Can't even write 'pro-life'

In You Will Be Made to Care—a just-published book that in June will make WORLD’s Book of the Year short list for current events—Erick Erickson and Bill Blankschaen write that left-wing and LGBT activists are out to take away freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and even freedom of thought. That last clause seemed over the top to me, but I recently ran across and experimented with a Google extension that changes the words “pro-life” to “anti-choice.” ThinkProgress has the details.

Here’s an example of how it works with Google’s Chrome browser: I wrote an email to several of our editors and reporters with this line: “Congress passed RICO in 1970 as a means to take on the Mafia and other organized crime groups. I didn’t like pro-aborts using it against pro-life groups.” The extension changed my sentence to “I didn’t like pro-aborts using it against anti-choice groups.”

When I saw what the extension had done, I wrote another email: “By the way, I’m experimenting with a left-wing, 1984-style program that automatically turns ‘pro-life’ into ‘anti-choice.’” But the extension made my sentence read ‘… automatically turns ‘anti-choice’ into ‘anti-choice.’” I was unable even to express my thought except by sending a follow-up email: “Oops—can’t even write pr-life.”

Here how the extension changes headlines and body copy from LifeNews.com, a strongly pro-life news site: “Marco Rubio: Donald Trump Would Not Replace Justice Scalia With Another Anti-Choice Judge,” “The company Hobby Lobby is synonymous with anti-choice values,” and “Senator Ted Cruz, the anti-choice advocate from Texas.” Sometimes the result is absurdity: “Google Extension Switches Everything You Read Online From “Anti-Choice” to “Anti-Choice.”

George Orwell would have found this attempt to control speech fascinating. Do you? You can try it yourself by downloading the Choice Language extension from the Chrome Web Store. Use of this browser extension, which was created by the National Institute for Reproductive Health, is voluntary, and anti-choice appears in boldface, but what’s the next step at inhibiting pro-life speech, which over time inhibits thought? At some point will we be made not to say “pro-life”? Even mentioning that seems over the top, but change that harms hope is coming like a locomotive.

Please email me (molasky@wng.org) with examples of thought control you have seen. I may write a future WORLD magazine column on this topic. And, by the way, I’ll send out my reply messages on Safari.