From: kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu (Dust In The Wind)
Subject: Abortion Labels
Organization: Glassboro State College
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 22:20:46 GMT


Kevin Cone (I think) from Memphis writes:

> I also believe, however, that the *leaders* of the "pro-choice" movement
> are indeed pro-abortion. Abortion to them means power and money. They
> *want* to women to choose an abortion over any other option. [...]

While I share his distrust of "pro-choice" leaders, I would not go so far as
to impute those motives to them.  That aside . . .

> For those out there who are pro-choice, I ask you to look at your leaders,
> examine their motives (and their spiritual condition), and ask yourself if
> you want to be identified with them.

Those people are not my leaders; I do not give them a single penny, or any
other form of concrete support whatsoever.

I do not like the label "pro-choice", partly for the reasons you state and
partly because the label is associate with ideas I consider overly extreme.

Left to myself, I would take no label except "Christian" -- but the Christian
Church is splintered and divided into groups that dispute many things,
sometimes hotly.  The label I consider important, the name above all others,
cannot be used as a descriptor because it describes so little.

In the situation we are in now, I prefer "anti-abortion anti-legislation"; I
think abortions are morally wrong in almost all cases (including rape and
incest), and morally questionable even in a case where the mother's health
might be harmed.  But I do not feel that unsupportable moral opinions should
be made into law.  I don't know to measure a woman's life versus that of the
potential person inside her.  I don't know how to measure the emotional damage
of carrying a rapist's child to term against the damage of having an abortion.


The people who own the "pro-choice" label have equated it with "abortion on
demand for any reason with no intelligent thinking required first and even if
the baby is due tomorrow afternoon".  The people who own the "pro-life" label
have equated it with "arrest and punish all those people for a crime we can't
prove exists".

Abortion involves people -- individuals with their own histories, medical
problems, emotional problems, ideas, opinions, beliefs and morality.  Both
of the public camps in the debate have tried to reduce all of that to short
slogans and sound bites, cramming human beings into whichever pigeonholes seem
to match.


And, in fact, that's how I end up.  I oppose legislation, so both groups stuff
me into the little box labled "pro-choice".  Neither group cares much about me
personally, let alone my ideas and moral prerogatives.  I find many pro-choice
protestors blasphemous and offensive, and prefer not to be associated with
them if at all possible -- but that doesn't matter to anybody.  I can't
imagine how anyone could have so little respect for human life as to put a
fetus on a board and wave it around as if it were a plaquard with "USA #1"
printed on it, and so I avoid associations with them, too.

I can't find much in either side to support, and I want to distance myself
from them more than anything else.  So I avoid calling myself "pro" anything.
The only sensible thing that I can think of to say is that I am against
abortion, and that I am against passing tightly restrictive laws without some
kind of proof: "Anti-abortion, anti-legislation".


Darren F Provine / kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu
"A plague on both your houses!" -- Mercutio
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia