Am I the only one who's sick of hearing that states are "enshrining" abortion rights in their constitutions?
Why do members of the media insist on using this religious word to describe a political action?
Aside from the obvious meaning, the definition of enshrine is "to cherish as sacred."
All these states are doing is adding the right to abortion to their constitution. Maybe you could say they're categorizing it as a civil right. But they are not cherishing it as sacred or building a shrine around it.
But it seems to me that the use of this word is being used — whether purposely or unconsciously — to categorize abortion as a religious choice, as if it were the polar opposite of the religious belief of evangelicals. Opposite, but still religious — the way the Christian Right tries to insist that atheism or science are religions, because they can't imagine life without religion.
Somehow it isn't possible that abortion is simply a person having control of their own body and their health, the same way they do when it comes to deciding whether they will donate a kidney or part of their liver, even though it will save someone else's life.
2 comments:
I noticed this yesterday, on both MSNBC and PBS, and It sounded weird to me too. I looked in Rodale’s Synonym Finder just now, where all the words gathered for enshrine have a religious or reverential flavor:
1. sanctify, dedicate, consecrate; beatify, hallow; deify, apotheosize, exalt, idolize.
2. cherish, hold sacred, immortalize, revere, venerate, adore; esteem, prize, value, preserve.
Maybe “now guaranteed by the constitution”?
Yes, guaranteed is another good verb that would work if journalists want something fancier than "added"!
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