Maybe, as a thought for this pre-Christmas week, we can borrow a column from BreakPoint, written b Eric Metaxes: Gushing over the Royal Fetus: â¨Words Matter Eric Metaxas,â¨December 18, 2012 The battle over human dignity is waged not just at the local abortion clinic or crisis pregnancy center, nor merely in the halls of Congress or the Supreme Court. It is also carried out in our choice of words. The war on the sanctity of human life relies on bullets of deception and warheads of untruthâin short, on what George Orwell called âpolitical language,â which he said âis designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.â Those who support the legal killing of unborn human beings in the womb have used political language for decades, cloaking their morally indefensible position in innocuous-sounding terms such as âchoiceâ and âwomenâs healthââhoping the rest of us will forget about the status and rights of the other person directly affected in the abortion transactionânamely the fetus. For any who express the slightest qualms about the unborn, these political language manipulators are quick to deny the humanity or personhood of the fetus, calling it a âlump of tissue,â a âproduct of conception,â or even a âpotential personâ! Thus, by their choice of vocabulary, they attempt to subvert thought and the normal human compassion we would feel for the 50 million defenseless human beings legally abortedâmake that snuffed outâin their mothersâ wombs since Roe v. Wade in 1973. But itâs hard to keep up the verbal sleight of hand all the time. A case in point is the considerable elation over the news that Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, is carrying a child. Thatâs right, a child, not a âproduct of conceptionâ! We are told that her âbabyâ will be third in line to the throne, behind only Prince William and Prince Charles. Iâm not the only one to have noticed the unusual descriptions of the royal baby in the press. One bemused observer is a British blogger who goes by the tongue-in-cheek pseudonym âArchbishop Cranmer,â referencing the 16th-century Protestant divine who was executed during the reign of Queen Mary on the charge of heresy. Noting the excitement in British society about the child who is âdestined to ascend the throne,â the modern âArchbishop Cranmerâ points out the slip of so many tongues. âSurely such âpro-choiceâ newspapers and journals (and people) should be talking about a bunch of pluripotent stem cells, an embryo or a foetus?â he asks. âFor reports suggest that the Duchess is still in her first trimester, so this is not yet a baby; and certainly nothing with any kind of destiny. At this stage, surely, it is a non-person, just like the other 201,931 non-persons who last year were evacuated from wombs in England, Scotland and Wales.â The Brits are clearlyâand rightlyâtreating the royal baby not as a clump of cells to be disposed of for any reason but as fully human, as a person. Yes, friends, the language we use matters. Is the life in the womb a âproduct of conceptionâ or a person, maybe even a prince in waiting? Philosopher Peter Kreeft says that the âpersonhood of the fetus is clearly the crucial issue for abortion, for if the fetus is not a person, abortion is not the deliberate killing of an innocent person.â Kreeft adds, âPersons have a âright to lifeâ but non-persons (e.g., cells, tissues, organs, and animals) do not.â Friends, our greatest weapon in the defense of human dignity is not bombs or bullets but the truth. Letâs wield it. For as Orwell also said, âIn a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.â