In reading Gloria Feldt’s commentary on the Supreme Court’s heartbreaking and groundbreaking decision to deny women the right to choose, I’m reminded of what the former President of Planned Parenthood Feldt calls “the travesty of language” around this issue.

In late 2005, I published a book titled “Dictionary of Republicanisms.” One of the many reasons for doing the book was my belief that before we can win the great battle of ideas, we must first debunk the Right’s political discourse–a veritable Orwellian code of encrypted language that twists common usage to deceive the public for the Republicans’ own purposes. “The key to their linguistic strategy,” I argue in the book’s introduction, “is to use words that sound moderate to us but mean something completely different to them.”

I think of what Feldt calls “the travesty of language” and the Right’s longterm, well-funded battle to hijack our language as I read the Court’s decision–one that in plain language eviscerates a woman’s right to control her own body. I also thought–Shame on major news outlets–like the Washington Post’s editorial this morning–for simply lifting and using the Right’s language of “partial birth” abortion. (The procedure–as the New York Times pointed out, is known medically as “intact dilation and extraction.”)

For those who want simpler definitions of “partial birth operation,” I offer two from “Dictionary of Republicanisms”:

1/ Convenient wedge issue used to separate working-class social conservatives from the Democratic Party.

2/ Banning of which is the first step in reversal of Roe v. Wade