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

[GrimmaTheNome]

Usually in quotes...but even so...

Clearly enough in the light of the tragic case in Galway, this is an oxymoron.

I want a more accurate term - should it be 'anti-choice' or is there something better I should use?

I refuse to use the term pro-life because pro-lifers are only pro the foetus's life. They regard the mother's life as secondary. That is not being pro-life.

Quite so - that was the nub of my initial objection.

Well said grimble

I think anti-choice is appropriate - it will be as offensive to those that are pro-life as the term pro-abortion is to those who are pro-choice!

I am quite torn on this one. The baby has a heartbeat very early on....there is life there. That can't be denied. I am 16 weeks pregnant and have started to feel the small little flutterings of a living, growing baby inside me. Never in a million years could I live with myself if I chose to end this life. It is a brand new and yes, INNOCENT life.

Yet I can also see that women should have autonomy over their own bodies. I am very much pro-women and would find it very hard to tell a desperate woman she should have the baby when not having it would be best for her.

I would never put the baby's life before the woman's...but I also cannot see the baby as anything but a baby who is human and alive as much as you or me.

I suppose what I am saying is I think women should choose, but I feel sad and sorrowful for the little lives that are lost.

I suppose what I am saying is I think women should choose, but I feel sad and sorrowful for the little lives that are lost.

Yes. Well put.

I concur entirely with that sentiment too

I really like "pro-forced-birther".

I am going to use it from now on.

When not using "uterus-bothering bucketheads", obviously.

what about "interfering judgemental hypocrites"?

I think the problem with pro-life/pro-choice rhetoric is that it sets up an emotionally charged, oppositional dichotomy, which does not deal with the complexity of the issues.

I think it is hard to argue that pro-life means pro-life, when there are examples of places where the woman's life is secondary, I concur with that view.

Equally, I would also argue that pro-choice is a misnomer, when many women seek abortions due to poverty, social pressure, lack of resources to bring up a child, where women are seen as the primary carers, having primary responsibility for contraception, for childcare, for balancing the needs of existing and potential children. Without equality, with more women than men living in poverty, without adequate support for pregnancy and childcare, I am sure that many, many times, it is not a 'choice' as such. I personally would not adopt the language of choice until all else is equal.

I am aware others disagree with me, having had this debate before. I don't have the heart to have it again at the moment. I don't have a name for my views or a quick label. I just am not sure that polarising the debate helps.

I've heard the term 'pro-birth' used before, as that's what it's all about. Personally I prefer using 'anti-choice'.

There's plenty of pro-choicers who, privately would not choose an abortion themselves, so are 'pro-life' on a personal level, however they don't want to force their personal choice onto other people.

I don't agree with woman-haters or misogynist, as religion infects women as often as it infects men, and it seems odd to describe millions of delusional women as women-haters.

I simply use religious, or religious extremists, as I prefer to focus on the cause rather than the symptom. That said, there is some minority who are not religious.

Alternatively, pro- vs anti- medicine (which results in the loss of a foetus), or more generally, anti-euthanasia.

'Pro-forced-birther' is apt. I might start using that.

I just am not sure that polarising the debate helps.
You're right, summerflower - and the rest of that post.

My problem is that language does matter - the difficulty of finding appropriate terminology results in skewed understanding of the issues by some.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

Its the term used of livestock too - you hear of cases where dogs worry ewes and they abort their lambs. You never hear of it referred to as 'miscarrying'. Odd stuff, language.

I've somehow been oblivious that miscarriage was stigmatised - perhaps because of the way my mother would occasionally mention the two she'd had between my brothers and myself, sad but certainly not something to hide ...I simply can't think why on earth why anyone would stigmatise it.

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
Even that doesn't quite get to the full grimness of what happened to Savita - it wasn't as though there was even any hope of a birth.

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.

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.

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.

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!