As Abortion Rights Shrink, What's the Best Language to Use to Protect Women's Options?

[HereSince1628]

2. Yes, getting a message that addresses the problem is important.

Struggling to stay positive, and the use of ambiguous terms hasn't produced a sharp edged contrast that has the moral suasion to overcome the anti-abortionists' most resonant charge: abortion ends a life.

IMO, whatever message is adopted it needs to achieve recognition as a moral counter-point to the anti-abortionists' position. I don't think that can found in legalistic parsing that de-personalizes/dehumanizes zygotes, embryos, fetuses etc. Such arguments are attempts to work around the issue of taking a human life by defining away the humanness of developing life. It hasn't been convincing to many outside the pro-Choice movement.

For a long time my position has been that "self-defense" is a phrase that should be associated with abortion rights. It's a phrase that has the moral suasion to make acceptable the ending of a life, and it is well understood by the public and within American law. But using it to support abortion rights requires embracing the notion that abortion of a pregnancy terminates a life.

Moving toward a position that names the costs of unwanted pregnancies is a step in the right direction. It seems to me that those costs are what in the end will make terminating a developing life justified and acceptable.