Pro-abortion vs. Pro-Life, why do we use Propaganda terms?

Even Amy Goodman this morning was talking about "pro-abortion" people...

Please, let's get the correct semantics and try to enforce them:
There are 2 positions on the problem of a woman's right to choose:
1 - Pro-Choice
or
2 - Anti-Choice

No one is ever "pro-abortion" (how can anyone be? Would they say "guess what I'm doing next week? I'm so excited! I am getting an abortion!Yay!!Isn't it awesome?")NO ONE!
And, we know that the so-called "pro-life" people are generally "pro-war", "pro-revenge" and "pro-death penalty" so both are misnomers and should never be used by thinking folks...

But I do agree that it a better choice of terminology than Pro-Abortion.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

I would never had thought they were...in my mind they are derived from the expression "a woman's right to choose".

Please explain :)

the vocabulary used to discuss it has become charged.

Even the phrase you used: "a woman's right to choose" is politically weighted. You know as well as I do that some people think said right doesn't exist. Just uttering those words puts you in a camp.

There is very little objective vocabulary one can use to discuss the issue.

Propaganda, is, after all, heavily charged political speech. The word itself is charged. (And so forth)

The people who discuss it don't have any common vocabularly, because they don't really want any common vocabulary.

It's part and parcel of the demonization that goes on on both sides of the fence for those who are passionate about this issue. Thus every term the other side uses is self-serving hypocritical propoganda, and every term our side uses is the simple truth.

The other side is made up of blackhearted monsters, while our side is made up of virtuous people who care only for justice.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

I doubt it.

The anti-privacy, anti-choice, anti-abortion position argues on ethical and religious grounds. The pro-privacy, pro-choice position takes them on based on legalities. It's arguing apples and oranges and it's why we lose. The so-called morality trumps the legality every time.

But no incentive for it (particularly from the ideological leaders of the struggle).

I don't know what you mean by So-Called Morality.

Bryant

The anti-choice position opposes the procedure on moral grounds, claiming it is murder. If you believe that abortion equals murder, you are logically and ethically obliged to oppose it for everyone without exception because you have a moral imperative to oppose murder. Not everyone agrees on the "murder" question, obviously, but once the argument is in the moral arena, you cannot refute it with legalities. It's like saying, "the murder was a private matter between the victim and me." You can't support that position.

The only position I can be comfortable with is that until a live child is born, it is not a legal entity or entitled to rights as such. Murder in utero is a false construct (imo).

That's why I don't think compromise is possible.

From the other side of the fence, it is all about the "baby's right to live."

Reframe, reframe, reframe!!

NGU.

use the same word for both sides of the issue.

I, for one, am sick and tired of being labeled "pro-abortion". I don't know a single woman who ever said: "Good, I'm pregnant. Now I can have that abortion I've always wanted."

I saw, on another web site, a remark about Harriett Meirs that she is "pro-life and pro-gun". What a comparison.

you are screwing it up for the other factions. You know, like the pro-root canal (people who believe in opposiong God's plan for tooth decay) crowd.

an anti-abortion liberal that is pro-choice....

I am not in favour of abortion at all; I think that abortion laws are too lax in certain areas and too tight in others (especially regards to minors).

It really is all about propaganda. In any case, are the pro-life people against the death penalty? I am very much pro life; I am against the death penalty. I find it a contradiction in terms that people can campaign against abortion and for the death penalty. Being pro-choice is still consistent with being against the death penalty because there are choices in how to deal with a violent criminal, like there are choices with what a pregnant woman can do (abort, carry to term and adopt, carry to term and raise, "other").

Those who want to outlaw abortion certainly need to be called anti-choice - I am scratching my head as to find a better word but certainly pro/anti-choice is a better description than pro/anti-abortion. Describing those who are pro choice as pro abortion means we're pro death. Maybe we need to describe them as anti-freedom, anti-liberty, maybe anti-woman?

Mark.

The difference is it's propaganda that we support.

The abortion debate has degenerated into little more than hyphenated sound bites.

Really, it should be

Those who want to keep Roe v. Wade as precedent

Those who want to overturn Roe v. Wade

That's as neutral as I can think of...

Edit for the :popcorn:

Those who are mathematically challenged and those who are not.

the past 13 years.

We need to be partisan, and use our language in such a way as to promote our partisan stance -- the repubs have been doing that since the 80s, and have gained the House, the Senate, the White House and the Supreme Court by doing so.

We need to make the use of language as much a weapon as the repubs have done.

who said she did not understand how "pro-choice" or "anti-choice" was propaganda. I think I should have replied to that post in hindsight, not the OP.

The issue comes not down to whether or not you support "choices," because the term "choice" is too vague. Oh, sure, in politics it has a certain connotation, but hypothetically someone could oppose "choices" regarding third-trimester abortions and support "choices" regarding marijuana use.

Granted, most of the "anti-choicers" around here believe that any choice you make is sin unless it's reading the Bible...

Likewise "anti-choicers;" not all who oppose abortion are against other choices, like Dennis Kucinich (sp?) a couple of decades ago; I don't think he ever wanted anything resembling a police state, yet at one point in his life, he opposed abortion.

Yes, I am symathetic to the "we need to define the debate on our terms, not theirs" arguments. I personally point out the hypocrisies in the "pro-life" position :puke: rather than specifically arguing for abortion rights, because in Fundieville, MO, the latter would get me nowhere. I was just pointing out an attitude on this discussion board that how when they do it, it's spin, when we spin, it is Absolute Truth.

Of course, I want more substance to my arguments and debates than hyphenated sound bites, which is why I made that point in the first place;)

Or maybe it's the MYOB position and the blue haired interfering old fart position.

Sometimes abortion is the best option in a given situation. Why be squeamish about it? Repeating the sentiments that abortion is an awful thing just reinforces the other side's position. Abortion is a medical procedure like any other.

I had an abortion. I am glad I did. I would do it again in the same situation, although I chose to continue a pregnancy at a different time in my life.

While I agree that few abortion decisions are made cavalierly (and mine admittedly was not, nor was my decision to eventually continue my second pregnancy), so what if some are? The decision is a private matter regardless. So what if some people treat abortion as if it's birth control? It is nobody's business (and certainly not the state's!) if they are. You might not agree with it, but it's not about you.

Or is that not what the pro-privacy, pro-choice, pro-abortion position is all about?

I agree 100%.

I don't get to have an opinion on this particular part, but if I did, I would agree with you.

I still think that most people would rather have a safe way of preventing pregnancy than have abortions.

But I agree with a lot of what you are saying.
However, to continue with your well taken arguments, I think that whether or not abortion is an awful thing, has nothing to do with whether or not women should have the right to their privacy and to choose what they decide to do with their bodies.

This abortion debate has a lot to do with making sure that women remain 2nd class citizens, and not so much with so-called "morality". Besides, abortion is common in Nature. Didn't God make the whole kit'n kaboodle anyway?

Although I don't believe in God (also a private matter, imo), it always goes back to the point that you can't legislate morality.

Of course using birth control is more sensible than having an abortion, but you can never count on people to be sensible, either. And...shit happens. Period.

You (general "you", not you specifically, judy) may think termination of pregnancy is terrible, a tragedy, murder, whatever. I say it's a medical procedure with no inherent value attached to it. Nature is as we find it.

Pro-life, especially, is a really misleading term.

They are strictly propaganda terms.

"Abortion rights" and "anti-abortion" are accurate terms which I always use.

I use those as well.

to me it always sounds like we are afraid to say the word that logically follows: "abortion". Of course the opposite is also true; "birth" could be the other word that follows but the phrase is rarely if ever used in that context.

Let's call it "reproductive rights" or "reproductive freedom", the word "choice" seems too narrow as you say, there are only two.

On edit: As for what to call the other side, I like "mandatory gestation", "pro-overpopulation", "anti-privacy", "morAns", and "zygote zealots".

"They want live fetuses so they can turn them into dead soldiers"
--Carlin

"sexual privacy?" Perhaps include them into an overall privacy rights rubric?
"Corporal privacy"
"Self determination"
If I want to get high or get circumcised (or not,) as long as it endangers or offensively discommodes no one else, it is no one's business but mine. How can we communicate and empower people to demand that it not be the right of the state to peek into my body in any form. If I should become a murder suspect and the state can present a very high level of probable cause, I'm willing to allow them some peeking privilege, providing that any specimens or documentation are provably destroyed upon exoneration.

This is getting a bit outside the point of the OP, but I would in a heartbeat vote for, give money to, and vigorously support the candidate who runs on a platform of a Right to Privacy Amendment.

cuz it means that a woman has the right to choose whether or not her next step will be to have an abortion, or if it will be to give birth.

Are you including birth control in that? I wasn't...so are there more than 2 choices?

I just think it's kind of a clunky phrase and you're right, it really doesn't allow for birth control issues, AI, stem cells, sexual freedom, or any of the other stuff that surrounds the abortion issue. Getting away from that phrase would defuse their primary catch phrase "It's a child, not a choice." Can you imagine them saying "it's a child, not a right/freedom."? That would make even the rightest eyes roll.

It's about punishing women for daring to enjoy sex without suffering the consequences that the Puritans demand. It's also about women being reduced to their "rightful role" of being baby machines.

even fundies want women to enjoy sex...more for the men!

...sniffing around everyone, and making government just small enough to fit in your bedroom.

The notion that business can and should be trusted to police itself but that individual citizens require extensive moral intervention still fractures me. I cannot get my mind around it.

"Keep your church out of my crotch"

The "Pro-get the hell out of my life and mind your own" will never work though, the freaks always think it's their god given right to mind everybody else's business. The fence sitters better wake up because this is just not about abortion. Abortion and all the rest of the hypocrisy is tied to some faulty thinking of where others don't know where ones life begins and another ones leaves off. They are out to make the world better even it makes the whole world just like Hell x(