Although you mourn the decay of the English language, all’s not lost. There’s some good news.  Americans still understand how to use words creatively and ingeniously, especially to sway someone’s opinion. Of course, no one maneuvers language better than the sitting President. He may miss the proper use of a pronoun here or there, but he masterfully hypnotizes millions of groveling subjects. You might say groveling has become a lucrative occupation in the land of Entitlement. In the business community, professional marketers who on the one hand struggle to parse a sentence also invent new words and find new ways to sway minds and hearts. So yes, all’s not lost. Our pristine language may be dying but the imaginative use of words flourishes as never before. By far, the best example of word play permeates both the boardroom and the bedroom. That word, or term, is Pro-Choice. Neat expression, don’t you think? Has a nice ring. Engenders feelings of self-determination, integrity, liberty, freedom, etc.  In the annals of political discourse, perhaps no word manipulation has ever been as artful. Because, in reality, Pro-Choice is what’s known as a euphemism (affectation, trick, false show). However grim it may be, the correct term is Pro-Death. You’re not the least interested in debating all the ins and outs of Roe v. Wade.  You simply want to expose the creative use of a single word to make a landmark case. If one group in society is Pro-Life, the opposing group must, by definition, be Pro-Death. Seems reasonable. The debate over this issue is futile and should be abandoned by leaving governments out of it. But something has been nagging you for years. If society decides it’s OK to kill a fetus (oops, you should say, “to end a pregnancy”), there also should be some legal provision for a parent to kill a child that hasn’t reached some magic age of independence; that is, when it can walk, talk, etc. Infants — even two-year-old’s — are as helpless and useless as they were in the womb; so to be fair, if a mother is inclined to abort a life in the womb, why should this authority not extend beyond the womb? In the real world, some women regret abortions after the fact; in other cases, women regret giving birth after the fact. In reality, therefore, Pro-Death is just a matter of timing. Millions of people despise Casey Anthony for terminating the life of her daughter, when in fact she just waited too long to realize she was Pro-Death. Scott Peterson didn’t want the burden of offspring. Fair enough. He should have been charged with the murder of his wife; but as a potential parent, the death of the fetus was merely a late-term abortion, in keeping with Pro-Death. If a mother gets a pass on premeditated abortion, shouldn’t a father? Parents do “own” their offspring, do they not? Or, let’s see, is there something in the Constitution about “the right to life?”  All this reminds you of a conversation between Josey and Ten Bears:
Josey: That’s my word of life.
Ten Bears: And your word of death?
Josey: It’s here in my pistols, there in your rifles. I’m here for either one.
Ten Bears: These things you say we will have, we already have.
Josey: That’s true. I ain’t promising you nothin’ extra. I’m just giving you life and you’re giving me life. And I’m saying that men can live together without butchering one another.
Ten Bears: “ . . . .The words of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life… or death. It shall be life.
You believe life is precious. You do, don’t you? Don’t you?