Bowing to political correctness, editors of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst's, college newspaper The Daily Collegian have changed the title of an article describing the recent visit of Planned Parenthood's president from "Pro-abortion group leader gives speech" to "President of Planned Parenthood gives lecture."
Read more at www.jillstanek.com.
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"Pro-abortion" is a loaded term. Unlike bloggers, actual journalists should avoid such loaded terms and strive for a neutral point of view. In the thorny thickets of the abortion debate, the best way to be neutral is to simply allow both sides to pick their own names. Hence, they are "pro-choice" and we are "pro-life". Both terms are euphemisms (at best), but neutrality requires that they both be accepted.
On the other hand, you are absolutely right about Planned Parenthood being pro-abortion. I addressed this point in a post several months ago. To summarize, Planned Parenthood's own words show that they encourage abortion in a wide range of circumstances, even outside of the usual "tough cases" such as fetal defects. For that reason, I think that "pro-abortion" is a perfectly valid term to describe them.
Sure thing. And I'm sure the liberal journalists will willingly drop the "right wing" and "fundamentalist" from the front of pro-life Republicans in all future articles. Adjectives are terrific as long as they are based on truth (I don't mind being called pro-life, do you?). Planned Parenthood's spokespersons will always be pro-abortion, so let's keep telling it like it is regardless if some "left wing" Massachusets student newspaper practices deception via clever semantics.
I don't mind being called pro-life, do you?
I don't mind it, but I am aware of its shortcomings. The main problem is that it isn't specific. This lack of specificity is exploited by pro-choicers with silly arguments like:
* If you're pro-life, you must also be opposed to the death penalty!
* You must also be opposed to the Iraq War!
* You must be in favor of more social programs, because letting people starve to death isn't very pro-life!
* Etcetera! (I'm sure that you've seen a few of these silly arguments.)
For those reasons, I prefer to be very specific. I am anti-abortion. I think abortion is an evil practice and should be stopped by any means necessary, short of actual vigilante/terrorist violence. I'll accept the term "pro-life" because that is the generally-recognized term to describe my views, but it isn't the term that I use to describe myself.
FYI, I am also opposed to the death penalty. However, I think those are two distinct issues. As Christina @ RealChoice says, "Show me an armed and aggressive fetus, and I'll agree that the two issues might be related."