Abortion Semantics

Since the recent murder of abortionist George Tiller there has been a lot of buzz on the internet about supposed inconsistency among the "pro-life" movement. I put "pro-life" in quotes since most of this buzz is centered on the term Pro-Life.

I'd like to give the benefit of the doubt to the rabid abortion advocates but I'm at a sort of impasse. Do I presume they do not know how language works, especially in the context of a politically charged issue? Or do I presume they are willfully ignorant, and possibly just not intellectually honest?

The contention seems to be over the fact that "pro-life" is not an entirely accurate term. But there is almost no criticism of the term "pro-choice" which is equally inaccurate. Neither of these terms are absolute, and they're not meant to be. They are monikers, political labels.

Abortion supporters tend to argue that to be truly "pro-life" one should be anti-war and anti-capital punishment. If the term were meant to be absolute this assessment would be legitimate. However, it is equally legitimate to argue that to be truly "pro-choice" one must support school vouchers and be an anarchist.

What is the meaning of "pro-choice"? If the term is absolute it should mean favoring one's right to make one's own decisions, in ANY AND ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. That is the standard to which pro-abortion radicals are holding the term "pro-life". Laws and regulations, by their very nature, limit people's freedom to make their own choices. So if it is hypocritical for a pro-lifer to acknowledge war is sometimes necessary then it is equally hypocritical of a pro-choicer to support the existence government. If it is inconsistent for a pro-lifer to support capital punishment it is equally inconsistent of a pro-choicer to oppose school choice. After all, it is strange to support a woman's right to choose to kill her unborn child, but to oppose letting that same woman choose which school to send that child should she choose to let it live.

Instead of acknowledging both of these political terms are labels, intended to be used only on the context of the abortion issue, so many extremist abortion supporters take offense at only the term "pro-life". Their selective hostile attention to that label and the refusal to recognize the reality of how both terms are used is intellectually dishonest, at best.

Claiming to be "pro-abortion" doesn't sound as good as claiming to be "pro-choice". This is a marketing tactic, which is manipulative, but apparently has been ingrained in the abortion lexicon. The anti-abortion reaction to this marketing ploy was to use the same trick, hence the term "pro-life" was coined. But the pro-abortion horde won't allow their opponents to employ their same tricks. That's why we frequently see the term "anti-choice" used by the pro-abortion mob. Can you imagine if the pro-life movement started using the term "baby killers" as synonymous with "pro-choice"? That semantics trick would generate phenomenal outrage among abortion supporters. And so the term "anti-choice" should do the same for abortion opponents.

If the baby killer movement can use semantic games with no scrutiny of its own rhetoric it should allow everyone else the same courtesy.

The book Notice A Pattern? explains the problem of abortion without using cheap rhetoric, as is ostensibly one of the favorite tools of the pro-abortion movement. This book is an essay addressing the reality of the situation, in historical context and with recommendations as to what can be done about it. No where in the pro-life movement do we find advocates of violence or murder. There are isolated cases, such as with Dr. Tiller's murder, that we find someone outside the mainstream of the pro-life movement who acts alone in committing crimes. But then, we don't see much effort among abortion supports to distinguish between these isolated cases and the pro-life movement. It's not as if we were trying to distinguish between Islam and a bunch of radicals who hijacked that religion.