a lie, but
that hasn’t stopped candidates like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis
from repeating it.

The phrase “abortion tourism” has also made its way into
Republican talking points. This makes it sound as if women traveling
to get abortions were taking vacations rather than fleeing their home
states for health care, sometimes emptying their bank accounts or
staying in shelters in the process.

The goal is to paint Democrats and pro-choice groups as the
extremists. The G.O.P. wants to trick Americans into believing
they’re somehow softening on abortion, even as they pass ever more
dangerous laws. Every new word and phrase was created in service of
that goal.

_[JESSICA VALENTI publishes a newsletter
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every day.]_

* abortion
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* anti-abortion
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* Dobbs v. Jackson
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* Roe v. Wade
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* Supreme Court
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* abortion rights
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* Women
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* war on women
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* women's rights
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* women's health
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* women's bodies
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* GOP
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* MAGA
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* Republican Party
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* 2024 Elections
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* Idaho
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