There’s a recent story in the Winnipeg Free Press with the headlines that, “Liberals fear pro-lifers trying to take over weakened federal party.”
Gawd, I hate such inaccurate, slanted reporting. It’s bad enough when politicians engage in it, but the media should be more objective.
Let’s get the terms straight, shall we? Then we can try for objectivity.
To call one side “pro-life” is to give credibility to the implication that the other side is “anti-life.” That’s spinelessly accepting a one-sided spin on the debate. It appeals to the emotions, not the facts, and certainly not to logic.
Neither side is “anti-life” – unless that life happens to belong to one of your opponents’ abortion doctors. Then it seems to be okay to commit murder. It’s inappropriate to put a ‘pro-life’ label on someone who condones murdering doctors. “Pro-life-except-for-abortion-doctors” is a bit of a mouthful, but it’s honest.
The abortion issue is better described as “pro-choice” versus “anti-choice” – a debate over who has the right to choose: the pregnant woman or some third party, a person usually not associated with the woman by marriage or family ties, and usually whose religious beliefs are not shared by the woman in question.
I doubt that the religious people on the anti-choice side would take well to the notion of someone from a different faith making them follow their different rules. Would they, for example, accept a Taliban decree that all Christian women must wear the hijab? Unlikely. Yet they are quite comfortable making more important and life-altering decisions for people who do not share their particular brand of faith. That’s hypocrisy in my books. But I digress.
Pro-choice versus anti-choice is at least a more accurate label. But it’s also a bit hazy as a description, because some of the anti-abortion side would agree that abortion might be allowable under some conditions (such as the mother’s life being in danger, incest or rape). They may not be entirely anti-choice (although from what I’ve read, they still want an outsider with specific religious views to have the final say, not the woman). Calling them anti-pregnant-woman’s-choice-except-when-we-permit-it, however, is also a bit clumsy for a headline.
You can argue that it’s really “late-life” versus “early-life” supporters, because one of the key issues is when individual life actually takes effect – at conception, at some point in the womb, or at birth. That begins to sound a bit too intellectual and distant from the issue. You also learn when trying to pinpoint a time that there are not two clearly-defined sides on that question, but rather several shades of grey.
In the strictest terms, it is a pro-abortion versus anti-abortion debate, and should not be categorized by any of the emotionally-laden terms each group prefers to see itself as cloaked in. Let’s call it what it is, and not indulge anyone in their propaganda efforts to position their side on the moral high ground.
