Pro-choice or Pro-life?

[Kingpoleon]

Pro-choice in all cases.

It's extremely unlikely that a woman is going to have an elective abortion if she's eight months pregnant - and putting in health requirements are often too vague and can place unnecessary restrictions to allow states to restrict it for no good reason.

At what point, then, is it murder? The instant the baby’s born? A month before that? Two? Maybe a few weeks after birth?

I’m not trying to sound disingenuous. I’m just saying, you should really think carefully about this before jumping in all the way.

[Kingpoleon]

The baby develops personhood the second he/she is born.

So anything after that would be murder.

So, if the death penalty is legal, regardless of if it should be, you’d be perfectly fine with the state executing a pregnant woman? You wouldn’t say that the baby had to be carried to term?

[Kingpoleon]

On the other hand, butchering these stupid fetuses en masse will, at worst, mean that we're killing a bunch of """living""" things that can't speak, think, feel pain, survive independently, or fight back. Who cares? There won't be any consequences for that, because the demographic we're """killing""" has no recourse to resist. If avoiding negative consequences was really what you people cared about, you'd be staunchly pro-choice.

If some friend of yours accidentally left a puppy inside your house somehow, you’d call them. But they’ve gone on vacation, to an isolated place in the Himalayas, and won’t be back for almost a year. If you don’t feed and water the puppy and it dies as a result of that, you’ve committed a pretty nasty crime. Yeah, it was in your house. You did not purposely bring it there. But virtually everyone agrees that you have a responsibility, to this blind puppy, to nurture it until such time as someone can reasonably take it off your hands. Why? It’s not capable of high level thought; it can’t survive independently; it can’t fight back. You could just snap its neck in its sleep - it probably wouldn’t feel a thing.

Why is that wrong? Why would nobody treat a puppy like that? To kill an animal, and even more so, a human, at a young age is a uniquely evil crime. To refuse whatever minimal requirements are necessary for it to live? That’s a pretty bad thing to do. And to justify it by saying, “They can’t resist”? By that logic, it’s perfectly reasonable to kill people sleeping.

[Kingpoleon]

If life begins at conception, and if abortion is murder, then a pregnant woman who requests an abortion is just as guilty of murder as the abortion provider to performs abortion. But the pre-Roe laws that banned abortion never treated pregnant women who wanted to get an abortion as if they deserve to be prosecuted, and even these days most pro-lifers only want to prosecute the abortion providers, not the pregnant women who ask to get an abortion. There is something "off" about the motives of pro-lifers.

I am pro-choice because I am afraid of the prospect of women self-aborting with a coat hanger, and because I respect women's self-autonomy.

One of the unique things about abortion is, to the extent that it is murder, it is like contract killing. Anybody can go up and hire these people to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy. Yeah, usually the people who do the killing serve a lesser sentence. But abortion doctors are distinct for both how many abortions they can do, and they provide a place that makes abortion much easier.

I do disagree with people who say the women should never face a day in jail or pay a cent in fines; a reasonable judge will give a reasonable sentence after taking into account all the facts of the case.

[Kingpoleon]

Looking at charts quickly, the moment where viability is at 0% seems to be, with modern medical techniques, at 21 weeks. So I'd personally ban on demand abortions after 20 weeks (5 months).

I don’t really buy the viability argument too much. No sane doctor would induce a pregnancy at 21 weeks - or really before 37 weeks - just because the mother wanted to “terminate the pregnancy.”

[Kingpoleon]

I am pro choice and even think eugenics is justified.

Is this you?:
https://youtu.be/7fGU5R2qBDc

[Kingpoleon]

That is actually the terminology prescribed by the BBC (and I presume others) in its style guide.

This is not neutral terminology, though. It accepts one ideologically driven term and rejects the other for no apparent reason. If we want to label one side as in favor of abortion and the other against, then we should do so. Nobody really rejects the term pro gun, pro gay marriage, etc., as shorthand for what they want to be legal except for the pro abortion advocates.

[Kingpoleon]

I can very much see where you’re coming from, but I think the authors of the style guide would argue that pro-life represents an editorialisation of that side’s position (as whether foetuses are “life” in the same sense as people who have been born is a controversial subject) and anti-abortion is a perfectly fair description which the pro-lifers would have not deny applies to them, whereas “pro-choice” is the only accurate descriptor of the other sides, as they are not actually “pro-abortion” as in seeking the most abortions possible, but their guiding principle is a woman’s right to choose.

On the contrary. You will not find a significant number of biologists who argue that life begins at a time other than conception. As for pro abortion meaning that you seek the most possible, that’s not accurate. Being pro marijuana doesn’t mean that you advocate maximal marijuana use. Pro choice people can and do argue that they don’t really support abortions. But if I advocate for something being legal, I believe that it is moral, or at least not so immoral/harmful that it ought to be banned. I don’t say that I’m not for gay marriage when I advocate that it be illegal. Why? Because being “for” something means I want it to be legal.

The charge of implicit bias against a group which is almost certainly majority pro abortion is not that unreasonable a charge, is it?

[Kingpoleon]

The terminology issue is an interesting one.

In a perfect world, we would have developed neutral sounding descriptors on both sides like "pro/anti fetal personhood" or "pro/anti legal elective first trimester abortion" but alas people don't work that way. As things currently stand, we've developed two highly editorialized terms to describe the debate. Who among us wants to be "anti-life" or "anti-choice"? I'm fine with this. The terms widely known and reasonably equal, so I see no reason to try to force a change. Alcibiades argument is interesting though I'm not quite convinced for the reasons Kingpoleon outlined.

What I really don't have time for though, is the disingenuous posters who, despite participating in an ostensibly high info forum, throw out everything they ever knew about commonly held meanings of words, to say things like "If you're pro-life how can you support the death penalty/oppose single payer healthcare etc"*, acting like the world's worst, most woodenly literal translators in the process.

Every pro-lifer supports something that doesn't promote maximum life, just as every pro-choicer some restriction on personal choice. Let's not pretend like this is some unique insight to pretend that words can't have meanings other than the most bare literal one.

*The pro-life version would be something about seatbelt laws I suppose, but I used pro-choice as that is by far the most common one I encounter on USGD.

I think this debate is rather odd in that the “conservative” side is charging the media with implicit bias, rather than purposeful bias. The claim that pro choice is the most accurate term is an implicit acceptance of the pro choice argument*.

*I generally use the term pro choice in the presumption of good faith. Name calling is not conducive to reasonable discussion, and a fair agreement upon terms must be the basis of any discussion which begins in disagreement.