Infernal Doublespeak on Abortion

The sun is darkness.

Death Valley is a soaring peak.

High cholesterol enhances circulatory health.

You may wonder what I’m doing. I’m practicing writing with all the verity and logic of Carlton Veazey, President of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. Let me tell you, it takes tremendous talent to be perfectly wrong so brazenly, so often. It must be a gift to produce such continuous doublespeak while keeping a straight face.

And doublespeak it is. William Lutz, an English professor at Rutgers, described doublespeak as “language that only pretends to say something; it's language that hides, evades, or misleads.” In this case, it does more: It describes what is evil in glowing terms, and what is good in disparaging terms.

Look at how Veazey began a recent press release:

After eight years of a policy that contributed to the suffering of women and children worldwide….

So what would one expect that policy to be, the policy that causes women and children to suffer? Might it be a policy that causes women to turn on their own children and mercilessly kill them by dousing them with caustic chemicals, hacking them into pieces, or leaving them battered and exposed until they die? Would that policy be one that causes suffering and death in disproportionate numbers for millions of the most helpless children of color, of poverty, of the underclasses?

No, it’s not that. The policy Veazey so oddly describes is a policy that has the effect of discouraging women from taking the lives of their babies, of discouraging the suffering deaths of the innocent.

President Obama has put the United States back on the path of charity, hope and compassion….

And what exactly is Veazey describing that is so charitable, hope inducing, and compassionate? Abortion. Abortion at every opportunity. Abundant abortion. According to Veazey, by enthusiastically exporting the wickedness of abortion on demand, the U.S. is exercising charity, hope, and compassion. Down is up. Hot is cold.

… by overturning the Bush administration's global gag rule.

So what was the “global gag rule”? It was a humane decision not to fund abortions with aid money or to use U.S. funds to interfere with other countries’ pro-life laws. U.S. funds would not enrich the horrific abortion industry. But now they will, under Obama’s rules.

… President Obama has reaffirmed that the United States is a caring and humane world citizen…

Let me get this straight: When we cherished the sanctity of life, seeking the welfare of women, families, and children by not promoting the savagery of killing one’s own child, that made the U.S. uncaring and inhumane? So it’s caring and humane to destroy our own children before they see the light of day? Infernal doublespeak!

… and has removed injurious barriers to funding family planning services for some of the world's poorest women.

The euphemism “family planning service” means abortion, plain and simple. It means snuffing out an innocent life. By describing a barrier to such inhumane cruelty as “injurious,” Veazey pretty well completes the pattern of serial doublespeak.

The apostle Paul has succinct counsel for the doublespeakers of the world: “Hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good” (Romans 12:9). That, however, would require a 180-degree turn for Carlton Veazey, so that he would no longer hold fast to what is evil and hate what is good.

As hard as that abrupt turnaround would be, it is necessary, because the prophet Isaiah has hard words for doublespeak, which hides, evades, or misleads: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20). One ignores God's woe statements only at the greatest of spiritual peril.

Surely our denomination must be morally bankrupt to lend one cent or one shred of Presbyterian legitimacy to the turned-backwards work of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.