That’s not a real good analogy, because it would be the anti-abortion folks arguing that we can’t just shoot people even if they are sleeping on the streets.
People sleep under bridges mostly because they are schizophrenic and/or drunks. The fact that we don’t extend deer season doesn’t raise the incidence of schizophrenia or substance abuse.
Regards,
Shodan
“Pro-life”, as others have pointed out, is purely a propaganda term that doesn’t even explicitly indicate it has anything to do with abortion (an objection that can also be leveled against the term “pro-choice”, of course).
I don’t contradict people if they choose to call themselves “pro-life”, but when I’m referring to the social/political movement to restrict abortion rights and/or enact abortion bans, I will call them by a more specific and descriptive term such as “pro-abortion-ban” or “anti-abortion-rights”. Because that’s what they are, objectively speaking.
If we want to have a good-faith conversation about abortion across the ideological divide on it, then there need to be accepted neutral but factually accurate terms that both sides are willing to use. I’m happy to call the two sides “pro-abortion-rights” and “anti-abortion-rights”, for example. But if the anti-abortion-rights camp are going to act insulted if anybody describes their position using any other term than their own pet moniker “pro-life”, then they’re not conversing in good faith.
And a developing problem is still a problem if you step in and stop it before it becomes a problem, right?
Slapping “developing” on a word changes the meaning of the term; (like pretty much all adjectives do) - in the case of “developing” is removes the surety that the thing actually is that thing yet.
“Potential” is the same deal, but worse - “potential” means it’s definitely not the thing yet, while “developing” leaves it ambiguous.
I’m of the Clinton attitude, *‘safe, legal, rare’ *camp. But I must say, picking this particular nit seems pedantic. I mean, Don’t you think that in civil/neutral discourse, it is appropriate to call an individual or organization by the name that that individual or organization uses?
That’s a silly distortion of RTFirefly’s perfectly reasonable analogy.
Namely, the anti-abortion-rights movement is encouraging more unwanted pregnancies by means of its simultaneous campaigns against access to birth control, sex education, and family-planning assistance. That leads to increased demand for abortion. The fact that the movement is also trying to legally prohibit abortion doesn’t absolve them from their responsibility for exacerbating the conditions that tend to increase unwanted pregnancies.
Likewise, conservative economic policies exacerbate the problem of homelessness by increasing hardship and decreasing opportunity and social benefits for the non-wealthy. That leads to increased poverty and substance abuse and consequently more homelessness and people sleeping under bridges. The fact that conservatives are also trying to crack down on sleeping under bridges by means of legal penalties doesn’t absolve them from their responsibility for exacerbating the conditions that tend to increase homelessness.
Looks like that’s a “no”.
But we’re not talking about the actual names of individuals or organizations. If I’m referring, for example, to the “March For Life” rally or the Republican National Coalition for Life in civil/neutral discourse, then of course I’m going to use the organization’s actual name instead of calling it the “March For Killing Women” or some such pass-agg misnomer.
However, if we’re talking about the general political-social movement against abortion rights, rather than a specific organization or individual, the supporters of that movement don’t have exclusive rights to determine what people call it, any more than its opponents do. If its supporters and its opponents want to have a conversation about it, it’s appropriate for both of them to use accurate factual terms to describe it, rather than one side insisting that the other side has to use the first side’s preferred propaganda term.
However, I’d hate to see your enthusiasm for appropriate nomenclature go to waste, so maybe you can use it to convince more of your fellow conservatives to refer to the Democratic Party by the official name of that organization, instead of miscalling it the “Democrat Party”.
Looks like you and Bone are having similar difficulty telling the difference between a specific “individual or organization” and an amorphous social/political phenomenon such as a “movement”.
No, I understand the distinction. I just don’t think it’s relevant to the matter. The commonly-accepted labels for the two sides are “pro-choice” and “pro-life”. People who use labels like “anti-choice” (or “anti-life”) are demonstrating an unwillingness to maintain a basic level of civility to facilitate conversation.
ETA: For example, the gun control movement refers to precisely this sort of “amorphous social/political phenomenon”, but labeling them things like “the anti-freedom movement” would be bad for civil discourse.
Of course not. The choice of name is itself *not *neutral. Using the opposition’s spun or self-righteous or disingenuous name cedes a large part of the argument. We’re about *fighting *ignorance here, not coddling or shying from it. Call a thing by what it is.
The claim of the anti-choice movement to be “pro-life” is a fine example. Using it cedes their claim that a fetus is a human life, yet that definition is what the entire disagreement is based on.
Those are not the only two “commonly accepted” labels for the two sides.
But using labels like “pro-abortion-rights” and “anti-abortion-rights” is both civil and factually accurate.
I’m not saying that it’s always out of line to tone-police loaded terms such as “anti-choice”: I’m just saying that your tone-policing shouldn’t extend to trying to disqualify neutral descriptive terms such as “anti-abortion-rights”.
But calling them the “anti-gun movement”, or the “anti-gun-rights movement”, generally would not, if you’re talking about people who are explicitly opposed to gun ownership or a constitutional right to gun ownership.
Again, if you’re going to make a fuss because a movement that is explicitly about limiting or removing abortion rights is referred to using the civil and accurate term “anti-abortion-rights movement” instead of the loaded PR term “pro-life”, then that calls into question your claim to be arguing in good faith.
You use “neutral” and “civil” here. I don’t think the phrase “anti-abortion-rights” is either one of those things. I think it’s exactly the same sort of “loaded PR term” you claim to be trying to avoid by refusing to accept the label “pro-life”.
It’s no skin off my nose, but I generally label people and groups as they want to be labeled. Makes it easier to avoid what I find not very productive quibbling. YMMV.
The opposite of “Anti Abortion Rights” is “Pro Abortion Rights”, but the opposite of “Pro-Life” is “Anti-Life”. In this matter you don’t have a case, period.
Even when the name is deliberately designed to disparage the other side?
What exactly is disparaging about the term “Anti-Abortion Rights”?
What the *hell *do you think this forum is for?
ETA: Conceding an argument by dismissing it as “quibbling” is not the most respectable way to do it.
The difference, of course, is that it’s accurate. Saying you’re “pro-life” is both totally non-descriptive of the issue at hand and (if we took it as a literal self-descriptor rather than an implied slur against their opponents) states that they oppose guns, oppose capital punishment, refuse to eat meat, and refuse to kill insects or bacteria. I’m thinking, not really an accurate descriptor of the group.
On the other hand, “anti-abortion-rights” is literally and precisely descriptive of the goals of the movement. If you see it as a slur it’s because you recognize that the goals of the movement are themselves bad, such that is an insult to be described as having those goals.
I was advocating a ban on most abortions after the first trimester, not a requirement that pregnant women must complete the pregnancy and take care of the child for 18 years (or more). They could still get a first trimester abortion, or if they miss that window, give the baby up for adoption immediately after birth. And with the advance of technology, I would hope and expect that even that limited window of prescriptiveness (in the second and third trimesters) would disappear with an increased ability to keep premature infants alive and therefore be able to initiate an adoption at any stage of the second or third trimesters.
This is a fair critique of right wing abortion opponents. But it’s not a necessary component of abortion opposition. For many years, Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich racked up a very low (maybe zero percent?) NARAL rating, while strongly supporting all kinds of social welfare programs.
Okay, now it’s time to fight with both sides about terminology. Kind of a PITA, but I feel an affirmative duty to do it anyway.
I take it you didn’t intend your first sentence to describe your second, but it does. Words have meanings, and you can’t just personally define them this way because it’s politically inconvenient to use their commonly accepted meanings.
There are three sentences I quoted here. I agree with the first and third. The problem with the second is that you are expecting the antiabortion camp to use a term that defines them as being against “rights”. This is almost as bad as implicitly defining those who support legal abortion as “anti-life”.
No, that’s silly. Spinmeisters like Frank Luntz are constantly coming up with implicitly tendentious labels to sell their causes. We are under no obligation to play along. Think about other issues: “Tax fairness advocates today held a rally to decry the death tax”. Is that the only fair way to describe a Koch-backed astroturf group that wants to slash the inheritance tax for billionaires? :dubious:
You’re right to oppose the use of “pro-life”, but for the wrong reasons. I absolutely cede their claim that a fetus is a human life, but I still call bullshit on their using the term “pro-life”, because virtually everyone is in reality pro-life. They don’t get to call themselves specifically the ones who are pro-life. To let them do so is like letting the Bolsheviks get away with calling themselves Bolsheviks, which means “of the majority”, even though they were in fact a small splinter faction.
It’s human, but for a nontrivial period towards the start of the pregnancy it’s not a human, by any non-insane definition.
A human hair is human. A human hair is not a human. Conflating the two syntactic formulations seems to be a favored form of dishonesty/idiocy on the part of the anti-abortion-rights movement. You see them do the same thing with “life” and “a life”, as well.