# Are you pro-choice because you are smart? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 3, 2019, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650 "2019-09-03T23:42:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/21 "2019-09-04T19:12:46Z")
> [@panache45](#): > > I’m a pro-choice atheist. You tell me whether that makes me smart. I’m an atheist pro-choice Democrat, which means I’m the smarterest one in the whole thread. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/22 "2019-09-04T19:26:23Z")
I am pro-choice, but smart enough to recognize that this is an opinion based more on values than facts. > [@Sage Rat](#): > > Though, in general, I believe that most people who think about the question come down on the pro-choice side. I think it is like many issues - people decide what they think, and then decide later why. Not limited to abortion, or any other issue, of course. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/23 "2019-09-04T19:32:11Z")
Opposition to abortion is fueled by hatred of women, the pro-choice movement by compassion and fairness. Intelligence has nothing to do with it either way; it’s a good versus evil issue, not a stupidity versus intelligence one. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/24 "2019-09-04T19:32:13Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I think it is like many issues - people decide what they think, and then decide later why. Not limited to abortion, or any other issue, of course. If someone can generate a sufficiently detailed and rational-sounding justification then, whether it was created as a rationalization for a belief that someone gave to them or that their gut gave to them for no rational reason, they are at least smarter than someone who can’t say more than “Because…! Because, it’s a HUMAN LIFE!” but then can’t explain why abortion isn’t murder and we shouldn’t lock up both the mom and doctor and, instead, simply huffs, turns red, and gets angry that you’re forcing them to think - probably to run away and dig in further in their position, without creating any greater logical underpinning. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/25 "2019-09-04T19:39:55Z")
> [@skyr](#): > > My experience is that pro-life activists tend to be more informed about topics such as fetal development and abortion procedures than pro-choice activists are. Less savvy pro-choicers will often say absurd things like claiming that an embryo or fetus isn’t alive or human, which is demonstrably false and sounds ludicrous to anyone who is informed about science. My wife, who is pro-choice, has a Masters in Reproductive Physiology, and knows a lot more about it than god-soaker anti-choice preachers and politicians. You are invited to provide a survey of experts on human reproduction saying that they are anti-choice. As for your second point, a fetus is alive (but so is a bacterium) but what constitutes a human is a matter of philosophy and ethics, not science. So it appears you don’t know much about science. ---
**Author:** ![Taesahnim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/taesahnim/32/84_2.png) [@Taesahnim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taesahnim)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/26 "2019-09-04T19:42:01Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > I’m pro-choice because as a man it’s none of my damned business what women do with their own bodies. Pro-choice does not mean pro-abortion. This. Very well stated, GL. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/27 "2019-09-04T20:19:31Z")
Being smart does help in seeing through all the bad arguments and false information peddled by the anti-abortion crowd. But like me, you can acquire the necessary critical thinking skills without having innate intelligence. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/28 "2019-09-04T20:30:12Z")
Being smart alone isnt sufficient to ensure someone is pro-choice. There are many highly-intelligent but also very cynical, amoral and dishonest people in the upper echelons of the pro-life movement. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/29 "2019-09-04T20:40:50Z")
It’s not a question of smart vs. dumb. It is a question of freedom and choice on one side, versus morality on the other. Apples and oranges, if you will, and both sides are seeing everything through their own particular lens tint, and reading the other’s side’s motives through that, when in fact, they’re not that at all. Der Trihs’ dumbass commentary is a perfect example. Fundamentally, the two sides differ on fetal personhood. The pro-life side has a embryo/fetus-centric view, and holds the view that a fertilized egg is a person at the moment of conception- the rest is just growth and eventually birth, and that destroying it is tantamount to murdering any other absolutely defenseless person, especially when done for reasons of convenience or economic utility. The pro-choice side doesn’t look at it that way- they have a more woman-centric view, and views that the woman is in charge of all that since it’s her body and it’s nobody else’s business what she does with it. Neither side is dumb or smart- it’s a matter of perspective. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/30 "2019-09-04T20:42:14Z")
I’m pro choice because I am compassionate and also believe in a compassionate God and the experiences that this compassionate God has given me. In short, the soul of the baby is not in the body, but with God underground, so by killing the body it is not harming the soul who has a life with God. God simply has not given us the ability to murder in the womb. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/31 "2019-09-04T20:42:57Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I think it is like many issues - people decide what they think, and then decide later why. Not limited to abortion, or any other issue, of course. > > Regards, > Shodan I absolutely disagree with this. I am pro-choice. I came to the full understanding of my position on this issue through a lot of self reflection, empathetic reasoning and analysis of facts. And I know I am but one of countless others who’ve arrived at the same position via similar paths. While neither of us can really speak to how anyone came to hold a position, other than ourselves as individuals, I feel like my assumption that the way i came to hold my position on abortion is one shared by many others on the pro-choice side, is much more well documented than is your assumption. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/32 "2019-09-04T20:59:41Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Opposition to abortion is fueled by hatred of women, the pro-choice movement by compassion and fairness. Intelligence has nothing to do with it either way; it’s a good versus evil issue, not a stupidity versus intelligence one. How does one define what is good and what is evil? And anyway, you’re just plain wrong. The vast majority of pro lifers arent “evil” human beings (whatever that means). They are just manipulated by forces who don’t have their interests at heart. Those at the top off the pro life movement are very immoral people. Those are the people who have hatred in their hearts. But not your average pro lifer just living his life in America. He’s just a person who’s never really been taught or been able to critically think for himself so he listens to the loudest, most urgent, most strident voices around him. And as a result he’s made to feel fear. Fear over change. And he is probably a bit bigoted due to living in a bubble and being fed nothing but propaganda while in that bubble. But “evil”? No, that’s a bridge too far. Manipulated, conditioned and triggered, yes. But not evil. Humanity is much too mundane for that. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/33 "2019-09-04T21:32:39Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > I’m pro-choice because I’m compassionate. Some people would believe that makes me stupid. This. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/34 "2019-09-04T21:55:07Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I am pro-choice, but smart enough to recognize that this is an opinion based more on values than facts. I agree. I don’t think there’s any major dispute about the facts around abortion; everyone agrees on what’s happening. The dispute is over the moral implications. And I don’t see how anyone can claim they have a moral position that is objectively correct. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/35 "2019-09-04T22:26:32Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I agree. I don’t think there’s any major dispute about the facts around abortion; everyone agrees on what’s happening. How on earth can you say this? Everyone does _not_ agree that every time an abortion takes place, a murder has occured. Some, however, _do_. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/36 "2019-09-04T23:03:30Z")
Yes. I’m pro-choice because I’m smart. I think my intelligence played a part in keeping me non-religious, so there’s that. But more importantly I’m also smart enough to know that we shouldn’t legislate something like this based on the corner cases. Given I don’t have some priest telling me that fetuses have souls from conception, I conclude from what science tells me about the timing that the vast majority of abortions take place well before there’s any real sign of a mind in there, and when it’s later it’s usually for a solid medical reason. Given that we should just stop worrying about it - people who want abortions aren’t going to _wait_ for there to be something sentient to kill, no matter what insane antichoice people might say. So there’s no morality-based reason to prevent it. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/37 "2019-09-04T23:07:39Z")
Joining the chorus of posters who don’t consider that their pro-choice principles are due to their intelligence. I will note that a lot of anti-abortion people are anti-abortion because they are dumb. But I hasten to add that that doesn’t mean that an anti-abortion position in itself is intrinsically dumb, or that anyone who opposes legal abortion **must** be dumb. It’s simply acknowledging the fact that the anti-abortion crusade among religious conservatives was [largely an artificial issue deliberately chosen to provide some conservative partisan “red meat” after pro-segregation positions became socially unacceptable](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133), and a lot of dumb people swallowed it hook, line and sinker. The part about religious conservatives’ original tolerance for abortion: > [@](#): > > Both before and for several years after Roe, evangelicals were overwhelmingly indifferent to the subject, which they considered a “Catholic issue.” In 1968, for instance, a symposium sponsored by the Christian Medical Society and Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of evangelicalism, refused to characterize abortion as sinful, citing “individual health, family welfare, and social responsibility” as justifications for ending a pregnancy. In 1971, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis, Missouri, passed a resolution encouraging “Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.” The convention, hardly a redoubt of liberal values, reaffirmed that position in 1974, one year after Roe, and again in 1976. […] > > Although a few evangelical voices, including Christianity Today magazine, mildly criticized the ruling, the overwhelming response was silence, even approval. Baptists, in particular, applauded the decision as an appropriate articulation of the division between church and state, between personal morality and state regulation of individual behavior. The part about cutting off federal support for segregated schools: > [@](#): > > In May 1969, a group of African-American parents in Holmes County, Mississippi, sued the Treasury Department to prevent three new whites-only K-12 private academies from securing full tax-exempt status, arguing that their discriminatory policies prevented them from being considered “charitable” institutions. […] > > Under the provisions of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which forbade racial segregation and discrimination, discriminatory schools were not—by definition—“charitable” educational organizations, and therefore they had no claims to tax-exempt status; similarly, donations to such organizations would no longer qualify as tax-deductible contributions. […] > > Paul Weyrich, the late religious conservative political activist and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, saw his opening. > > In the decades following World War II, evangelicals, especially white evangelicals in the North, had drifted toward the Republican Party—inclined in that direction by general Cold War anxieties, vestigial suspicions of Catholicism and well-known evangelist Billy Graham’s very public friendship with Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Despite these predilections, though, evangelicals had largely stayed out of the political arena, at least in any organized way. If he could change that, Weyrich reasoned, their large numbers would constitute a formidable voting bloc—one that he could easily marshal behind conservative causes. > > “The new political philosophy must be defined by us [conservatives] in moral terms, packaged in non-religious language, and propagated throughout the country by our new coalition,” Weyrich wrote in the mid-1970s. “When political power is achieved, the moral majority will have the opportunity to re-create this great nation.” […] > > But this hypothetical “moral majority” needed a catalyst—a standard around which to rally. For nearly two decades, Weyrich, by his own account, had been trying out different issues, hoping one might pique evangelical interest: pornography, prayer in schools, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, even abortion. “I was trying to get these people interested in those issues and I utterly failed,” Weyrich recalled at a conference in 1990. > > The Green v. Connally ruling provided a necessary first step: It captured the attention of evangelical leaders , especially as the IRS began sending questionnaires to church-related “segregation academies,” including Falwell’s own Lynchburg Christian School, inquiring about their racial policies. […] > > The IRS was not placated. On January 19, 1976, after years of warnings—integrate or pay taxes—the agency rescinded the school’s tax exemption. […] > > Weyrich saw that he had the beginnings of a conservative political movement […] The part about how abortion was selected as the “principled” conservative common cause: > [@](#): > > But Falwell and Weyrich, having tapped into the ire of evangelical leaders, were also savvy enough to recognize that organizing grassroots evangelicals to defend racial discrimination would be a challenge. It had worked to rally the leaders, but they needed a different issue if they wanted to mobilize evangelical voters on a large scale. […] > > Weyrich, Falwell and leaders of the emerging religious right enlisted an unlikely ally in their quest to advance abortion as a political issue: Francis A. Schaeffer […] considered by many the intellectual godfather of the religious right, was not known for his political activism, but by the late 1970s he decided that legalized abortion would lead inevitably to infanticide and euthanasia, and he was eager to sound the alarm. […] > > Between Weyrich’s machinations and Schaeffer’s jeremiad, evangelicals were slowly coming around on the abortion issue. […] > > […] leaders of the religious right hammered away at the issue, persuading many evangelicals to make support for a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion a litmus test for their votes. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/38 "2019-09-04T23:50:48Z")
And those in this thread saying compassion helped inform their pro-choice stance, you don’t think the pro-lifers are saying the exact same thing about themselves? They have compassion for the lives of all those innocent little (unborn) babies being annihilated on a large scale by abortionists and their socialist patients. ---
**Author:** ![skyr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/54ee81/32.png) [@skyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/skyr)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/39 "2019-09-05T00:38:58Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I feel it’s the opposite. The basis of the pro-life position is the belief that some people are smarter and know more than the people who are actually involved in the situation. So these people feel that it’s best to take the decision making away from the people involved and tell them what they should be doing. If that is true for pro-lifers, then why isn’t it also true of laws against other forms of killing too? “Who am I to tell that guy he can’t murder his ex-wife? He knows better than I do what their marriage was like. Maybe he has a very good reason for wanting her dead.” It seems like you are presupposing that the life of a fetus is less significant than the life of a born person with this line of thought. Pretty much all pro-lifers that I know consider fetuses to be living human beings and think it is wrong to kill them, so of course they don’t agree. > [@](#): > > I’m pro-choice because I don’t believe that I’m smart enough to be making decisions like that for everyone. I feel that the people involved in the situation are going to be able to make better choices about it than I am and should be allowed to make those decisions for themselves. This is why I am against gun control of any kind, because I don’t think I am smart enough to decide for everyone the limits of their constitutional rights to own firearms. If you think you need to own an AR-15 or a fully automatic machine gun, then that’s between you and God. Surely gun enthusiasts know more about weapons than I do and are going to make better choices about what guns they should own than I can. They should be able to make that decision for themselves, instead of having those decisions taken away from them by a bunch of old men in Washington. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2019, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650/40 "2019-09-05T00:41:10Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > I’m an atheist pro-choice Democrat, which means I’m the smarterest one in the whole thread. I’m a gay atheist pro-choice ex-Objectivist Democrat, which means I’m the smartest one in the whole world. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-pro-choice-because-you-are-smart/839650.md?page=3)