Almost without exception, Davis has been regaled as a heroine of the war on women, a new gladiator in the pantheon of feminist warriors. As such, she faced such probing questions as “How are you even awake today?” and “What was it like standing for that long?” Like wowser-zowser, Wonder Woman, “Will you filibuster again?” …

In other words, we seem to be relatively comfortable terminating a pregnancy before the fetus looks much like a baby. At 20 weeks, the halfway point, the fetus looks very much like a baby. …

Perhaps the silliness and vagueness of our language have led to silliness and vagueness in our understanding and behavior. Who wants to talk about the meaning and purpose of life when you can talk about rouge-red shoes?

But when the question of whether we should destroy human life at any stage is reduced to theater, leaving many journalists gushing like breathless red-carpet commentators, we have lost more than a sense of decorum.