Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I noted, in a post where it was quoted, a phrase that sounded odd to me in the article "Oberweis Vows To Defund Planned Parenthood" (Illinois Review). Tucked away at the end of a paragraph as a supposedly innocuous bit of background, is the sentence, "Pelosi is backed by abortion advocates."

How odd. I do think I've heard from abortion advocates in the past, but I can't recall hearing from -- or of -- them often, and I've seldom been able to tell whether they were sincere or engaging in Onion-style over-the-top-ness. When I've been able to tell, it's clearly been satire or exasperation talking and not intended seriously. Who are these real "abortion advocates" allegedly numerous enough to mention as significant Pelosi supporters?

The folks I hear or read opposing the "pro-life" advocates, are not really advocating abortion; they're advocating the right to choose, they're advocating for the availability of abortion as a safe option. Casually describing them as "advocating" abortion itself makes it sound as though they're trying to talk more women into having abortions, rather than trying to ensure that women who do decide on that route for medical or other personal reasons have access to legal and safe practitioners. (What's that famous line about wishing for abortion to be safe, legal, and rare?)

The key there is the notion "medical or other personal reasons". It's personal. (And I'm counting medical reasons as a subset of personal reasons. It should be up to a woman and her doctor, and her priest/rabbi/whatever if she chooses to seek out their spiritual guidance, not a judge or a panel or lawyers, to decide whether the medical concerns are a "good enough" reason.) As far as I can tell, most or all of the pro-choice folks get that. Advocating abortion as the preferred course of action, instead of advocating the availability of a full range of choices that includes abortion among them, would be quite out of character.

So describing them as "abortion advocates", and thus conveying the impression that they're somehow "anti birth" or trolling for patients or something, is either intellectually dishonest or painfully journalistically lazy. If the article I linked to was written as right-wing propoganda masquerading as journalism, then it's the first. If it was copied onto that site from some claiming-to-be-objective newspaper or wire service, then it's the second. In either case, although it is far from being the most important aspect of the story of the new Planned Parenthood facility in Aurora, it's an easily overlooked rhetorical trick that I felt the need to point out in the hope that others will start noticing it and reacting against it instead of letting the writers pushing that phrasing "shift the frame" by means of it.

The irony in all of this is that some significant fraction of the "pro-life" movement could, based on a steadily mounting pile of evidence, be accurately described as "anti-choice" (or, in at least in the cases of some important leaders, misogynist) instead of their own preferred label; their making noises about opposition to contraception being the next step beyond opposing abortion bears this out. A far greater percentage of the "pro-life" movement can be described that way, than the percentage of the pro-choice movement who could be legitimately called "pro-abortion". (And yes, this is why I put 'scare quotes' around one and not the other. There are some -- a significant minority, AFAICT -- pro-lifers who really should be called pro-life, and I respect them even where I disagree with them. There are enough people like that to make me be careful how and when I substitute "anti-choice" for "pro-life", despite the temptation to do so across the board as part of a re-framing attempt.)