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Erin Ashley Mink Garvey Prof. Abraham WRD 511: Final Paper 21 November 2011

The Vernacular Voices of Abortion Introduction A common adage is that in mixed company, one should never talk about religion or politics, implying that few hot-button issues are as charged as those related to religion or politics, and fewer still manage to intersect both realms. Abortion--or terminating an unborn child, or ending an unwanted pregnancy, or infanticide, or the many other ways of describing the procedure--marries the personal with the public, religion with politics, and often results in hostile conversations at the policy-level, or, on a more local level, angry conversations around the dinner table that come to a standstill when different views fail to consider the opposing side(s). This paper will not attempt to convince readers that one way of describing, or reacting toward, the practices of abortion is favorable to another, nor will it seek to proselytize. Instead, it will examine the practices of abortion as conveyed through the American public and in so doing will deconstruct the common perception that there are only two abortion publics--pro-life or prochoice. Using Habermas Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Hausers Vernacular Voices as my analytical anchors, I will both describe and deconstruct the publics of abortion from two seemingly disparate, diametrically-opposed sides--that of the Catholic church, specifically the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (herein, USCCB) and Planned Parenthood Federation of America (herein, PPFA)--to show that while these two camps differ ideologically, there is still variation in the publics that comprise them. After examining the larger-picture environs of abortion practices from the Church and from PPFA, I will localize my examination by describing the abortion-related content of each sides websites, paying particular attention to whats said and not said about the issue, how each organization situates its content, and the

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language each organization uses to describe abortion practices and its views toward them. This paper will conclude with an analysis of the ideological issues surrounding the practice of polarizing abortion advocates and opponents in the mainstream media and how doing so will continue to make a productive, substantive conversation about the topic impossible to achieve. Situating Habermas and Hauser Habermas In his dissertation, Habermas traced the trajectory of the bourgeois public sphere and showed its historical dynamism in the European countries he studied. He argued that the bourgeois has always dictated what comprises the public sphere, but he also said that the public sphere didnt just derive from the bourgeois conversations in salons, coffee houses, or book clubs, and that the bourgeois wasnt always exclusively comprised of white, land-holding men. Shifts in political economies, mercantilism, and commodification, among other trends of national and international import, impacted the rise and fall of certain individuals once included (and excluded) in the bourgeois public sphere and, as such, influenced what issues were (or were not) part of it. It is helpful to foreground my analysis of the public spheres implicated in the abortion debate with Habermas theory because doing so illuminates that the so-called public sphere is not necessarily as public as its name would imply, nor is the public sphere necessarily a static entity. Understanding these fallacies of the common perception of the public sphere is critical to understand how and why analyzing the vernacular of vocal abortion critics and proponents, like the USCCB or PPFA, isnt as black-and-white an issue as it might appear. In addition, understanding that the bourgeois typically controls what is included (and excluded) from the public sphere is helpful in understanding why sometimes--particularly during election years--abortion is in the

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news, whereas in other times, it is not as prominent.1 Hauser Hauser, who published his Vernacular Voices text nearly two decades after Habermas dissertation, further complicates Habermas idea of the public sphere by offering five rhetorical norms that recommend themselves as criteria by which the defining conditions of any specific public sphere may be gauged and criticized (76). He enumerates these norms as permeable boundaries, activity, contextualized language, believable appearance, and tolerance, and says that these norms are essential to making public life a rhetorical achievement, explaining that, A well-ordered public sphere is inherently tied to the quality of its rhetorical exchanges. The particularity of its issues and its civil judgments requires a commitment to language and thought and their limits, as these function under conditions of contingency. Its rhetorical features encourage open consideration of a question from a variety of perspectives (77-80). The norm of contextualized language is particularly relevant to our analysis of the USCCB and the PPFA due to language inherently being laden with issues of power and politics. Hauser states that [institutional powers and epistemic elites] often preempt the possibilities for vernacular exchange by substituting technical language as coin of the rhetorical realm. Controlling the language in which issues are discussed determines how they are expressed, relevance of experience, and expertise in adjudicating the issues they raise (78). It is often so easy to take words, and their implicit and explicit meanings, for granted, until individuals find themselves adversely affected by the words, and their connotations or denotations, political ramifications. Consequently, as Hauser says, it is crucial that the contextualized language be appropriate to the exchange under consideration. Many of the controversies and debates surrounding abortion boil
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Case in point: on November 8, 2011, the state of Mississippi failed to pass a constitutional amendment, the personhood amendment, that would have declared that life begins at fertilization, directly challenging Roe v. Wade (Pettus).

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down to semantics--pro-life versus pro-choice or baby versus fetus, for example--so Hausers emphasis on contextualized language becomes especially relevant to our analysis. The Vernacular of Abortion Before dissecting the rhetoric of abortion as employed by the USCCB and PPFA, it is worthwhile to consider the terminology that abortion critics and proponents often use in their arguments because, as Hausers norm of contextualized language described, the language one uses in discourse often determines how issues are expressed (Hauser 78). Justfacts.com, a 501(c)(3) independent online research and educational institute, describes that [p]erhaps the largest point of contention involving terminology is the label applied to what or who is being aborted, detailing that people commonly use unborn child, unborn baby, fetus, baby, or preborn human to describe exactly what (or who) is being aborted (Agresti). The site also cites additional research that describes that using fetus and fetal are scientifically applicable from nine weeks after fertilization until birth, yet: numerous major news organizations have misapplied these terms to both before and after this period. Journalism guidelines disparage the use of medical jargon, but journalists selectively employ it in their coverage of this issue. Despite widespread usage of the term fetus, journalists commonly employ the word mother to refer to a pregnant woman, and rarely, if ever, the more specific and clinical term gravida. Conversely, when the topic is not abortion, press outlets sometimes shun the term fetus and use words such as baby or child in its place. (Agresti) Though there is a slew of other words in the abortion vernacular worth critiquing in terms of their ramifications, page limits preclude us from doing so. That said, it is most appropriate to begin our analysis of the USCCBs and PPFAs abortion-specific discourse with this idea in mind: that, at the most basic level, the organizations (likely) fail to share the same vernacular on the topic of abortion. Whether the public(s) that comprise said organizations share the same vernacular, however, is a different consideration. It is also worthwhile to note that abortions rhetoric carries with it significant social

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force, as Condit describes (1). She explains that the practice and meaning of abortion in the United States of America underwent stunning changes between 1960 and 1985. [...] The breadth and depth of the impacts of this singular, contested, and rapid change can hardly be underestimated and details that abortion has a pivotal role and that its meaning and practice is central to the reproduction of the human species, to our understandings of gender, and to our life ethics (Condit 1). Thus, the vernacular of abortion carries a significant weight, not only because of the implications of its many denotations and connotations but also because of its far-reaching, pivotal social forces that it affects and by which it is affected, including organizations such as the USCCB and PPFA. Deconstructing the Catholic Church At first glance, one might be tempted to think that the Catholic Church is a unified group of believers who support the same message and share the same belief system, regardless of demographic and social differences that distinguish parishioners in one locale from those in another. It is easy to forget that the American Catholic church may be categorized as an institutional interest group, [...] a hierarchical organization with tremendous resources that is able to maintain a consistent lobbying presence in Washington. [...] However, issues of representation and accountability are clearly not central for the American Catholic hierarchy (Segers 91). Segers, analyzing the church from the viewpoint of a political scientist, maintains that churches can at times operate as institutional interest groups seeking to protect their own narrow interests, and as membership organizations mobilizing congregants to influence public policy. At other times they may be acting as public interest groups, seeking the enactment of public policies that will benefit all in society (92). Thinking about the church as a political group might seem sacrilege, but Segers analysis

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situates it as one of the thousands of lobbying groups at the local, state, and federal levels, with the keen advantage of having organizational longevity, resources, and a defined hierarchy and logistical scheme that allow it ample access to policymakers (92-93). She explains, the church is a major player in public debates over abortion not because it represents the views of its members (indeed, poll data indicate that it does not) but because it is uniquely positioned, as an institution, to contend with what David Truman called the multiplicity of co-ordinate or nearly coordinate points of access to governmental decision in the United States (Segers 92-3, emphasis added). The fact that not only does the church have the aforementioned organizational advantages, but also that it has used a host of strategies typically employed by pressure groups in American politics, such as grassroots mobilization activities, court litigation, public information campaigns, direct intervention in electoral campaigns, and legislative lobbying--among others-situates it as a prominent, nearly immortal force to contend with on the issue of abortion on the local, state, and federal level (Segers 93). OBrien equally supports Segers view of the misrepresentation of the Catholic public between its leadership and laypeople2 as he explains that, given the Catholic governing structure, and the fact that Catholicism remains the largest single Christian denomination, the media sense the importance of the Catholic voice and vote. Reporters know where to go to get the Catholic view--or so it seems to them--and often turn to the bishop making the loudest pronouncement (OBrien 5). Segers and OBriens points that the churchs leadership misrepresents the Catholic publics view toward abortion intersects with Habermas idea of the bourgeois determining what enters into the public sphere. In this instance, in Segers view, church leadership is the bourgeois, maintaining that they are representing the will of the [Catholic] people in their anti-abortion
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Its outside the confines of this paper, but during my research, I stumbled upon many scholars work that explained how and why the contemporary churchs pro-life view is faulty, dating back to a misinterpretation of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Its fascinating.

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views, yet the parishioners who comprise the Catholic public are not necessarily at odds with the practice in the first place. Shannons findings also support those of Segers and OBrien, as she describes that Catholics have 30 percent of the abortions in the United States, only 15 percent of Catholics agree with the bishops that abortion should not be permitted under any circumstances, and that a majority of both prochoice and antichoice Catholics are uncomfortable with their own churchs anti-abortion actions in the political arena (25-27). Segers notes that it is perhaps a cliche to say that the church is not a democracy and is therefore not obligated to consult its members. However, those members (American Catholics) live in a constitutional democracy in a religiously diverse society [and as] citizens of a secular state, they are committed to religious freedom and tolerance (Segers 105). Clearly, this misrepresentation between the Catholic bourgeois leadership and its proletariat laypeople can become problematic when an entire group of people with diverse sociological and demographic differences are lumped together as one public, allegedly united in their anti-abortion rhetoric. Moreover, this misrepresentation becomes even more problematic when people assume that they can secure the Catholic voice on the issue of abortion. Localizing Abortion Within the Church: the USCCB website When I accessed USCCB.org on November 11, 2011, a quick search yielded no results for abortion on the sites homepage. It wasnt until I explored it in greater detail, reading the smaller print and menu drop-downs, that I found a section of the site accessible from the homepage devoted exclusively to pro-Life activities. The pro-life site, seemingly a committee of the USCCB, describes that it: assists the bishops, both collectively and individually, in teaching respect for all human life from conception to natural death and in organizing for its protection, especially on behalf of those who are unborn, disabled, elderly, dying, or facing the death penalty. This mandate includes the following areas of responsibility: [e]ducation, promotion of pastoral

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care programs, and public policy advocacy focused on issues involving the defense of human life at its beginning (abortion, embryonic stem cell research, cloning) and at its end (euthanasia, assisted suicide, including collaboration on opposition to the use of the death penalty). Subsequent research revealed USCCBs extensive (and well-organized) information and literature related to post-abortion healing, partial birth abortion, RU-486, and Project Rachel, and its abortion-specific site contains over ninety pamphlets, PDFs, press statements, informational fact sheets, and statistics, dating from the 1970s into the present, related to abortion, and many of these resources are available in both Spanish and English. Judging from the extensive and exhaustive library of anti-abortion resources on the USCCB website, it is completely understandable how one might stumble upon this site and, thinking that the USCCB is the representative body for American Catholics, conclude that this diverse, enormous group of people are as united in their ideologies and anti-abortion stances as are their religious leaders. The contextualized language in the abortion controversy is quite clear and connected from the Catholic (leadership) side of things: life begins at conception, so killing the by-product of fertilization is murder, and thus, all Catholics are pro-life. Additionally, perhaps not surprisingly, the USCCB site does not let on, even in the smallest detail, that there is a disconnect between the Catholic leadership bourgeois and its laypeople parishioners, as Segers, OBrien, and Shannon explained. Demonstrating and acknowledging a diversity of Catholic opinions in the abortion debate would seriously undermine and fragment the churchs alreadyestablished vernacular voice, even though showcasing this swath of opinions would be more representative of the varied American Catholic publics. Deconstructing Planned Parenthood Federation of America PPFA differs from the Catholic Church in many ways, and the base of this difference is that while PPFA is a health services provider, the Catholic Church is a religious organization. At

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the same time, however, PPFA is similar to the church in that it is meticulously organized at the local, state, federal, and international level. Because PPFA has so many levels of connections, one could theoretically claim that it is as connected as the church is to policy-makers and the controllers of the public sphere. While the Catholic Church is the largest religious domination in the USA, PPFA is the nations leading provider of reproductive healthcare services for men and women, and its website boasts that PPFA is comprised of 83 unique, [independent] locally governed affiliates that operate approximately 800 health centers in their communities. The PPFA site also claims its status as the nations leading reproductive healthcare services organization because, according to them, one in five American women have used PPFAs services at least once in her life. A common mistake is to characterize PPFA as strictly providing abortions to the women they serve, and while surely they do provide abortion services--suffice it to say that it comes with the territory--many people fail to characterize PPFAs numerous other services that comprise the bulk of their work. The PPFA site states that the health centers provide a wide range of safe, reliable health care and more than 90 percent is preventive, primary care, which helps prevent unintended pregnancies through contraception, reduce the spread of sexually transmitted infections through testing and treatment, and screen for cervical and other cancers. There is no doubt that PPFAs wording to describe their services, particularly in their Who We Are section, oscillates between fully disclosing in plain language the reproductive health services they provide and somewhat skirting the issue of starkly disclosing that they perform abortions; in fact, the word abortion is nowhere to be found on the sites Who We Are page. Similar to the Catholic Church, there is more than what meets the eye of PPFA. In this way, we could claim that there are many publics that comprise the public of PPFA, since the

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organization has come to signify many things to many people, as their site explains. Besides the preventive (and reactive) reproductive health care services they provide, they call themselves a trusted health care provider, an informed educator, a passionate advocate, and a global partner helping similar organizations around the world. Planned Parenthood delivers vital reproductive health care, sex education, and information to millions of women, men, and young people worldwide. For more than 90 years, Planned Parenthood has promoted a commonsense approach to womens health and well-being, based on respect for each individuals right to make informed, independent decisions about health, sex, and family planning. Unlike the Catholic Church, however, there probably is not a huge disconnect between the leadership of PPFA and the people who use the organizations services.3 Additionally, it is reasonable to assume that there will also be a more unified public under the guise of a healthcare provider, like PPFA, than there would be under a religious organization, like the Catholic Church or the USCCB.4 Localizing Abortion Within PPFA: the PPFA Website While my earlier analysis of PPFA, particularly of the websites Who We Are section, explained that PPFA flies under the radar in how it describes its providing of abortion services, PPFA is transparent toward the practice elsewhere on its website. At the organizations homepage, readers prominently see the word abortion placed as the second option under the Health Info & Services drop-down menu, second only to Planned Parenthood Locations. Besides the logical placement of abortion under the organizations Health Info & Services drop-down menu, readers can also click a hyperlink on the homepage to learn more regarding the facts about abortion.
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Admittedly, this is an assumption. I did not encounter a statement denying this claim anywhere in the literature, and one might assert that if patients didnt agree with PPFAs ideological bent, they could satisfy their healthcare needs elsewhere. At the same time, however, PPFA prides itself on its accessibility to the most vulnerable in society, so claiming that patients can go get their care elsewhere might not be entirely accurate.
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Another claim, but it seems reasonable. A healthcare organization doesnt deal with issues of ones soul, making any service it provides incomparable to those housed in a religious (or religiously-affiliated) organization.

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Interestingly, if readers click on either abortion link from the homepage, they are redirected to the same abortion site, where the first complete sentence, which is bolded and in an approximate 16point font, declares that abortion is a safe and legal way to end pregnancy. Once at PPFAs abortion health services sub-page, though the text is sparse, readers can click on subsequent hyperlinks to learn about in-clinic abortions and the abortion pill--the two kinds of abortion available in the USA--and they can also click on other hyperlinks pertaining to pregnancy options, parenting, adoption, as well as those related to parental consent for abortion and how to find their own local PPFA affiliate. On the right sidebar is also a link to PPFAs Q&A with Dr. Cullins, who has a abortion-specific Q&A. The pregnancy options page5, linked from PPFAs abortion services sub-page, is also worth examining because of its tone: almost as though it is replicating a conversation between a medical practitioner and a patient. It states: If you are pregnant, you have three options to think about abortion, adoption, and parenting. Reading and learning about each one will help you get the facts and may help you decide. It may also help to weigh the benefits and risks of each one. Think about which benefits and risks are most important to you. Only you can decide which choice is right for you. But women often find it helpful to talk it through with someone else. You may choose to talk with your partner or a trusted family member or friend. Pick someone you think will be supportive. It's important to remember that you get to decide who is a part of your decision-making process. Family planning clinics, like your local Planned Parenthood health center, have specially trained staff who can talk with you about all of your options. But beware of so-called crisis pregnancy centers. These are fake clinics run by people who are anti-abortion. They often don't give women all their options. They have a history of scaring women into not having abortions. Absolutely no one should pressure you or trick you into making a decision you're not comfortable with. It may be important to take your time and think carefully about your decision. But you may not want to wait too long. Whether you choose adoption or to become a parent, if you plan to continue your pregnancy, you should begin prenatal care as soon as possible. And if you are considering abortion, you should know that abortion is very safe, but the risks increase
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Ive left the hyperlinks in place so you can see where and how PPFA links its content to other areas of its website.

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the longer a pregnancy goes on. It is interesting to see here that while PPFA does not try to be disingenuous about the availability of abortion services it provides, most of its content on this page is concentrated on empowering the individual to make the choice thats right for her and for her circumstances. By using Hausers contextualized language norm as an anchor for our analysis, we can claim that this passage is quite revealing, in that a common perception of PPFA is that it is exclusively an abortion services provider--with some people equating it to Planned Abortion, not Planned Parenthood,--but the empowering, practitioner-to-patient vernacular it uses on its pregnancy options page reinforces the fact that PPFA believes that abortion is but one of three options a woman can take. Thus, to say that PPFA espouses that abortion is the best solution for all women is wholly inaccurate.6 Just as there are many publics who comprise the Catholic Church, full of a diversity of opinions and experiences that influence their ideological inclinations regarding their faith, so, too, are there clearly a variety of people who use PPFAs services--not just those who are seeking abortions. Concluding Analysis As this abbreviated analysis has revealed, the medical practice of abortion is rife with proponents and opponents who base their beliefs on ideological grounds related to religion and politics. It is temptingly easy to claim that only two disparate camps exist within the abortion conversation based on how it is commonly framed when it is prominent in the public sphere. Fittingly, Habermas teaches us that those who are in control of the public sphere often do not speak for or represent the interests of others and that what makes the sphere often coincides with the

In fact, when I asked a former Planned Parenthood Nurse Practitioner about the terminology that PPFA staff used when talking with patients, she explained, We really tried to be non-judgmental and non-biased, so if a person came in for a pregnancy test, we would ask what her plans were. If she was undecided, we would discuss continuing the pregnancy, terminating the pregnancy, or continuing and considering adoption. Overall, I think abortion has a pretty gruesome connotation to it, so we would avoid saying that word (Morlan).

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self-interests of those who have the power to control it. Hauser extends Habermas ideas and says that in order for a productive rhetorical exchange in society to occur, the norm of contextualized language, among others, must be satisfied by societys rhetors. As our earlier analysis showed, however, the issue of abortion is rife with semantic contention, making Hausers contextualized language norm practically impossible to satisfy. Advocates and opponents of the practice of abortion work tirelessly to progress their cause, particularly in the mainstream media, yet our views of the issue are often colored by those who make it onto the evening news--the extreme of the extreme, people who bomb clinics and murder practitioners because they believe they are realizing their gods work, or those who are hospitalized or die horrific deaths because their fear of getting an abortion, legally, in their community clinic leads them to get abortions in precarious circumstances. The perpetuating polarization of the abortion topic--both within disparate groups, such as the USCCB and PPFA, and among individuals--will continue to make having a productive and substantive conversation about abortion nearly impossible; only when we realize that there are many publics that comprise the disparate groups, who have many opinions about the topic, will meaningful conversations be able to occur.

Works Cited Agresti, James D. Abortion Facts." JustFacts.com. Published 24 Sept. 2008. Revised 5 Nov. 2010. Accessed 11 Nov. 2011. Web. Condit, Celeste Michelle. Decoding Abortion Rhetoric: Communicating Social Change. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990. Print.

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Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1989. Print. Hauser, Gerard A. Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Caroline Press, 1999. Print. Morlan, Lauren. Personal interview. 17 Oct. 2011. OBrien, George Dennis. The Church and Abortion: A Catholic Dissent. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2010. Print. Pettus, Emily Wagster. Mississippi Personhood Amendment Vote Fails. Huffington Post. Web. 11 Nov. 2011. Planned Parenthood Federation of America. 2011. Web. 9 Nov. 2011. Segers, Mary C. The Catholic Church as a Political Actor. Perspectives on the Politics of Abortion. Ed. Ted G. Jelen. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 1995. 87-130. Print. Shannon, Denise. Outside the Chancery: Catholics Take Issue. Guide for Prochoice Catholics: the Church, the State, and Abortion Politics. Ed. Catholics for a Free Choice. 1990: 24-28. Print. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). 2011. Web. 9 Nov. 2011.

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