Up till now I've used the term 'pro-life'....

Also what I would choose for myself has no business interfering with what other women should have to do or have the opportunity to do. So I respectfully stick to my pro or anti abortion terms...

Your analogy is a good one Fastidia.

I still prefer to use 'pro abortion' though because also many anti-abortion campaigners sadly argue that they also offer women 'choice' in the choice to not have one while they claim pro abortion campaigners tend to present the 'no choice but to have one' viewpoint..

Which as we know, really is 'no choice'. We'd all like the luxury to have every baby in comfort, happiness, wealth and freedom from health concerns....

I agree.

I don't like the term 'pro abortion' because it makes them sound like a good thing. Safe, legal abortion for those who need or want one is a good thing. But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't prefer every pregnancy to be a wanted one. And a healthy one.

Similarly I am pro-life. I think life is a good thing. I am pro people living. I hate that the term has been co-opted to mean something else.

I saw a shocking article in the Times yesterday. Women in Ireland who had had much wanted babies with conditions incompatible with life. Made to either wait until the foetus died, carry it to term (when it would die) or speak in veiled terms to medical staff about an abortion in England. Then spend their savings doing it (or borrow money from family,can't remember). Absolutely fucking shocking. Likewise a women with advanced cancer refused an abortion and resulting in a late surgical abortion in the UK. Makes me mad.

I don't think it does mignon because a lot of people who are in favour of abortion being a legal and safe option for a woman, are anti-abortion in the sense that they would never choose it for themselves.

In that sense, pro choice and anti-choice is more accurate.

But it's not very accurate either, because most women don't actively choose to have an abortion - they have one because there is no other choice.

I read it once described as choosing to have an abortion in the same way a fox caught in a trap chooses to gnaw its own leg off.

I use pro abortion and anti abortion. Keeps the two standpoints as clear as possible.

I use anti-abortion and pro-choice. Anti-abortion is an accurate but not inflammatory term. Some people say that pro-choice should be referred to as pro-abortion, but that's disingenuous as most pro-choice campaigners do not want to increase the number of abortions, they just want the option to be there.

Pro-life is much too vague a term. If you asked somebody who had never heard the term used in the abortion context what they thought pro-life means, they might think of charities promoting healthcare, trying to stop wars, or all kinds of other things. Maybe some anti-abortionists also care about those things, but in this context, anti-abortion is the relevant term.

Seth and Fastidia, really interesting comments. If you find the reference, Seth, please do post it! Thanks.

Sassh, yes I see what you mean, and I am glad women do have the choice, especially in cases like the one you mentioned.

Not that long ago I was staunchly anti-abortion. I was brought up in an ultra Catholic house (my parents are brilliant - very tolerant and loving considering they have the strongest faith ever), went to a Catholic school, went to a Catholic college, taught RE in Catholic schools (thankfully that's all over). In school there was a video called 'The Silent Scream', that was shown to ALL pupils in Year 12, that showed a baby being ripped apart inside the womb until just the head was left. Can you believe that up until quite recently, I thought that was how all abortion was carried out??? THAT is what is taught in Catholic schools...at least the one I went to (a convent school) and the ones I taught in.

So regarding abortion, all I saw was an issue of life and death...the baby's that is. I even fell out with a friend when she told me she had had an abortion after a one night stand. She was just so flippant about it like she didn't care, and it seemed so disrespectful to her baby. I could not understand how people did not see it as I saw it.

I can't believe I was ever so narrow minded. Thank goodness I became interested in feminism and learned to educate myself.

I am pro choice because I think that whether to carry a fetus to term should be a choice.

For this reason I am also pro contraception and sexual education - people should be as well-informed as possible on how not to get pregnant in the first place if they don't want to.

I am also pro free healthcare and the welfare state and subsidised childcare and the destigmatisation of single parenthood - the choice of whether to have children should be as much as possible a free choice.

Ironically, those two praragraphs are full of things that would reduce the abortion rate, not increse it. If women did not get pregnant unless they wanted to, and if an unplanned child was not a disaster (financially, emotionally, socially), there would be fewer abortions.

But few of those who claim to be "pro life" care about the life of the woman before she falls pregnant or the life of the woman ad child after the child is born.

SamuraiCindy

But your baby is wanted and healthy, and I hope it stays that way. One of my relatives went to her first scan to find out her baby had no brain.

She could have carried to term but her baby would either be born dead, or live for seconds. She chose to terminate.

And that's what pro choice is. The choice to terminate, and to change your mind depending on circumstances.

There are women in that same situation who do carry to term. It is their choice and I'm glad that so many places allow it.

Yes even the catholic church allowed abortion up to quickening at various points in history. Augustine was more liberal on abortion, than Pope Benedict is. Although he believed "ensoulment" happened at 40 days. (nice random religious number there) I think it was Pope Innocent III in the c12 who decided quickening was when the woman felt the baby move.

It was only when women started to get some real legal rights in Europe, that the church started to decide that abortion was a sin in all cases. IE, backlash. Women get some rights in one area? Attack them in another. It's all so drearily familiar.

I've got a feeling that the foetus wasn't considered to be alive/real until the "quickening" (feeling kicks) in pre scan times. I'm struggling for source but I've definitely read various historical data from eqyptian texts or uk history talking about treating both men and women for issues if the foetus failed to quicken, oddly enough it's ringing a bell that this was considered to be a male failing. Must dig.

Two things: I entirely agree that language matters, Grimma, I guess that was where I was going with my comments on the other thread (albeit in a slightly different context).

Secondly, FastidiaBlueberry, I think you are right to say that there used to be confusion between whether a miscarriage was spontaneous or induced, before abortion was legal. Part of the confusion was that the medical profession had no idea of the true rate of natural pregnancy loss, because there were no reliable pregnancy tests, no ultrasound, and people relied on the woman herself to make the pregnancy known, usually not until quickening (foetal movements felt). The only person who knew whether the abortion was spontaneous or induced was the woman herself (and anyone who helped her procure it, if it was induced)

So, in many ways, the creation of foetal personhood (which the pro-life debate uses to emotional advantage) is the result of technology, I think, which makes the inside of a pregnancy visible and takes it beyond the woman?s control. If that makes sense. Pregnancy is a public matter from the earliest days now, because we all can see the foetus (not the actual individual foetus, but the general, known foetus which we imagine, from scans we have seen and from well known photographs (the Swedish photographer in the 1960s whose name escapes me who used aborted foetuses for a photo series in Life magazine - ?).

So, pre-technology, it was not just sin and superstition, but the fact that the foetus was not known/seen in the way it is today.

This always makes me wonder if there was, or is, a qualitative difference between abortion 100 years ago and today, even though the actual outcome is the same.

Apologies for the long post!

I get what you're saying fastidia, about supersitition or crank theology around miscarriage, but I actually think it is worse than that.

I am not a theologian, far from it, but I do know Catholic theology from back in a time when medicine was desperate attempt to stop people dying. And it does seem that back then, people did have a natural instinct to want to save a dying woman if they could. I honestly believe things have become worse, not better. It is macabre.

It's just horrifying.

Every time I think about it I'm staggered by the contempt and inhumanity they showed that poor woman.

They have no fucking right to call themselves doctors and I hope they're struck off.

Exactly, it's horrifying and nonsensical that that poor woman and her family were given no choice at all. A foetus known to have no hope of survival was allowed to die in its own time and that was considered the priority over a grown woman. I mean we help the terminally ill to die by withdrawing nutrition or not resuscitating.

I suspect that in the old days, it was partly because no-one knew if a miscarriage was spontaneous or deliberate. And there were all sorts of stupid ideas like miscarriage being caused by sin, or it being a bad omen and other sorts of superstitious crap.

We still haven't quite got over all that.

Forced birther is grim though which is helpful for getting the point over. Due to thread on here I've been inwardly debating the clinically accurate paedophile versus old school child molester. I'm wondering if the seperateness of the work paedophile detracts from the horror, whereas child molester is graphic and meaningful.

I think pro-life is a very cleverly chosen slogan, because it is not at all what denial of the right to abort is in reality.

I've always felt it was pro choice/no choice.

Have just realised how odd that sounds.

Said friend was not known as "habitual aborter" by all and sundry as a nickname or anythign - she was called that by the medical profession. She was greeted one day by the receptionist "ah yes, Mrs L - you're the habitual aborter, aren't you? Doctor will only be 5 minutes..."

I think that's a really interesting point, that failure of our society to deal with miscarriage.

The technical term for miscarriage in the 1st trimester, is of course "abortion". (A friend of mine was known as "an habitual aborter" in the seventies when she had 7 miscarriages). There was much less distinction between deliberate termination and spontaneous abortion and of course there was a massive amount of stigma about miscarriage and still is.

I do think language matters hugely, too.

It seems to me it's the anti-abortion side who polarise the debate. So this woman's death has become an 'abortion' issue. I think it's awful. Why don't they recognize that there's a huge spectrum of outcomes to a pregnancy that don't end in a nice easy birth with a lovely, healthy full-term baby? Because I think that is the issue. I think this must be related to the way miscarriage is really still hugely stigmatized, and the way there really isn't a lot of humane treatment of pregnancy loss later on, or of neonatal death.

I agree, Grimma, language does matter. That's why they use the term "pro-life", because it paints them in such a good light and makes the rest of us sound like some sort of death cult for not being "pro-life".

I am of course pro-life. I have never murdered anyone, never advocated murder and I am very much in favour of medicine to save lives. I would say that this is what the term "pro-life" should mean. It has nothing to do with abortion and it clouds the issue using this term to describe the anti-abortion camp.

Pro-forced-birther seems to fit nicely for me too. I have always used anti-abortionist before, but I like this term.