Harelip … What’s in a Word?

Recently, someone referred to my son’s birth defect as a “hare lip.” I winced. Why? Because I’ve heard too many jokes about “the guy with a hare lip.” Because kids who teased and bullied my son used the term “hare lip.” Do I need to say more about why I find the term offensive?

Am I too sensitive? Are there not situations in which I should overlook the use of “hare lip?” Perhaps some people using that term are merely uninformed and are genuinely curious about the condition. Others ask how to spell it – “hair lip” or “hare lip.” No matter how innocent people might be or how confused about how to spell the term, the term is pejorative to me and too many others.

If you read the Laura J. Kennedy’s guest blog on the Cleft Lip and Palate Association (CLAPA)* web page and visit Christine Errico’s site, you will see that I am not alone. These women have weathered since childhood the stigmatizing remarks of others and now are calling attention to the harm the use of the term “hare lip” can cause.

Perhaps the term was useful when it was coined by Galen, a Roman Greek in the 2nd century AD, (1) who thought it a useful term to describe the birth defect of a lip that was split like a hare’s lip. But over the centuries superstitious people considered a “hare lip” a curse and people born with this birth defect were often viewed as undesirable or mentally defective (see Jim’s poem “Perhaps I Have a Cleft Because” in our book Choosing Ourselves).

Usage of “hare lip” persisted in medical settings until the 1920s when the American Medical Association called for elimination of the term because of its pejorative use, substituting the term “cleft palate.” But in the 1970s and 80s it was not uncommon to hear cleft palate referred to as hare lip, even be some professionals. The term is still in use today, particularly by bullies and comedians.

It seems not too much to ask that health professions and others make an effort to eliminate the insulting term from their vocabulary.

*Kennedy, Laura J., “The History of Cleft in Literature,” https://www.clapa.com/news-item/guest-blog-the-history-of-cleft-in-literature

(featured image downloaded from https://www.vecteezy.com/vector-art/35372557-harelip-vintage-engraving)