The power of reflecting on your own beliefs and values

This past beautiful Friday, I picked up a copy of The Record.

I did a little perusing through, and my eyes were drawn to “All life is sacred;” to which I initially found myself thinking “yeah, I agree with that,” at least on paper. However, I wasn’t born yesterday. I understand that’s a common phrase used by those who consider themselves advocates for the pro-life movement.

As my eyes tracked along the newspaper page, the number of exclamation points going off in my head felt like the metal gear solid alert sound was going off.

After finishing the op-ed, I knew I was going to write a response.

Now, I understand this article was written in response to Sonja Hoversten’s op-ed from last week titled “We must protect the sanctity of human life in Gaza,” but language is powerful. I’d argue the usage of certain verbiage within our media is the main culprit of the ongoing polarization happening in the world. In my seventh grade English class, we compared denotations and connotations. For those of you who haven’t had this lesson in a while, here’s a refresher.

A denotation represents a literal meaning of a word, whereas a connotation represents the ideas and feelings commonly attached with a word. Think CONtext. So, when I read the line, “Americans often fail to realize that the largest genocide in human history is the abortion genocide happening around us every day,” to say I was appalled by the heinous and egregious misuse of the word genocide is a humongous understatement.

If you looked up the definition of a genocide, Encyclopedia Britannica would tell you that genocide is “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a group of people because of their ethnicity, nationality, religion or race.”

An example of this is what happened to our Jewish brothers and sisters during the Holocaust—that’s a genocide. What’s happening to our Palestinian brothers and sisters is a genocide. What’s happening to our Darfuri brothers and sisters is a genocide. Abortion is not a genocide, in looking at the denotation of the word.

If your connotation of genocide is a lot of people being killed at once, you’re missing large piece. Alternate words like massacre could be used, but genocide is just wrong. This misappropriation of the word is a harsh slap across the faces of those who are actually affected by it.

I’m Muslim, and in Islam, the permissibility with abortions is tied to when ensoulment occurs. It’s most widely accepted that ensoulment, when the soul enters the fetus, happens 120 days after conception. Before that point, in cases such as rape, incest and if the pregnancy poses a threat to the mother’s health, it’s permissible. Even after that 120-day point, if the mother’s mortality is on the line, it’s still permissible. It was interesting to find out that the procedure used to remove a miscarried fetus still in the womb, which is often recommended by doctors, is the same one used to carry out an abortion. I think the removal of the fetus in this case is a lot more cut and dry, but strict abortion laws limit and police these medical procedures.

I say all this to convey that we don’t live in a monolithic society. Not everyone, even if you claim to be from the same group of people, believes the same thing. So, yes, it can, should and will be the mother of my children’s “choice” to get an abortion, because the value that women bring to our world by being here living among us far surpasses what value might’ve been brought, regardless of the woman’s ability to bring children into the world. If doom scrolling on Instagram reels has taught me anything, it’s that brutality happens all around us—whether it be police brutality onto BIPOC communities or the humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We’ve got sisters and brothers out here on our campuses who are dealing with food insecurity, so when we’re talking about “the issue that is closer to our home and our community,” when you say we can’t pick and choose which lives are more important, you not only are removing nuance, but you are not acknowledging we already do that in how we choose to serve our communities. I’m not going to change your mind with most of these points, and you’re free to have your own beliefs. However, if there’s one thing you should take away, it’s to be infinitely more mindful of the words you use to spread your message.

Take some time to reflect on not only your word choices and their connotations, but also your beliefs and values and sources of information.

Do you actually believe these things because you came to your own conclusion, or have you been influenced by external factors that you’ve learned not to question? Reflecting on these questions during these college years is how we build a sense of self. This has been Bangaly Kaba, keeping it honest.