No matter how much I read it, I cannot suppress my reaction of horror at label , the gloomy message on cigarette packs: "Smoking kills". But smokers and non-smokers alike have learned to live with that omnipresent notice . The public authorities do not mince their words here. Bread, bread and butter. Perhaps that is why I find it strange that the same authorities wrap the name of induced abortion in modest euphemistic expressions. Even the very name of the law (Organic Law 2/2010 on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy) seems to have been designed by an image cabinet bent on selling a product whose true reality is hidden.

It is well known that when one wishes to do "social engineering", the first step is to carry out the appropriate "linguistic engineering", to coin new expressions to rename the usual things. Linguistic engineering" is based on the pretension that if we change words, reality will change, or at least its social perception. And a privileged resource of "linguistic engineering" is the employment of euphemisms, a resource as old as language, although the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century managed to get the most out of it: communist and Nazi dictatorships or radical nationalisms have put into practice the verbal camouflage and manipulation that G. Orwell predicted in his novel 1984.

It is true that not all euphemisms are manipulative and mendacious: there are humanitarian, attenuating, polite euphemisms, such as blind or disabled; and also magnifying euphemisms, such as those used to designate certain professions or establishments (employee of urban property "porter", pedicurist or podiatrist "callista", boutique "tienda", street cleaning technician "barrendero"), a phenomenon that Delibes baptized as "revolution of card of visit". Here I refer to the lying or manipulative euphemism. The euphemism consisting of masking, cosmetics at the service of an ideology. This subject of euphemism, by giving a new denomination to a certain reality, proposes a new vision of it, in accordance with the ideology that coins it. It is politically correct language. But the designated reality remains intact. Hence the need to look for other euphemistic substitutes when the use has ended up "contaminating" the euphemistic expression. This is the so-called "domino effect": backward, underdeveloped, developing country development, emerging country...

One of the star products of manipulative euphemism is the expression voluntary interruption of pregnancy, acronym IVE, to designate "induced abortion", an expression that has been imposed in the official legislative and administrative speech with the aforementioned controversial organic law. And this expression has "slipped" into the Dictionary of Medical Terms of the Royal National Academy of Medicine and even into the official academic dictionary. Both dictionaries define abortion as "interruption of pregnancy". But, fortunately, not all dictionaries at language have included this euphemism in the definition. The Diccionario del Español Actual (by Manuel Seco, O. Andrés and G. Ramos) and the Diccionario del Español de México, to give an example of good dictionaries from each side of the Atlantic, disagree with the official academic definition. For the former, abortion is the "provoked expulsion of the fetus". For the latter, abortion is "to expel a fetus before the time in which it can live or to expel it already dead".

Abortion does not "interrupt" the pregnancy, but cancels it forever.

It could be argued that the meaning of interrupting can also be "to cancel, to cut off the continuity of something". And here again, non-academic dictionaries disagree with the official dictionary, specifying that the distinctive feature "for a certain time and space" is part of the meaning of interrupting, which is why it is not appropriate to apply the notion of "interrupting" to abortion: abortion does not "interrupt" the pregnancy, but rather cuts it short or cancels it definitively.

But even if we were to admit that to abort is to cancel the pregnancy, such a definition would still be euphemistic and somewhat opaque by silencing the most important thing: that a life that begins is suppressed; a life that is, from the beginning, distinct from that of the mother, as demonstrated by the latest scientific data on the genesis of human life.

A life that begins is always a matter of three: father, mother and child. It does not seem fair to try to solve the tragedy of an unwanted pregnancy with the higher tragedy of abortion. The legislation of a civilized country of the 21st century cannot ignore the defense of the weakest, the child and the mother. Only a society that protects the weak is a strong and healthy society. The public authorities should make it as easy as possible for parents who, for whatever reason, consider themselves unable to become position of a child, to find others who can become position of the child and, moreover, wish to do so, which would solve two problems.

Words are more than words. It is not indifferent to name something in one way or another. If it is true that smoking kills (and to say that it "interrupts a vital process" would not be from receipt), it is no less true that abortion also kills. Knowingly or unknowingly, willingly or unwillingly, when we use language we are often giving moral lessons by ignoring certain aspects of reality and emphasizing others.

Doesn't the simple fact that there is so much euphemism in so many central points of the current discussion on life: interruption of pregnancy, reproductive rights, sexual health...? The content of the aforementioned 2010 law seems that, at last, it is going to be changed. Let us hope that its very name will also be changed, so that it will be transparent about what it designates and not mislead people. Let us hope that we do not have to regret, like so many intellectuals in the West in the last century, having been complacent with a mentality that wants to change our current words and impose a politically correct language of design , in accordance with the prevailing ideology. May the historic day come soon when the same humanity that one day banished the scourge of slavery will also overcome the monstrosity of abortion.