Comments on: Anti Choice Activists Pwned by Angry Husband

By: itzac

itzac — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:01:53 +0000

I’ve often thought of myself as pro-difficult-choice, though I don’t call myself that for similar reasons to what Greg mentioned above. It’s not that I think anyone should make the choice harder for women. Rather, I just don’t imagine there are very many women for whom this is an easy choice to make. Even for those whose circumstances all but dictate the outcome, the consequences are difficult to accept. To trivialize a woman’s choice as a question of “convenience” is extremely ignorant and condescending on the part of the pro-lifers who do it.

By: Ra

Ra — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 17:02:33 +0000

The ‘All joking’ could well have been applied to the ‘they have mental disabilities’ as opposed to the ‘and therefore they would have been good candidates’

As lots of people do have retrogressive views about abortion of disabled people, it is not unreasonable to ask.

By: Stephanie Z

Stephanie Z — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 13:00:11 +0000

Oops. Not trying to gang up. I missed Greg’s response before I made mine.

By: Stephanie Z

Stephanie Z — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 12:57:27 +0000

Kerrick, I can understand being upset by the idea, but you probably don’t have to ask someone who just said, “All joking aside,” whether he was serious about his prior remark.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 12:56:18 +0000

Lisa, that’s fine, but very counter productive in terms of communication of the issues, and you may want to let those on the ground actually engaged in the fight (I’m guessing you’re not or you would already know this) control the terminology in a more productive way.

The term “pro abortion” could mean pro right to have abortion, etc, as you say, but in English, an abortion is the removal of a fetus from a woman, and pro-X is for X, so pro-abortion means you want to see the fetuses removed from the women, to most people. requiring people to parse what you mean may have a certain satisfaction to it (I certainly use that particular approach at times) but I think this is not a good place for it.

If we ignore people with “limited imagination” than we might as well give up on fighting the political fight, because that’s most people. That’s why we pay artists so much.

By: Lisa

Lisa — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 12:38:20 +0000

I’m perfectly fine with saying I’m pro-abortion. I’m pro-existence of the procedure that saves women’s lives, mentally and physically. I’m pro-existence of a legal medical procedure that should be the domain of a woman and her doctor. I’m pro-abortion, because if the alternative is “anti-abortion”, meaning all the warrrgarbl that goes along with that kind of stuff (hospitals refusing to do abortions to save the mother’s life unless there’s no heartbeat of the fetus, terrorizing doctors, teen girls drinking veterinary medication to try and induce miscarriage to get around parental notification laws), then I proudly raise my pro-abortion flag and fly it in all weather.

And only people with very limited imagination see this as a dialectic, anyway.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 12:19:40 +0000

SamC, is this sickening faux intellectual honesty or do you really think that? Pro choice people are not pro abortion.

Kerrick, I’m pretty sure the “all joking aside” part of Jared’s comment meant that the first part of his comment was a joke at their expense. I’m not defending the classiness of his joke, but that’s how I took it.

By: Ashley Moore

Ashley Moore — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 11:50:47 +0000

SamC,
I think it is called ‘pro-choice’ and not ‘pro-abortion’ because the movement isn’t about encouraging abortion. If you don’t want an abortion the ‘pro-choice/’pro-abortion’ movement won’t try to convince you to have one. They are just trying to ensure the decision is the choice of the woman involved.

By: SamC

SamC — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 11:31:29 +0000

Euphemisms – choice is about ice cream flavors and stuff like that. The honest terms are pro-abortion and anti-abortion. How can one claim to have a principled stand on an issue if one isn’t even prepared to be honest about what the issue is?

By: Kerrick

Kerrick — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 07:30:43 +0000

I’m staunchly pro-choice. But pro-choice comments like yours, Jared, give me pause.

Is it your position that people with disabilities should be, or have been, targeted for abortion?