What does "pro-choice" mean? The logic goes something like this: any female, for whatever reason, should be free to kill her unborn child; any doctor, no matter the moral reservations, must be forced to perform, or refer clients to where they might obtain, abortions.

On Wednesday, the House Appropriations Committee approved an amendment to block federal funding for governmental agencies that sue doctors, hospitals, and others involved in health care who refuse to perform abortions.

The existing state of affairs in which the government sues health care providers for refusing to offer abortions is wrong on so many levels. Can't the pro-abortion lobby bankroll their own frivolous lawsuits without our money? If it's wrong for the government to impose morality, isn't it also wrong for the government to force immorality? Doesn't pro-choice mean, well, pro-choice--the freedom to not perform abortions?

"The effect of this amendment would be a gag order on physicians," New York Congresswoman Nita Lowey contended, "to be able to give patients the full range of options." No, there are hundreds of places across America--at least one in every state--where women can get abortions. NARAL condemned the amendment as an aspect of President Bush's "anti-choice agenda." This is an Alice-in-Wonderland inversion of reality. The amendment doesn't stop health care providers from performing abortions. It merely stops government from subsidizing lawsuits against them should they decide to steer clear of abortion.

"Pro-choice" is a euphemism. It really stands for the freedom of abortion's proponents to do anything they want, and the conscription of its opponents to do what they don't want.

This is why "pro-abortion" is by far the more honest and accurate term than the politically palatable euphemism "pro-choice". Having an abortion is, after all, the "choice" that NARAL exists to try and justify; not some abstract choice, like whether to have your tonsils taken out, or whether to have your ear pierced. "Pro life", on the other hand is an accurate term, because the word "life" tells you what's at stake in a way the term "choice" does not. An abortion terminates a human life at its earliest and most vulnerable stage. Without the abortion you have a human life, with the abortion you don't. This is an indisputable fact that the propagandists at NARAL and their tools in the Democratic party can't explain away.