General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Being pro-life doesn’t make me any less of a lefty [View all]Tommy_Carcetti
(43,151 posts)And yes, I know that when someone says "pro-choice" then that means they support the legal right to an abortion. Just as when someone says they are "pro-life" it means they oppose abortion as a legal right (in part or in whole), regardless of whether you or I believe that to be an accurate descriptor. The debate has been going on for decades and the terms have become part of the political vernacular. And I haven't been living under a rock in that respect.
But that's all beside the point. The respective sides perform no service to rational discourse by attempting to frame the issue in their own unique way. In the end, all it is is appealing to some sense of higher authority--personal liberty on one hand, the notion of God and inception of human life on the other. Both sound great, which is exactly why they do that. But in the end, it's all groupthink. It's all designed for the purpose of self-aggrandizement and the demonization of the other. The truth is all on their side, and as for the others, they wallow in perpetual darkness and malevolence.
In my lifetime, I've had the opportunity to be in close contact with both sides of the debate. I'm a Catholic; I'm a Democrat. I have Catholic friends staunchly on the anti-abortion side, and I have Democratic friends staunchly on the abortion rights side. And I have a fair amount of crossover to boot. And I'm amazed, but maybe not, how good and honest people on both sides are. They instrinsically believe what they do as a matter of heartfelt principle and not as an excuse to bash the other. They believe they are acting in the interests of women, or conversely, in the interests of what they believe to be innocent human life. But all that goodwill and principle gets lost in the ever heated rhetoric that has enveloped the debate. And suddenly, they--in the eyes of their opponents--become either bloodthirsty proponents of child murder, or alternately, troglodytes hell bent on subjecting women out of their own misogyny. And it's a damn shame that good people have been painted into little caricaturistic boxes like that, but that's the sad state of affairs that we are in.
The only thing of which I am certain when it comes to the abortion issue is that it concerns one thing: abortion. And that abortion is a medical procedure, but an extraordinary medical procedure. And whether one believes it should always be a legal right, never be a legal right, or--as in the vast majority of Americans--that the answer, if there even is one, lies somewhere in the vast spectrum in between. And if one is honest with him or herself, they will recognize that the issue carries with it additional ethical matters that your routine medical procedures do not carry. The fact that you do not see people protest offices of plastic surgeons is proof that the issue is not merely about making a choice regarding a medical procedure about one's own body and nothing more. This is not to say that those who oppose abortion are right or wrong in their position, but let's not blind ourselves to think that the issue is just so common sense and so black and white beyond all rational debate. Because you know what? Those who are anti-abortion think exactly the same thing about abortion rights proponents. And so long as we fall into the "life"/"choice" thinking trap, we will remain in this clusterfuck of a stalemate and all rational and reasonable arguments that ought to be discussed will fall by the wayside.