Royal Baby: Once Again the Entire World Knows a Baby is a Baby

International   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Sep 8, 2014   |   11:26AM   |   Washington, DC

The former Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, has announced she’s pregnant with baby number two. And once again, the world seems to understand that an unborn baby is a baby, and not something else.

The British royal couple announced today that they’re expecting their second child and Kate is being treated for severe morning sickness. The couple’s Clarence House office said they and their families were “delighted” with the baby news.

royalbabyAll over the Internet and on social media, people were again using the term “Royal Baby.” The potential terms “royal fetus” or “royal blob of tissue” haven’t caught on. Again, it seems as if the world again has settled on the fact that a baby before birth is a human baby.

The phrase “#RoyalBaby” immediately became a top trending topic on Twitter and has remained that way since.

Christian writer Eric Metaxas pointed out last year that the same phenomenon occurred:

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 untruth—in short, on what George Orwell called “political language,” which he said “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

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 “choice” and “women’s health”—hoping the rest of us will forget about the status and rights of the other person directly affected in the abortion transaction—namely 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 “lump of tissue,” a “product of conception,” or even a “potential person”! 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 aborted—make that snuffed out—in their mothers’ wombs since Roe v. Wade in 1973.

But it’s 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, was carrying a child. That’s right, a child, not a “product of conception”!

The Brits are clearly—and rightly—treating 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 “product of conception” or a person, maybe even a prince in waiting?

Philosopher Peter Kreeft says that the “personhood 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.” Kreeft adds, “Persons have a ‘right to life’ but non-persons (e.g., cells, tissues, organs, and animals) do not.”

Friends, our greatest weapon in the defense of human dignity is not bombs or bullets but the truth. Let’s wield it. For as Orwell also said, “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

Earlier this year, as Prince George turned one, LifeNews writer Maria Vitale Gallagher recalled the “Royal baby” language and its emphasis on life.

Sometimes it takes a prince to show us our humanity.

This week’s People magazine features a cover photo of Great Britain’s Prince George. His Royal Highness is turning 1—an occasion marked by a grand family celebration.

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princegeorgeIt is interesting that a baby’s face graces a magazine called People, in a country that, under the Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade, denies the humanity of the unborn child during all nine months of pregnancy. His plump cheek visage could also easily make him a candidate for People’s celebrated “Most Beautiful People” issue.

People is a bible of pop culture, and I think it’s appropriate to applaud the media when they get it right. It is altogether right to herald a little prince’s birthday, along with the possibility of a royal sibling. Entertainment journalists should also be appropriately credited with coining the term “baby bump,” which is a little homage to the developing child.

But the pro-life movement should be credited as well. For, despite Roe’s decades-long reign, “fetus bump” just hasn’t caught on. And one would have to think it’s due to more than just a lack of alliteration.

Recognizing the nobility of a child is just a human thing to do. Despite the efforts of the abortion industry to dehumanize an unborn baby…to compare pregnancy with nursing a toothache…and to sever the ties between mother and preborn child…abortion practitioners have yet to completely overtake culture and country.

Each celebration of babies…each recognition of baby bumps…every photo of a most beautiful pregnant woman is actually a victory for the pro-life side. No court can overrule popular expressions of reverence for life.