Possibly, from your perspective this is only a war of words, as you seem primarily concerned with the importance of formal semantics. Maybe you have never been a woman seeking reproductive choice, never had an unwanted pregnancy, never experienced the days before Roe vs Wade… But priorities can change, political terms mean something different to the woman whose body is involved, and what becomes important is this woman, empathizing with this woman, and knowing what this woman is going through.
Apparently so.
The pro-choice position climbed steadily until 1994, then started to decline (at the same time as the GOP takeover of federal congress). Plus young people are more pro-life than in the past. I didn’t know either of those things.
No, he/she isn’t; you are assuming your own conclusion, that one side is just as dishonest and manipulative as the other. It’s become a standard defense of anything associated with the Right to say “They do it too! They’re just as bad as we are!!”
Oh for god sakes. What on earth makes you think such a time did not exist? My own mother was born in 1943. She had to go to begging for an abortion when she was raped by an asshole in 1963. Why the hell should a woman have to plead for medical attention after being raped?
FYI, I probably would not be here had she been denied access to the abortion as there’s no way in hell my father would have married a woman with a kid by another man. So I personally owe my existence to the fact that my mother had an abortion.
Yes, in a debate on semantics, I foolishly focus on semantics. And however strongly any woman, of any political position, may feel about either term, that intensity of feeling won’t add any weight whatsoever to your argument about which term is more logical. You’re making an emotional appeal in a discussion on lexicology, for Pete’s sake. Did you really think that would work?
BTW, if I find that rarest of animals, a pro-life woman who feels just as passionately about this issue as your anguished pro-choicer, have we created some sort of semantical paradox? Will the two terms collide and create a black hole, maybe?
It’s far less a “lame attempt at a personal attack”, as you want to call it, as it is a rather inconvenient truth (for you, anyway).
This has been explained to you on more than one occasion, with the requisite cites and quotations, only to have you ignore it; therefore, I don’t feel like going over it again. You can go back and read the information you’ve been given numerous times already.
As to the rest of that well… It’s still an unrelated tangent which I don’t feel like playing with today.
I don’t see where you’ve said a truth that inconveniences me in the least. Rather, you made an assumption that I was picturing thousands of deaths as the major reason to oppose abortion restrictions. That I have other concerns has utterly escaped you, because… well… the truth of them is inconvenient for you, I guess. It’s far easier for you to just pretend the unwillingly pregnant woman is a nonentity.
Truth be told, I don’t really care about the demographics of a growing pro-life tendency among Americans (assuming such is actually occurring). If Americans are dumb enough to fumble away their rights in this manner, I pity and scorn them.
Well, scorn more than pity - they should know better.
If the conflict is about logical terminology, what is the logic of giving a benign term like “pro-life” to an anti woman group who wants to deny important health care access to women, when the lack of this health care can cause the deaths of these women?
Yeah, this is the part I’m not going to get dragged into again. I’d point out that the pro-life camp doesn’t see it that way at all (amazed that this needs to be pointed out), and (again) if the name is imprecise and politically motivated, it shares that trait with the name “pro-choice.” Then you ignore that and point out why it’s okay for pro-choicers, because in their case they’re right, their name is logical and illuminating, and from you for some reason, the irrelevancy (to this discussion) that their proponents feel really strongly about this cause. It’s a pointless debate, since the simplest point, one that does not concede an atom’s worth of ground on the actual issue, cannot be acknowledged for some reason.
The “pro-life” movement does see it as killing women. And they regard that as a good thing. If some sluts die, that’ll help keep the rest in line, right?
OK, you want to go deeper into how the anti-choice camp sees it? How about I create a name for the group which better reflects what they are all about, “pro-punishment”. The anti choice people have a nasty version of “she made her bed, and now must lay in it” going on because, she done gone and got herself pregnant, now she must be forced to carry the unwanted pregnancy to term. It is all about the punishment. “Oh the poor fetus” is just a smoke screen, for the desire to punish the woman for having sex, or getting herself raped, etc.
Anti-choice are the same type of people who were gleeful over the AIDS death toll during the early years of the disease, because it was God’s punishment for the wicked. The deaths of women getting unsafe illegal abortions would be a great thing for anti-choice groups to achieve, and why they work so hard to make it happen.
florez, thanks for laying all your cards on the table. Now I know what sort of poster you are (there’s another poster I’m thinking of, hmm, what’s his name?) and won’t waste any more time on you.
In other words, florez is impolite to enough to point out the obvious, and rather than hopelessly try to argue against it you’ll put on a “I’m too superior to argue with the likes of you” act and refuse to defend your position. It’s become popular with people holding right wing positions here on the SDMB, I’ve noticed; they can’t defend their beliefs, so instead they refuse to do so with a sneer at their opposition thrown in to cover up what they are doing.
Well, it’s not too far-fetched that punishment is a major motive behind an argument about how the woman must “take responsibility” for her pregnancy.
She’s not supposed to end it, though. That’s not responsible enough, I guess.
I don’t have a cite, but IIRC, these type of polls are all over the place depending on how the question is phrased. If you ask, “Should a woman have the legal right to control her own reproductive choices?” that gets a high favorable rate. If you ask, “Should a woman be allowed to murder her unborn child in the womb?” that, not so much.
Some of the results are staggering. Does anyone really believe that 1 in 4 want abortion outlawed in ALL circumstances? Even when the life of the mother is endangered?
I think that when you take all of these polls together, you see a fair majority in favor for abortion being illegal except in cases of rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother. That’s the position I hold, but this latest poll would label me pro-choice. I’ve always thought of my position as pro-life.
(And yes, I agree with the above poster that each side should be allowed to pick their own label that is slightly misleading, but with a positive spin).
Statocaster,
“What’s his name” and I are deeply saddened that you had to skulk away, now that you know what sort of poster I am. All the best, and cheers to you and your uncle.
No, the pro-life side see abortion as killing babies. Hence, they are ‘pro-life’ for babies, from their POV. Not endorsing this position, nor saying it is my own. Simply stating, from my personal contact with a large number of pro-lifers(most of them women), that this is the way they see it.
No, they aren’t. They don’t care about the life or health of the fetus; they don’t even care if it’s dead as long as the woman is forced to give birth to it. Nor do they particularly care if the laws they push reduces abortions or not, nor do they mind getting abortions for themselves. They are liars and a hate movement.
All generalizations are false, including this one.
Seriously, there are a huge amount of opinions, and catagorizing all pro-lifers as “wanting women dead”, is insanely ridiculous. It’s just as insane as the whole, “using abortion as your main form of birth control/all women who have abortions are sluts”.
I thought we were past all of this by now. You do yourself and your side no favors by painting everyone with such a large brush. Do you even KNOW anyone, seriously, have any FRIENDS who are pro-life?
Guin, pro-choice, but not fucking irrational.
Claiming that you can’t generalize about a group is just a means of conveniently making criticism of them impossible. By the standards that “generalizations are wrong”, we can’t condemn even as blatantly evil a group as the Nazis since not every single Nazi supported every single evil thing they did.