Well whatever the opposition terms, te standard terms actually are pretty good as both sides come to this issue from different perspective. Pro-life, that’s your baby sweety, try not to kill her. Pro choice, honey it’s your body, ain’t me to say what you chose to do. When we get into trouble is when we don’t respect the different perspectives then we get baby killers and anti choice.
And no one can talk to a corpse of course.
You’ve never heard of a talking corpse
Listen to this
I am Madame Blavatsky
Except that pro-choice people can be anti-abortion - for themselves. They might accept that the status of the fetus is a matter of opinion, and not fact, and that they should not impose their opinion on others.
I’m unaware of how any “pro-life” person is not anti-choice, but perhaps you can enlighten me.
. Not really, they can decide if they will or will not abort. They are still pro abortion, in that they appreciate and think it good to be a legal option
One can chose to engage in baby making activities, full choice here. One can chose not to raise their child, full choice here, however murder, and even murder of your own child is not a choice, it’s a crime.
Hmm, did you mean to write “pro-life” at the end there?
Regarding pro-life, pro-choice, etc., I think we should call people by what they want to be called. However, the most accurate terms in my opinion would be pro-abortion-rights and anti-abortion-rights. I say this because many pro-lifers are also fine with the death penalty, for example. And, pro-choice means what? It’s only choice in terms of abortion rights – they may be anti-choice for many other things (maybe gun rights?). So, I’ll call people what they want to be called (pro-life and pro-choice, I think) and in my mind think pro-abortion-rights and anti-abortion-rights.
There is not enough consensus on where “personhood” starts to make that statement. Speaking only for myself, aborting a viable fetus is extremely hard to justify barring some terrible medical risk. Terminating a recent conception is very different to me. I am not saying it is meaningless, but it is not murder or killing to me. I understand why it may be to someone else though…
But the issue that really determines my view of abortion is whether it is a good idea or not for the state to have direct authority over what takes place internally within anyone’s body.
IIRC John Kerry, being a good Catholic, said that he personally was against abortion but did not want to impose his religious views on others. I’d hardly call that a pro-abortion position.
I assume by child you mean fetus, since no one doubts that once a child is born it is a person. If you say that abortion should be a crime, that sounds like anti-choice to me.
If on the other hand you mean that because these people support the right to choose what ice cream we eat and therefore are pro-choice, I’ll wait until you have an intelligent response.
I hope you know I am playing devil’s advocate in this line, though it was similar to viewpoints I once held.
Why not? He supports a society that permits abortion. What would you call this position?
You by even having to make this assumption demonstrate you don’t understand the disconnect between the 2 sides. To many who are pro-life the fetus is a child, it is a person and is alive. There is no potential person, and that term makes no sense. Child being used for a fetus is automatically understandable. Pro-life is all about the child, and protecting it’s right to live from the deception that it is just a clump of cells that can be scrapped away and try to deceive the mother into murder of her child, greatly harming the mother as well (as she murdered her child). If you can’t understand that, i’ll give this back to ya:
Which sort of fits, though I would have to reword it a bit to be a better fit.
Again you are not realizing that both sides come at this issue from different perspectives. Until you do, and until you can intelligently talk to either side from their own perspective you will just be babbling in the wind over things you don’t understand to them.
no comment
Thinking more on this, I need to also state that Kerry’s statement doesn’t say that much in terms of his reason for his position and sounds more like a re-election statement to please people then a true belief, but ignoring that last part.
The question is not really answered by saying he is a good Catholic as to what his statement is based on. What is it specifically in terms of Catholic beliefs and or doctrines that he is referring to that would get him into a state where he is personally against abortion but he didn’t want to impose his religious beliefs on others.
It does not seem to align with Catholic church’s views on the subject:
Note above ‘public policy’, thus not just for catholics.
So it sounds like in the issue of abortion John Kerry is not acting as a ‘good catholic’. In fact to be a good catholic it would seem like a political figure would have to push to end abortions.
I go with the terms “pro-legal abortion” and “anti-abortion.” The former wants to keep abortion a legal option, the later wants to end it entirely.
I think the simplest terms are the simplest -
Anti-abortion: the persons in the anti-abortion camp are not “pro-life”, as others point out they may be in favour of the death penalty. The sum of their position is that others should not have the option to themselves have an abortion, maybe in some or maybe in any circumstances. The faction is centered around the issue of abortion choice, not around the issue of not wanting to do so themselves, or not wanting people to die in other ways. The sum of the movement is to deny others abortions, through legislation and social changes. Note too, this then does exclude say, John Kerry - he does not seek to disallow others from having abortions, despite his personal convictions.
**Pro-choice: **These people may not want abortions for themselves, or may wish others in their family don’t have abortions, but yield to the concept that ultimately it is a woman’s personal choice to determine what happens to her body, and a physician’s right to effectuate that choice if their patient desires it. It’s about respect for the right to choose, not about wanting it yourself. John Kerry, it seems, is reluctantly pro-choice.
If you really want to see how dedicated someone is to their pro-choice principles, ask them if they would support laws against sex-selection abortions.
:smack:
I want to be called “The only person who is not a fucking idiot”.
Nobody* is “pro-abortion”, in the sense that nobody is jumping up and down and cheering ‘yay abortion! let’s everybody have abortions! they’re fun! abortions are essentially a Good Thing, everyone should have at least one!’
And calling people ‘pro-abortion’ sounds a whole lot like a claim that that’s what pro-choice people are saying.
*OK. Somewhere in – good grief it’s around 8 billion people now – there may be some human saying this, or something like it. Possibly on the internet. But it’s most certainly not a standard position.
Pro-life is not dishonest just because you prefer to call them something else.
I happen to agree that anti-abortion is a more precise but so what?
Why is the term pro-choice slanderous and lying? I think it’s at least as accurate as pro-life.
This gets a bit semantic but what is the difference between a person that is anti-abortion and a person that is pro-life?
Anti-abortion with a proviso that he might be wrong and that other people disagree. A very healthy position, one that we could use more of these days.
What you’ve done here is given an excellent example of poisoning the well, which anti-choice types indeed do. They can call a fetus a child, but it isn’t one. I have two new grandchildren and neither are anything like the way they were as fetuses. It’s not much different from the OP’s attempt to poison the well by having pro-choice types admit that a fetus is a person.
I understand their perspective just fine. But I’m not letting them control the language. And I am happy to let them live their lives as they see fit, as long as they let my wife and daughters live their lives the same way.
He was trying to be both a good Catholic and a believer in the Constitution, which means that the church should not establish its religious views as public policy.
The Catholic Church at this very time was covering up for pedophile priests, so their support for children seems a bit weak. If they want to be political they can pay taxes.
If the Catholic Church were consistent in its views, they should push for a ban on birth control (as they once did) also. Is anyone in favor legalized birth control not a good Catholic also? If so, why draw the distinction at abortion?
If the Catholics excommunicated everyone who went against any church doctrine, there would be cobwebs in the churches.
- The phrasing “pro-life” implies that people who are in favor of access to abortion are opposed to life in general.
- Many people who oppose abortion are only pro-life in that specific context. They may favor the death penalty. They may favor wars. They may not be willing to have money spent to save the lives of children who have been born. So a specific person who’s anti-abortion may in general be pro-life; but if the term’s being used for everyone who’s anti-abortion, then it’s often inaccurate. (For that matter, they very likely eat meat and swat flies; though I think most people on all sides of this issue are using the term with an implied “human” attached.)
Pro-life implies that ones opponents are anti-life - or at least that they are not pro-life also. It’s already been mentioned that pro-lifers are fine with the death penalty and wars. Which are perfectly legitimate positions, but not ones which go with an identification as pro-life.
Anti-abortion is a bit more nuanced. Does it mean a personal position or a universal one? I’m anti-abortion in the sense that it should be a last resort and you should direct your reproductive life to make it unnecessary - understanding that it is impossible to do this perfectly. I hardly know anyone who is pro-abortion in the sense that it should be the first method of birth control.
So the distinction is between anti-abortion for me and anti-abortion for me and you and you and you.
But still, anti-abortion seems a lot more accurate label than pro-life.
Pro-life is objectively false for the reasons repeatedly mentioned and it’s a lie because it’s a slanderous attempt to imply that the opponents of the so-called pro-life movement are opposed to life, ie, pro-murder. That is the whole purpose of the term - they aren’t describing what they believe, they’re describing what their damaged little minds think their opponents believe, and positioning themselves opposite of that.
In a way it was a portent of the political right’s current approach of defining themselves entirely based on who they oppose.
I already :smack:'d over that typo/brain fart, what more do you want of me?