I had just finished my dinner at Osteria del Figo, which it turns out is an excellent Italian restaurant (good food, low prices), and on the way out happened to spot this bumper sticker on a moped outside. Something clicked in my head, and I suddenly realized that English usage has made it so there is no semantic difference between the language that we use to describe vasectomy and abortion—or between abortion and any other non-abortion child prevention tactics—making it more difficult to dicuss abortion and similar procedures in isolation from preconception pregnancy prevention.
Essentially, the term “birth control” is used to apply to all forms of pregnancy prevention, but I submit that this is not only incorrect, but making it more difficult for pro-life advocates to frame the debate. For many (though certainly not all) pro-life people, there is a fundamental difference between using “the pill,” condoms, or abstinence, which should really be called “conception control,” and the methods of abortion, et al., which are truly “birth control” since they directly control whether a birth occurs.
Unfortunately, the language didn’t evolve that way, and attempts to narrow the definitions of words, even to a more correct definition, are notoriously prone to failure (see “hacker”). This means that the language does not itself imply the bright line that is conception is relevant; instead we (as a nation) have decided that the line is fuzzy, and that it is nowhere near the conception line, the one definite point of reference.
Is this Newspeak? No, for one, I don’t think that this was an intentional abuse of language with the intent of changing the way that we think about things. But humans categorize and we name. Without it’s own name, it’s a lot harder to talk about.
