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When Our Labels Fail: The End of 'Pro-Choice'
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When Our Labels Fail: The End of 'Pro-Choice'


Jan 22 2013
Our impulse to divide and categorize has its limits.

I stand with Planned Parenthood.

Um, perhaps I should explain. I stand with Planned Parenthood's decision to ditch the term "pro-choice." According to a low-key announcement, their research showed reluctance among many to use either the "pro-choice" or the "pro-life" label.

"I'm neither pro-choice nor pro-life," one participant said. "I'm pro-whatever-the-situation is." Another argued for three categories: "pro-life, pro-choice and something in the middle … It's not just back or white, there's grey." Even some who actually want to keep abortion legal call themselves "pro-life," making both terms problematic if they're not being used according to their generally understood meanings within the current political debate.

Both sides have long charged that the label used by the other is misleading. In the decades surrounding the U. S. legalization of abortion in 1973, news coverage routinely used the terms "anti-abortion" and "pro-abortion." As a longtime abortion opponent, I've never had a problem being called "anti-abortion" rather than "pro-life." As a longtime word lover, I find the most specific and accurate term to be preferable. There are lots of other contexts in which "life" is at stake and some might value something else more (justice, safety, self-preservation, science, or economics, for example).

Likewise, as Planned Parenthood has at last conceded, the term "pro-choice" is practically meaningless. While some abortion rights supporters decry the attempt to abort the phrase, some people-formerly-known-as-pro-choice acknowledge the inadequacy of a term they themselves describe as "bourgeois," "limiting" and "confusing," "frivolous," and even "flippant." So if the day has come (although I have my doubts that it truly has) when both sides will ditch its tendentious terms, then I say, "Hallelujah."

The impulse to place everything under the sun into one of two polar categories is largely a modern phenomenon, a product of Enlightenment thinking and its elevation of the scientific method. Don't get me wrong. I'm thankful for most that science has wrought. After all, if it weren't for manmade binary categories, we wouldn't have computers or computer language, and I wouldn't be posting this essay on the Internet.

Comments

Displaying 1–10 of 12 comments

audrey ruth

March 20, 2013  1:37am

Since abortion has been legalized, almost 60 MILLION innocent babies have died. There is no excuse for this, and America will be judged. We have God's Word on it.

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E B

February 04, 2013  11:02pm

Pro-life is a misleading label anyway. When abortion was illegal, a lot of poor women died horribly. There's nothing pro-life about illegal abortion.

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Christie Esau

January 23, 2013  9:52am

"We should recognize that categories that are not from God are limited. Even if useful and good for a time, that usefulness and goodness may be passing." Thank you for this thoughtful comment! Labels and categories can certainly be helpful for understanding, but they shouldn't serve as the be all and end all--especially when it comes to complex issues such as abortion. Getting caught up in rhetoric dehumanizes and desensitizes, which certainly isn't what God wants for our society.

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J Thomas

January 22, 2013  6:02pm

Karen, the God of Christianity is a God of truth, not a God of half-truths. The phrase "Pro-Choice" is a half truth. One half of the truth is that a person can choose, the other half of the truth (that dare not be admitted by proponents) is that the choice is to kill children at their most vulnerable. We need to be clear and precise in our language. We only propagate confusion by continuing to allow half-truths to dominate our culture. Samuel Johnson, the creator of the dictionary, decided to define words for that reason...to maintain clarity in the English language. So we can choose to lie to ourselves about abortion, or we can be honest with ourselves and each other about it.

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Stephen Leonard

January 22, 2013  5:56pm

No matter the games played with nomenclature to assuage guilt or clarify what one believes as right, wrong, godless, godly, good, evil, et cetera, God's Word and His character could not be clearer that we are to call sin sin and not equivocate. Give me an example where God equivocates delineating what sin is and isn't. Mercy from God does not cease to call sin sin. The sanctity of life is quite clear in Scripture. You shall not murder! The practice of homosexuality is an abomination to God. Man may come up with many inventions, but he cannot change God's character or transform darkness to light, no matter how many names he invents to change sin to righteousness. So I am not sure I can say hallelujah to the gist of the article, when it seems we are attempting to lighten the burden of sin, possibly because we sense we can make a relationship for the goal of evangelism. Too much evangelistic effort aims to first soft peddle sin to set the hook so to speak. Doesn't work.

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Karen Smith

January 22, 2013  3:19pm

@J Thomas - I disagree about it starting out as meaningless. Pro-Choice doesn't necessarily mean pro-abortion - yes, it means abortion should be protected and accepted, but it doesn't mean it should be something that should be sought out. Saying someone is pro-abortion (as opposed to saying they are pro-choice) is akin to saying someone is pro-murder (because they believe in the death penalty). (Please note that I'm both and neither; I am of the opinion that abortion is both a sin against God and a crime against humanity - but I'm also of the opinion that the first shouldn't drive laws that apply to those that don't believe the way I do, and that the latter is an opinion I have, not indisputable fact - I'll push for a constitutional ban on abortion, but while it's legal I won't support efforts to restrict it through deceitful laws and underhanded means.)

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J Thomas

January 22, 2013  2:35pm

"Pro-Choice" is a term that is meaningless because it began meaningless. It's Orwellian Newspeak meant to disguise the real nature of abortion behind the guise of something everyone wants. The term never had meaning because it did not represent the true definition of the thing being described. Calling abortion "choice" is about as dishonest as you can get. It's a shame that we as a culture have let people get away with that for so long. Call it abortion. Thats what it is. Don't mute the word because you are afraid that people will see it for what it is in all of its gruesomeness. Killing a child is not "choice". It's "murder".

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Steve Skeete

January 22, 2013  2:05pm

If I am not mistaken the terms 'pro-life' and pro-choice were considered acceptable to both camps because the word abortion made the 'choice' camp uncomfortable and the word 'anti' made the 'life' camp appear too negative. It was just rhetorical make-up, until both sides started to take their names too seriously. It was not long before 'choice' and 'life' meant much more than simple being 'for' or 'against' the termination of unborn life. I do not believe we will get rid of these or other labels, especially since more and more it is neither open discussion or truth that either side is after in these 'culture wars'. After all, war is about winners and losers, and names, like uniforms, are intended to mark the other side clearly as the enemy. It would be interesting though, to see what new names the antagonists can come up with as the abortion battle rages over the next forty years.

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Karen Smith

January 22, 2013  12:41pm

"Labels are for foods, not people." I'll post a more thorough comment later. I will note that many people that register as "Independent" are not, in fact, Indepenedent; many are instead Republican- or Democrat-leaning, and maintain a theoretical independence because they don't want to be lumped in with people they may later disagree with.

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Tim Fall

January 22, 2013  12:01pm

Karen, at the risk of engaging in rampant binomialism, may I say that I really like this post (as opposed to not liking it)? You got it right with how limited our own constructs can be, and how unlimited God's eternal ones are. Cheers, Tim (timfall.wordpress.com) P.S. to Jamie - "I'll vote for the godly man every time." Ah, but would you vote for the godly woman? ;-) Sorry, couldn't resist.

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