In the world of medical care, the word "abortion" has a simple and straightforward meaning. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, induced abortion "ends a pregnancy with medication or a medical procedure." When states ban abortion, that is what they are banning: Medication or medical procedures that end pregnancies that don't result in a live birth. Now that the horror stories are quickly piling up that illustrate the high human cost of abortion bans, Republicans are getting rather, um, playful about what they do or don't consider an abortion.
In the text of the bans that are being passed or reinstated now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, "abortion" is generally understood as a medical intervention to terminate pregnancy. But when trying to bamboozle the public, Republicans suddenly start pretending all sorts of abortions aren't actually abortions.
When trying to bamboozle the public, Republicans suddenly start pretending all sorts of abortions aren't actually abortions.
During a House hearing on abortion rights last week, Catherine Glenn Foster of Americans United for Life, a woman who previously falsely claimed D.C. powers it street lamps by burning fetuses, once again illustrated the total shamelessness anti-choicers apply to the art of lying. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., brought up the recent case of a 10-year-old rape victim who was forced to get an abortion in Indiana because her home state of Ohio had banned the procedure. Boxed out of the previous move by Republicans to gaslight their way out of this one — falsely claiming this didn't happen — Foster pivoted to denying that abortion is abortion. Acknowledging that forcing childbirth on a child rape victim would "probably impact her life," (probably?!) Foster, with a glibness that you really need to watch the video to absorb, lied and said it "would not be an abortion."
Swalwell: It would not be an abortion if a 10 year old with her parents made the decision not to have a baby that was the result of rape?
Republican Witness: That's not an abortion
Swalwell: Are you familiar with disinformation? pic.twitter.com/6zyO3Bq2Uv— Acyn (@Acyn) July 14, 2022
Needless to say, there is no "impact her life" exception to Ohio's abortion ban, since abortion bans impact the lives of everyone forced to give birth. And this abortion was absolutely an abortion, which Foster definitely knows. Make no mistake: Foster and her allies would not hesitate to prosecute the doctor for performing it if they could. Indeed, anti-choice activists have legally persecuted doctors for aborting pregnancies in 10-year-olds before. Abortion is only not-abortion before the cameras, to maximize the cruelty they can inflict while evading political consequences for doing so.
Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.
This game-playing has been going on since the Roe overturn started flooding the public consciousness with these resultant horror stories. Women have been denied termination of ectopic pregnancies since the laws disallow aborting if there's any detectable cardiac development, even though these pregnancies are all non-viable. Women having miscarriages are denied treatment because while there is no way the pregnancy can be saved, they are still technically pregnant and any intervention to relieve their suffering is abortion.
The real reason that Republicans keep calling pregnancy prevention "abortion" is to create a pretext to ban contraception.
Causing this suffering is absolutely the point of these abortion bans, as demonstrated by the fact that GOP-controlled legislatures are rejecting opportunities to exempt miscarriage care, life-saving treatments or ectopic pregnancy terminations from their abortion bans. But when confronted with their own sadism in public, they pretend that somehow these abortions are magically not-abortion and therefore not an issue.
RELATED: Post-Roe gaslighting: The party of QAnon denies the very real rape of a 10-year-old
John Seago of Texas Right to Life blamed "a breakdown in communication of the law, not the law itself" for doctors who are afraid to terminate miscarrying pregnancies. But the doctors understand the legal risks perfectly well. The Texas abortion ban only makes an exception if "the mother's life is in danger." The patient described in the New York Times piece was told she could get her miscarrying pregnancy terminated "only if she was bleeding so excessively that her blood filled a diaper more than once an hour." The doctors seemed quite aware they need patients on the verge of death to justify abortions. As journalist Irin Carmon pointed out on Twitter, in the very same article, Seago admits that the Texas abortion law does require doctors to refuse treatment to miscarrying patients. His other claims otherwise are just noise he spews to distract from the horrific realities he's deliberately creating.
In which the head of TX Right to Life concedes that their abortion bans DO require delaying (and thus worsening) miscarriage care—something already documented in medical journals as harming pregnant patients. https://t.co/gny1JjHY7Lhttps://t.co/wxQihWRr2v pic.twitter.com/sPY3NDqWaI
— Irin Carmon (@irin) July 18, 2022
Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.
The word games around "abortion" long predate the current moment. Right now, abortions that anti-choicers have banned in practice become not-abortion when gaslighting politicians and reporters. When strategizing about how to take away access to contraception, anti-choice activists and Republican politicians take a more expansive view of what they consider "abortion," one which includes popular forms of birth control. Even during his confirmation hearing, Justice Brett Kavanaugh equated birth control with abortion. Republicans justify this lie by pretending birth control pills and IUDs prevent fertilized eggs from implanting, which is false. The former works by preventing ovulation and the latter by preventing sperm from meeting eggs. Republicans get around this by claiming that both "might" prevent a fertilized egg from implanting.
Of course, all sorts of things women do "might" impact implantation, including behaviors that Republicans approve of, such as having sex with Trump-voting husbands, cleaning toilets, or dieting. Impossible to know, as half of fertilized eggs don't implant for whatever reason. But of course, this entire gambit is bad faith on the level of the "ivermectin cures COVID-19" nonsense.
RELATED: The end of Roe v. Wade: American democracy is collapsing
The real reason that Republicans keep calling pregnancy prevention "abortion" is to create a pretext to ban contraception, a goal that Justice Clarence Thomas openly hinted was in the works in his concurrence on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health.
"Abortion" is quite the flexible term in Republican circles! The same abortion can be both an abortion and a not-abortion, depending on the moment. When it comes to terminating pregnancies in child rape victims, it's somehow an abortion when you're arresting the doctor who did it and a not-abortion when talking into a microphone in front of cameras. When trying to convince voters that you're not coming for their birth control, it's fine to call the birth control pill "contraception." But when drafting the policies that govern whether people can actually get that birth control, it's suddenly rendered an "abortifacient" and therefore bannable.
The meaning of words is ever-changing, depending on political necessity. What remains fixed, however, is the ultimate goal: Ending female autonomy by any means necessary.
