pro-choice people

[angus]

I think my own position, while best stated by Ms. Kerry, on this issue doesn't really affect my vote, as I don't share your qualms, but I certainly respect our differences.  I think yours is Harry's position as well, though I've never been entirely clear on what makes for mainstream libertarian thinking.  You actually seem fairly mainstream libertarian to me.  I'm a bit too far left to support a Libertarian President or Governor or legislative candidate with a clean conscience, but I have voted for other Libertarians for other offices.  Anyway, I'm glad you supported Bush and I'm not trying to talk you out of it, but you should consider looking into LP candidates for AG if that's an elected office in your state.   

[WalterMitty]

personally, i still consider myself pro-life.

but i was turned off by the constant moralizing of the pro-life movement.  who the hell am i to judge anyone else? ive lived a pampered life.  i dont know what it is like to walk in their shoes.  sure, i wish they didnt abort their babies, but i dont know what they are going through.

im also deeply disturbed at the thought of women getting abortions the unsafe way (ie in a back alley with a clothes hanger)

and another thing, we should NEVER criminalize teens who have abortions without their parents consent.  is that a criminal offense?   hell, i snuck around just to smoke cigarettes. 

[A18]

If we criminalize teens who have abortions without parental consent, then yes, it is a criminal offense. I'm not sure what it is you're incapable of understanding about that.

How do you not 'moralize' life issues? I guess if I beat someone into a bloody pulp with a metal baseball bat, you're going to tell them not to judge me.

When something is a lesser example of the thing you're talking about, using it as a defense of something more extreme does not work. I snuck around to get cookies out of the cookie jar. Somehow I think taking life, which you claim to value so much, is a little more important than how many ing cigarettes you smoked.

[WalterMitty]

philip, i thought like you did when i was your age.

now i realize the world isnt that simple.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

I think the breakdown is roughly a third between
Strongly pro-choice, and would consider it
Feel that it should be legal, but personally against it
Anti-choice

The later two catagories might still have an abortion though. I hear there's rumors on the Internets that Bush had a girlfriend of his get an illegal one.

[angus]

I like the way Democrats won't use the word Abortion any more than republicans will use the word Voucher.  Wanna sell something?  Call it choice!  Marketing agents figured this out early on and have sold the idea to politicians.  School Choice.  Pro-Choice.  Real Choices.  Spin the wheel.  Your choice.  King of the Hill did something with this idea in one really good episode.

A rose by any other name smells just as sweet.  A pile of dung by any other name smells just as foul.  Please explain this, Mr. Shakespeare, to the average American voter.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

I like the way Democrats won't use the word Abortion any more than republicans will use the word Voucher.  Wanna sell something?  Call it choice!  Marketing agents figured this out early on and have sold the idea to politicians.  School Choice.  Pro-Choice.  Real Choices.  Spin the wheel.  Your choice.  King of the Hill did something with this idea in one really good episode.

A rose by any other name smells just as sweet.  A pile of dung by any other name smells just as foul.  Please explain this, Mr. Shakespeare, to the average American voter.

I love how all of the pro-death penalty anti-medical care for the poor pro-Iraq war people call themselves pro-life.

[angus]

that doesn't amuse me quite as much.

but I'm serious about this Choice thing.  When was the last time you heard a Republican use the word Voucher?  Probably about the same time as you heard a Democrat use the word Abortion.

I'm the only abortion-friendly poster on this thread who uses the word abortion, and the only voucher-friendly poster who uses the word voucher.

but hey, it's a free country.  engage in whatever marketing you like.

[Ebowed]

I like the way Democrats won't use the word Abortion any more than republicans will use the word Voucher.  Wanna sell something?  Call it choice!  Marketing agents figured this out early on and have sold the idea to politicians.  School Choice.  Pro-Choice.  Real Choices.  Spin the wheel.  Your choice.  King of the Hill did something with this idea in one really good episode.

A rose by any other name smells just as sweet.  A pile of dung by any other name smells just as foul.  Please explain this, Mr. Shakespeare, to the average American voter.

I love how all of the pro-death penalty anti-medical care for the poor pro-Iraq war people call themselves pro-life.

Generalization.

I hate it when people say "Anti-choice."  It makes the person who says it sound like a brainwashed puppet.

[Nym90]

I hate debating abortion. But I have to say this: Isn't it a logical fallacy (red herring) by saying "it's a women's body, she should choose". I mean it diverts that fact that even though the fetus IS in her body, it's still living and should be treated as if it were any other human being. Saying "it's her body" only tries to justify doing what she wants and not even taking into consideration the fetus. Again, I hate to bring it up, but it needs to be said.

I agree, I don't like this argument either. I think it misses the larger point.

I am in favor of abortion being legal up to 5 months, because the fetus can't survive on its own up to that point, even for one second, without its mother's body, as no fetus has ever been born alive more than 4 months premature. It is 100% dependent on the mother for everything, even to breathe. So that's what distinguishes it from a newborn infant, which at least can eat, drink, and breathe on its own in a physical sense.

But yes, the "it's her body" argument implictly assumes that the fetus is not human, which, although I would agree as stated above with this from a technical standpoint, it fails to recognize the philosophical and moral issue involved. The emphasis should be on reducing the number of abortions, as all sane people hopefully agree that abortion is a bad thing, and that we should do whatever we can to minimize it. I feel this is much better done through removing the economic necessity for abortion (better schools and a decent living wage for those who work hard and play by the rules, but simply lack the ability to move up the economic ladder) rather than by throwing people in prison. I feel that making abortion illegal in all circumstances, with no exceptions, would be counterproductive and only make matters worse.

[Nym90]

I hate debating abortion.

I love debating it. Its not so much of a policy debate (like gun control) yet as a values debate, hence it's quite easy to debate. There are no esoteric religious interpretations to get into here. No deep legal insight. No mountains of statistics and facts to dig up, or at least not many. On the other hand it is a big lightning rod. A very convenient issue for everyone to chip in on.

Lately I've picked up some new stuff about this debate.

First, a good percentage of people take the position they take not out of genuine conviction on this issue itself, but rather because a consensus on the issue on one side or the other would be a big win for the opposite side in the culture wars, which they are viscerally, heavily terrified of. So many people wouldn't even care about abortion at all except that it is a huge proxy for all the culture war. I find it's usually the more extreme people who are more likely to feel this way, but not all the time.

The second is not so obvious: This issue, like others, undergoes throes of high salience where the debate rapidly shifts, followed by long periods of hibernation. During the last period (1970s, early 80s), the debate developed two different "frames" (woman-focused vs fetus-focused) along with separate axes of values, and rhetoric, and opinion. Along each axis falls the full gradient of opinion, but they are each separate frames or paradigms of approaching the debate, or of forming opinion, and essentially talk beyond one another. The woman-focused frame can be seen in debates of individual rights (hence pro-choice) and circumstances. The fetus-focused frame can be seen in debates of fetal status (hence pro-life) and definition of life.

Third, although the fetus-focused framers (people who take this view) constantly claim that their frame rationally encompasses weighter substance (right to life vs privacy), their claims are more abstract and less tractable, requiring a deductivist view of the debate and perhaps an overly rationalist mind to fully accept. In fact, both frames have been supported by the structure of our debates and social attitudes.

Fourth, changes in mass consciousness for any particular issue do not occur except during a period of high salience, even when the underlying factors supporting the status quo structure of the debate have changed. For example, from 1935 to 1955, the underlying factors supporting the traditional dominance of segregation in the South had changed due to the economic and technological transformation of the country, the social experiences resulting from World War II, and the nature of the judges sitting on U.S. courts, in that order. However, civil rights was not a high salience issue until activists made it so. The revolution did not occur by itself. Hence, the proximate cause in a change in mass consciousness and the underlying factors that leave the status quo vulnerable to that proximate cause are separable.

Fifth, the underlying factors supporting the status quo in the abortion debate, which are a balance between the woman-focused vs fetus-focused frames, is gradually being undermined, even as public opinion, in the absence of a period where abortion has extremely high visibility, shows a deceptively stable picture of the abortion debate (as it has been for 30 so years).

Specifically, let us make a supposition. Suppose the individual rights view prevails on the woman-centered axis. That is, as womens' rights became broadly accepted enough to exit the political debate, and as premartial sex and the right to have sex become accepted, and as tolerance wins the culture war on womens' and sexual freedom issues, this axis gradually disappears due to an emerging consensus. With this apparent victory for liberal forces (which I do not feel to be complete by any margin), they are actually put at a fatal disadvantage in the abortion debate, as it is destabilized by the gradual exit of one of the two major axes. With the war over women over, the debate becomes increasingly defined along the fetus-centered axis.

Ultrasound is contributing to this. What was once an overly deductivist view, the fetus-centered view, nevertheless becomes dominant when the pro-life movement stops framing the issue along the woman-centered axis, realizing they cannot win there. Then, they shift themselves into the position of extendors of rights, of being the progressive side of the debate. They are aided by this by the fundamental importance of life over privacy in the hierarchy of rights, from the perspective of their frame. Under that case, all that is needed for a mass shift in public conscience is a period of high salience for abortion.

Such a period of high salience could occur before this administration goes out, assuming that 2 or 3 SCJ's decide to retire, sparking contentious confirmation hearings on this delicately balanced Senate. Under such conditions, a pro-life group that consistently ran a shorter, updated version, of, for example "Silent Scream" in national TV ads, and if they aggressively pushed their frame while avoiding the woman-centered one like the plague, might be able to push through a sea change in opinion.

The biggest thing holding back the pro-lifers today, ironically, is the surprising strength of the conservative right in the culture wars. The more abortion is framed in the '80s culture war, woman-centered frame, and less it is framed as a fetus-centered civil rights matter, the more stable the pro-choice status quo remains. Sometimes, you have to lose to win.

Fabulous post. I think you really nailed it with that one. We see that a lot, even on this forum. I think a lot of people have the attitude that "I don't really know enough to say one way or another on the facts, but I hate the relgious right, so I'm pro-choice" or likewise, the opposite view "I'm strongly religious, so I'm pro-life". People see it as symbolic of the larger battle. Politics often makes strange bedfellows, but in this case, people seem to pay more than the average amount of attention to who they are in bed with.

[A18]

philip, i thought like you did when i was your age.

now i realize the world isnt that simple.

It's pretty simple when you think smoking cigarettes is a lot like having an abortion.

[Inverted Things]

I hate debating abortion.  But I have to say this:  Isn't it a logical fallacy (red herring) by saying "it's a women's body, she should choose".  I mean it diverts that fact that even though the fetus IS in her body, it's still living and should be treated as if it were any other human being.  Saying "it's her body" only tries to justify doing what she wants and not even taking into consideration the fetus.  Again, I hate to bring it up, but it needs to be said.

I'm going to make an argument that is a bit nuts.

Let's say you had a 14 year old who decided to severely hurt his/her mother/father physically. Personally, I'd kick him out of the house. A fetus either is or is going to hurt the mother physically, so treating the fetus as having the same rights as the hypothetical 14 year old means that the mother has the right to kick the fetus out of the house. The fact that it is not viable simply ensures the fetus death. That's where 'the same rights as any other human being' argument gets you.

Like I say, a bit nuts, but there's a kernel of a valid point in there.

When you get pregnant, you are signing a contract with the faetus that you will feed him and carry him around through the next 9 months. Carrying him around obviously accounts for teh kicks, that will not severely hurt the mother, unlike your red herring wants us to think.

The fetus cannot legally enter into a contract, being it is under the age of 18. The pain I was referring to was the birth process.

[Inverted Things]

If we criminalize teens who have abortions without parental consent, then yes, it is a criminal offense. I'm not sure what it is you're incapable of understanding about that.

How do you not 'moralize' life issues? I guess if I beat someone into a bloody pulp with a metal baseball bat, you're going to tell them not to judge me.

When something is a lesser example of the thing you're talking about, using it as a defense of something more extreme does not work. I snuck around to get cookies out of the cookie jar. Somehow I think taking life, which you claim to value so much, is a little more important than how many g cigarettes you smoked.

By this line of reasoning, all we have to do to get rid of crime is to repeal all of the laws.

[angus]

I like the way Democrats won't use the word Abortion any more than republicans will use the word Voucher.  Wanna sell something?  Call it choice!  Marketing agents figured this out early on and have sold the idea to politicians.  School Choice.  Pro-Choice.  Real Choices.  Spin the wheel.  Your choice.  King of the Hill did something with this idea in one really good episode.

A rose by any other name smells just as sweet.  A pile of dung by any other name smells just as foul.  Please explain this, Mr. Shakespeare, to the average American voter.

I love how all of the pro-death penalty anti-medical care for the poor pro-Iraq war people call themselves pro-life.

Generalization.

I hate it when people say "Anti-choice."  It makes the person who says it sound like a brainwashed puppet.

I agree with you.  It's very offending.  But he makes a good point that Pro-Life is all about marketing as well.

Think about it.  You say you want to run for school board.  I ask you what you'll do if elected.  You can say something like, "Oh, I'll be pushing for School Choice."  I think, "Gee, I like that.  That sounds grand.  I think I'll vote for you."  You could have said, "Oh, I think I'll move money from the schools that need it most to schools that need it least."  But you know that'd sound less attractive to the voters, so you don't.  Same with abortion-rights folks.  They say, "Oh, I'm Pro-Choice."  I think, "Gee, that sounds grand.  I think I'll vote for you."  Of course, the candidate could have said, "Oh, I think I'll debate for your right to terminate pregnancies."  or "Oh, I think I'll work on the bill that allows pregnant people to exterminate the offending symbiont."  But of course that'd sound less attractive to the voters.

It's the same reason that a box of cookies cost $2.99 instead of $3.  It's called "psychological pricing" by suppiers, but it's the same idea.  If it's $3, you think, "Oh, that's three dollars.  Damn, they're proud of those cookies, aren't they?  I think I can do without."  But if it's only 2.99, you think "Wow!  two-something.  that's a pretty good deal.  Think I'll get me some of those."

So I'm off psychological marketing of ideologies.  Just over it.  Don't need it.  I stand up and say, "Yep, I favor Vouchers with a capital V.  I also favor abortion with a capital A."  Good thing I don't plan on running for office. 

[dazzleman]

I agree with you.  It's very offending.  But he makes a good point that Pro-Life is all about marketing as well.

Think about it.  You say you want to run for school board.  I ask you what you'll do if elected.  You can say something like, "Oh, I'll be pushing for School Choice."  I think, "Gee, I like that.  That sounds grand.  I think I'll vote for you."  You could have said, "Oh, I think I'll move money from the schools that need it most to schools that need it least."  But you know that'd sound less attractive to the voters, so you don't.  Same with abortion-rights folks.  They say, "Oh, I'm Pro-Choice."  I think, "Gee, that sounds grand.  I think I'll vote for you."  Of course, the candidate could have said, "Oh, I think I'll debate for your right to terminate pregnancies."  or "Oh, I think I'll work on the bill that allows pregnant people to exterminate the offending symbiont."  But of course that'd sound less attractive to the voters.

It's the same reason that a box of cookies cost $2.99 instead of $3.  It's called "psychological pricing" by suppiers, but it's the same idea.  If it's $3, you think, "Oh, that's three dollars.  Damn, they're proud of those cookies, aren't they?  I think I can do without."  But if it's only 2.99, you think "Wow!  two-something.  that's a pretty good deal.  Think I'll get me some of those."

So I'm off psychological marketing of ideologies.  Just over it.  Don't need it.  I stand up and say, "Yep, I favor Vouchers with a capital V.  I also favor abortion with a capital A."  Good thing I don't plan on running for office. 

angus, I really don't think that the issues of school choice/vouchers and abortion are even remotely comparable.

This is not the place for a debate on this, but I don't accept your assertion that school choice involves taking the money from where it is needed most, and giving it where it is needed least.  I completely disagree with that liberal logic that equates education quality solely on amounts of money spent.  If that were the case, the failing Hartford schools would be the best ones in my state.  The state showers them with money, and they still suck.

Only with abortion are the advocates seeking to obscure what it is they really support.  If one refers to school choice or private school vouchers, at least a person without great familiarity in the lingo can still have some basic idea of what is being talked about.

But what the f-k does "choice" mean?  That you have a right to pick the color of your next car?  Or to buy the brand of soda that you like?  It trivializes a life and death issue and infuses it with banality to simply call it choice.  And taken literally, a person could be pro-choice and in favor of criminalizing abortion, because one could argue that there are plenty of opportunities for choice prior to pregnancy.

[angus]

no?  I do think there's a marketing urge in both parties.  and I do agree that school vouchers don't inspire the emotionally-charged responses that abortion does.  I think we are delicate with language though.  I think most speeches by candidates who can afford them are made up of lines which have been tested and focused.  All I'm saying, originally, is back when, oh, let me see...well, I was talking to jfern, but I noticed it earlier and it's now off this page, but anyway I see this all the time, that the "choice" crowd knows they're the "choice" crowd and how it's strategized language.  brainstormed.  sure, I'm in a weird mood and making light of everything, but seriously, I think there's a marketing effort.  and the comparison was to be fair, as I did notice the "school choice" in speeches, and I sort of noticed when they had Peggy Hill inventing a "Spin the Choice" game in a backyard barbeque in which she noted "People like choices.  We need to have the word choice..." and then somebody mentions how they like to spin.  Maybe Dale.  I forget.  Anyway, I don't think I read too much into that episode.

I don't disagree with the analysis in your last paragraph.  I'd add that they are not mutually exclusive groups in any case.  I am certain there are those I know, and with whom I have discussed this issue, who are, by the modern definition, very much pro choice, in the sense that they have expressed grave reservations about restrictive language regarding the procedure, but who are, by the modern definition, pro life, in the sense that they really hold the belief that the fetus is a life, and therefore can be killed, and therefore should not be killed, and it is a sin against humanity to kill it.  In fact I agree that it's silly to try to argue that it isn't really human, any more than it's silly to try to argue that the killers of innocent people are "animals" and therefore not afforded the right to life.  I think that was a side point of jfern.  no, a major point.  I do not disagree with that statement either, nor did I claim to.  I was venting about the surrealism of the marketing and language. 

[Beet]

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That is one of the most misfortunate things of this debate, and that which makes it most intractable. Is there anyone in the American landscape today who stands for anything but one of the two radical polar positions? If so, the public is woefully denied an opportunity to demonstrate support.