Way of the Mind

A little more than a year ago, I wrote a post called “Letting the Bad Guys Name Things“, warning about an increasingly common tactic: name something bad after something uncontestably positive, and your opponents will be reticent to speak against it, even if they realize how badly named it is. For instance, pass a law removing freedoms from people, but call it “Freedom Something”, and everyone will stay silent, because nobody want to be seen as “anti-freedom”. A well-known example is the Patriot Act.

But this post is about another one: “pro-life”. It’s a misleading label, of course, since what they are really about is banning sex outside of marriage, for religious reasons. (Either that, or they haven’t really thought about it, and just go with what feels good: “we’re saving lives!”). Still, it’s a well-chosen one (in marketing terms). After all, who wants to be seen as “anti-life”? That sounds almost like a murderer, or something…

The “antidote” to this problem is to refuse to use their misleading terms, and, instead, call things what they really are. I could give many examples here about the Bush administration, the “war on terror”, the invasion of Iraq, the fact that abortion clinic bombers aren’t called “Christian terrorists”, and so on. But what this post is really about is a term the author of No More Hornets came up with: Pro-Forced Maternity.

I believe this term is infinitely more honest and accurate than “pro-life”. It’s describes what they really want, what they really are about. Not “life”, but control. To force others. And, so, I think we atheists / humanists / secularists ought to spread it. Refuse to use their misleading terms, and describe things as they really are.

So, please, if you agree with this, help spreading the word. Write / blog about this, start using “pro-forced maternity” in conversations, and correct others when they use the common, misleading term (much like the Patriot Act isn’t really about “patriotism”). If this ever reaches the mainstream media (which is perfectly possible), even if they try to “denounce” it as evil secularist propaganda, it could make a lot of people think about this for the first time, and see the “pro-lifers” pro-forced maternity people for what they really are: anti-life, and anti-individual freedom.