Pro-life
From RationalWiki
Pro-life is a political neologism (often termed elsewhere as the less emotionally loaded term anti-abortion) that means being in favor of protecting the life of every human fetus regardless of the consequences, and against abortion. The activities, protests and lobbying of "pro-lifers" extend to abortion and embyo research.
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[edit] Origin of "pro life"
Because being "pro-life" is now largely considered a conservative stance, it also has a high correlation with support for war and capital punishment and with opposition to potentially life-saving stem cell research or euthanasia. Currently therefore, the term is like an ironic joke; for most pro-lifers, life begins at conception, ends at birth and starts again at brain death. This was originally not the case. The origin of the "pro-life" movement was in the Catholic left during the Vietnam War among Catholic social justice activists, who were opposed to the war, capital punishment, and abortion alike. Those who hold this particular combination today now use the term "consistent life ethic".
[edit] Post Roe v. Wade
After Roe v. Wade in 1973, the largely Protestant religious right latched onto abortion as a holy crusade and made it a core part of conservative politics, conveniently forgetting the other issues. Mostly their opposition to abortion seems to stem from them seeing it as part of a feminist plot to empower women with control over their own reproductive rights, and with the sexual revolution more generally. Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority played a big role in making abortion a moral panic among conservatives and evangelical Christians starting in the 1970s and 80s. Today, being "pro-life" is almost a given among members of evangelical megachurches, with dissenting views on abortion met with accusations of near-heresy. It is used as a wedge issue (or a single-issue litmus test) to convince many who otherwise hold liberal, moderate, or libertarian politics, to vote Republican.
[edit] Racism?
There is also a subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) racist undertone to some aspects of the pro-life movement, wherein people of a certain paler skin tone fear they are being "out bred" by peoples of certain darker skin tones. Hence the desire to prevent paler-skinned women from being able to limit their fecundity by any means at all. (Conversely, within the African-American community there is a notion that abortion is a white plot to destroy African-Americans.)
[edit] Abortion in the Bible
Ironically, abortion appears to be mentioned only once in the Bible, in Numbers 5:11-31. Priests are instructed to give women suspected of adultery a "bitter water" which (somehow) distinguishes between a pregancy from her husband and a pregnancy due to adultery. If it is due to adultery the bitter water will induce an abortion. It's in the Bible! Pro-lifers to the contrary are usually likely to quote Jeremiah 1:5 ("Before I formed you in the womb I knew you"), which is more in keeping with the Calvinist doctrine of predestination than anything having to do with abortion, and Deuteronomy 30:19 ("Therefore choose life, that you and your children may live"), which in context is about faith in God and likewise has nothing to do with abortion.
There is also a lunatic fringe of the pro-life movement which turns the idea of "pro-life" so far on its head they they take what they call direct action and are willing to murder physicians who perform abortions and plant bombs in abortion clinics.
[edit] See also
| Abortion articles on RationalWiki | ||
|---|---|---|
| Abortion - Fetus/Fœtus - Gonzales v. Carhart - Nuremberg Files - Parsley abortion - Pro-life - Pro-choice - Essay:Rhetorical analysis of abortion essays - Roe v. Wade - Schlafly, breast cancer and abortion - The Silent Scream - Barnett Slepian - Essay:Where do you fall in the abortion debate? | ||
