Language is important

While the world held its breath, Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, gave birth to the third in line to the throne. Our congratulations and best wishes.

But did you notice how the royal baby was described?

The language manipulators who support abortion might have called it the product of conception, a blob of tissue, or a potential person. But no. This was always a baby.

From the announcement of the Duchess's pregnancy, the Guardian talked about the couple "expecting their first child," who would be "the Queen's third great-grandchild," who would "become third in line to the throne" and was "destined to wear the crown one day."

Archbishop Cranmer, the blogger who hides his identity behind the name of the 16th century prelate who was burned at the stake, noticed.

Asked Cranmer, tongue in cheek, "Surely such 'pro-choice' newspapers and journals (and people) should be talking about a bunch of pluripotent stem cells, an embryo or a fetus? For 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."

Language is important. George Orwell said political language "is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

Philosopher Peter Kreeft says "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. Persons have a 'right to life,' but non-persons (eg cells, tissues, organs and animals) do not."

As Christian writer Eric Metaxas points out, "our greatest weapon in the defence of human dignity is not bombs or bullets, but the truth. Let's wield it."