We are all too accustomed to the military's Orwellian evasions.Today's New York Times' editorial appears to indulge a like propensity.

Not surprisingly, it inveighs against a new Kansas law regarding abortion. The Editorial Board is particularly exercised by what it considers "the shock value language" employed in the legistlation, which describes “clamps, grasping forceps, tongs, scissors” or other instruments that “slice, crush or grasp a portion of the unborn child’s body in order to cut or rip it off.”

The Board clearly prefers the more clinical and antiseptic language of "dilation and evacuation" – though it does concede that the fetus is removed "often in parts."

Reading this, the perverse thought came: can the Times actually be an instrument promoting conversion to the pro-life cause?