It’s been a great month for the pro-life movement. Not only has the Supreme Court granted certiorari in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which is perhaps the best opportunity to overturn Roe since Casey, but Texas has also passed a law that will ban abortion when the fetal heartbeat is detected with exceptions for medical emergencies.
While I’m most thankful that the Texas law works to rid America of its greatest sin since slavery, there is another reason to be thankful, namely that it exposes what abortion advocates want a right to do.
There is perhaps no topic in American politics where euphemisms are more widely used than abortion. It’s obvious why. Such an evil act is intolerable to most if left uncensored, so the truth of what abortion is must be hidden away by dishonest rhetoric so that no one must face the reality of what it is they are advocating for.
There’s never been any confusion as to what the opposite of life is, yet when it comes to abortion we are told that the opposite of pro-life isn’t pro-death, it’s pro-choice. It’s not the mother’s baby (and the father’s baby, for that matter), it’s a cluster of cells—another part of a woman’s body—not that different from her liver or esophagus. “Fetus” is commonly used as if the technical term for the state of life negates the humanity of the child any more than calling it a neonate would.
The doctor isn’t said to have murdered the baby, he’s said to have “terminated the pregnancy.” When it comes to other medical procedures, there’s little difficulty in providing a rough description of what the procedure entailed; the tumor was removed, the organ was replaced, etc. But we never hear about the baby’s limbs being ripped from its body or its skull being crushed. Instead, Planned Parenthood describes it as “gently tak[ing] the pregnancy tissue out of your uterus.”
The so-called “right to abortion” is most often advocated for as the right to choose, or a woman’s right to control her own body. Indeed, it’s often cast as a choice no different than choosing to partake or refrain from smoking or drinking.
A heartbeat law tears away these euphemisms and exposes the façade for what it really is. In banning abortion when a heartbeat is detected, Texas indirectly made the scientifically accurate assertion that the baby has its own heart and that heart is beating throughout the pregnancy. None of the abortion advocates dispute this. Yet they all want to strike this law down.
Heartbeat laws prevent abortion advocates from framing the debate as being over “the right to choose” or a “cluster of cells.” Instead, abortion advocates are forced to admit what they really want a right to. The right to stop a heartbeat. The right to end an innocent life. The right to murder.
So I applaud Texas’s heartbeat law and encourage the other states to pass their own heartbeat laws. Protect the rights of the innocent and the vulnerable, and force abortion advocates to acknowledge what they really want a right to do.
They’ll still defend it until the bitter end, but the American people will be faced with what abortion truly is. God willing, Americans will reject the false right to stop a heartbeat, and instead embrace the right to life, ridding the American republic of its great sin at long last.
Jack Shields
Jack Shields is a graduate of Texas A&M University and is currently attending Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. He is an editor and columnist for Lone Conservative, and a reporter for The College Fix.
The views expressed in this article are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Lone Conservative staff.
@Jack_Shields20
