“Words are blunt instruments / words are sawed-off shotguns”

—Radiohead

Louisiana’s restrictive new abortion access law was fought in court Thursday by a group of healthcare providers, the latest skirmish in the United States’ new post-Hobby Lobby reproductive law landscape. That the law would force at least three clinics to shutter their doors is a deeply frustrating but by now familiar outcome of such legal battles in the U.S. today. Yet to see the fight for abortion rights taking place now in Louisiana as anything other than just the latest in a string of hard contests for abortion access requires a look back at how the language surrounding these battles has evolved since Roe v. Wade in order to frame a war of ethics.

The Hobby Lobby decision, handed down by the Supreme Court this June, provides pro-life advocates with a new rhetorical weapon grounded in the idea of personal responsibility and liability. In doing so, it leaves intact the theoretical permission for women to seek abortions, while maintaining that neither the federal government nor employers are obligated to promote or fund that access. How well both sides can adapt to that balancing act in Louisiana and beyond will determine the future of the war for reproductive rights.

To see how, it’s helpful to watch the words used to wage it. The early pro-choice movement understood the power of language in the psychological as well as the legal war for both proponents and opponents alike, beginning with efforts in the 1970s to reform and repeal restrictive abortion legislation. By adopting a pithy, uplifting slogan such as “pro-life,” early reproductive rights opponents sought to produce damning effects on those who advocated for them. Jimmye Kimmey, the executive director of the Association of the Study of Abortion during the early 1970s, drafted a memorandum that read, “Right to life is short, catchy, composed of monosyllabic words—an important consideration in English. We need something comparable. Right to choose would seem to do the job. And . . . choice has to do with action, and it’s action that we’re concerned with.”

From there, a rhetorical arms race ensued, influencing public opinion on both sides of the debate by seeking to determine how it played out in public discourse. By altering language, it appeared, one could also alter perception—it’s rare to find a person who would be “anti-life,” a pure contrast to being “pro-life.” Similarly, few would label themselves “anti-choice,” especially in a country where self-determination is held in wide regard.

Debate over the language and legal understanding of abortion only intensified in the wake of the Roe v. Wade decision, as the court established the trimester system for assessing pregnancy stages. This then opened up a new layer of debate over abortion restrictions, creating a new battleground for deciding how late into a pregnancy a woman could legally obtain an abortion. No longer would the abortion debate be a simple binary; one could now be an opponent of “late-term abortion” alone as opposed to taking a more hard-line stance against the procedure writ large.

By 2003, sweeping legislation banned certain types of abortion procedures, couched in rhetoric claiming to protect of the life of the mother above all else. The 2003 legislation outlines:

Rather than being an abortion procedure that is embraced by the medical community, particularly among physicians who routinely perform other abortion procedures, partial-birth abortion remains a disfavored procedure that is not only unnecessary to preserve the health of the mother, but in fact poses serious risks to the long-term health of women and in some circumstances, their lives.

More than ten years later, the abortion debate has shifted back to state-level initiatives that use language to curtail abortion access, in many cases banning the procedure outright. A 2008 Colorado initiative recast the state’s definition of a person as “any human being from the moment of fertilization.”

In North Dakota, the “Personhood of Children Act” sought to “provide equality and rights to all human beings at every stage of biological development,” which covered pre-born and partially-born fetuses and would effectively ban abortion within the state. South Dakota’s similarly deceptive “Women’s Health and Human Life Protection Act” centered its restrictions to Plan B around a concern for women’s health—another deceptive use of language that obfuscates the true rationale for restrictive abortion legislation.

Hobby Lobby entered this tremendously broad, riotous, and well-trodden battlefield. The decision, handed down by the Supreme Court this year and hinging on definitions of personhood and morality, inaugurates a new era of political discourse on reproductive rights. The ruling, which allows companies with religious convictions to opt out of covering reproductive medicine and procedures for their employees, embraces the pervading libertarian view that people are free to pursue their own courses of action without the expectation of assistance from others.

By grounding many arguments in support of the Hobby Lobby decision around the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, some libertarians argue that third parties should have no obligation to assist or fund abortion if they disagree with the procedure. Even left-wing Libertarians find that Hobby Lobby might be sound law under these constructs, creating yet another level of complexity to a daunting legal and ethical argument. Libertarian Party Executive Director Wes Benedict released a statement on the ruling shortly after Hobby Lobby was decided, reading in part:

It’s strange that liberals and conservatives are making this ruling out to be a huge deal. All the ruling does is remove a very narrow coverage requirement, in very specific cases; 99.9 percent of Obamacare is upheld. It’s true that closely held corporate entities should not be forced to pay for this particular contraceptive coverage. But focusing on that narrow issue misses the bigger point: No employer should be forced to provide any health coverage at all.

With the notion that abortion can be viewed as an issue which the federal government should leave to individuals and corporations, the war of rhetoric enters a new stage: no longer is the fight relegated to technicalities around trimesters, procedures, and definitions of conception. It appears, however preliminarily, that the battle can now focus on the financial and religious liabilities of providing coverage.

By consequence, a paradoxical mix of personal freedom and personal responsibility has entered the fray. No longer is the question of abortion a purely ethical quandary. It is now, at least rhetorically, a matter of the freedom to choose whether or not to provide coverage to a third-party.

As the result of the new Louisiana law, the only doctor in the state who meets its draconian qualifications has threatened to quit if he becomes the only provider left. He may soon be. The debate, though, is far from finished.

 

Brian O’Connor is a Blog Editor for The Brooklyn Quarterly as well as a freelance writer and editor. By day, he is a book editor focusing on politics and current affairs.