Why I Am Pro-Life

You know what: I'm willing to trade: gun control for severe restrictions on abortions. Is that what you are proposing? Count me in. But, of course, that's not really what you are proposing. You are suggesting pro-lifers are hypocrites. Without acknowledging your own hypocrisy.

Friedman's thinking echoes the Catholic "seamless garment" pro-life stance: you can't be against abortion and for the death penalty. You can't be against abortion and indifferent to the poor. It is nonsensical for someone who is pro-death penalty to claim to be pro-life.

Many religious groups ignore this holistic thinking and pick and choose their illogical and hypocritical stances. I respect the (now few) Catholics who at least commit to being consistent. And I appreciate Mr. Friedman's views since they take it all a step further in calling out the blatant ignorance and illogic, if not outright misogyny that underlies most "pro-life" rhetoric.

Women don't live in a theoretical world of mutual respect. We live in the real one, where we are still routinely considered second class (see N. Kristof, across the page). Where state legislature regularly pass laws that restrict and impede our ability to exercise the right to choose that Roe v Wade protects. And while I agree that beliefs of various religious groups deserve respect, I don't agree that those groups should be allowed to use federal law to force their doctrinal strictures on the rest of us. Talk to me about mutual respect when women have the same rights that men can take for granted.

Precise language is essential to clear thinking. The so-called “pro-life” stance is actually anti-choice, and should be called that.

Pro-choice IS pro-life: it values the woman’s life.

Anti-choice defines the value of the women’s life solely on the basis of her function as an incubator.

A woman’s life has developed over a number of years: it is a life in which society has an investment: raising her, educating her, her health-care, etc. To support a woman’s right to continue to continue and develop her life in the way in which it is best for her and her relationships, is PRO-LIFE. The anti-choice position actually accords greater value to potential life than to actualized life.

Is a packet of seeds worth more than a garden of flourishing plants?

To treat women as incubators whose (often accidental) contents must be saved at all costs is disrespectful to the sanctity of the woman’s right to life as an individual human being.

Unfortunately, the anti-choice people have hi-jacked the language used to talk about these issues, and the pro-choice people haven’t taken it back. As a consequence the rhetoric more often than not misses the real point.

Generally excellent, Tom. But Bloomberg? He just came out against Elizabeth Warren and for Scott Brown in Massachusetts. She conceived and helped create the Consumers Protection Bureau—surely that is "pro-Life in your sense; but Bloomberg says that is Socialism, leaning toward communism!!! Brown is a tool of the finance industry, and definitely cynical on pro-life/pro-choice, slicing and dicing in various statements but when asked who his favorite SCOTUS Justice is, he said Scalia. He has voted with the Party of Cynicism on substantive issues 74% of the time!

These are compex issues. Much of what Bloomberg has done is great, no doubt. But Scott Brown over Elizabeth Warren???

How about using the term Pro-Freedom for those of us who support women to choose what's done with their bodies?

The thing about Mourdack is that people are not being fair. It's clear to me that his was a problem of syntax, not heart. What he meant to say is that he's come to realize that all babies are gifts from God; their lives are as valuable as any other babies' lives despite the way they were "fathered."

I am pro-choice but I wish people would stop attacking this man who was clearly trying to be compassionate. I would not carry a rapist's embryo (would abort), and no woman should have to. In the Balkan wars of recent memory and other wars throughout history, rape and impregnation of the enemy's girls and women, was a war tactic. Abortion of embryos created under these circumstances must be legal and perhaps even the ethical choice, but who can condemn the infants born from such unions?

Mourdack just needs to explain himself better. Just as does Friedman. He left out some of the details, I think, about the death penalty, but we can't rush to conclude that he is in favor of it because of his omitted mention. Same with Mourdack.

PS: Michael Bloomberg is terrific for my beloved hometown, but he has to work even harder to get the litter problem solved in NYC. Trash bins are overflowing up there.

You know, I'm very careful about my Absolutes, and my absolute on a woman's choices on reproduction does not depend on how I (or society) view the death penalty, taxes, capitalism or socialism, or any other factor or fact of any society. My Absolute is, well, absolute.Either a woman has utter control on her own, personal reproductive capacity - or she is a breeder, whether for her husband, her family, her economic system or her government, or her 'god'. Do I grant men the same right? Yes, absolutely. However, men do not get pregnant. Only women get pregnant, and there are few laws that protect women across the socialological board on that timeframe of her being pregnant and having her body go through a year of that physiological status.

I'm really tired of everyone linking a woman's reproductive choices to any other (and every other) subject. It is a seperate and specific matter.

I admit to a slight knee-jerk reaction to whenever a member of the gender that doesn't get pregnant identified himself as "pro-life," a phrase that has come to be associated with the belief that a woman has no right to her own reproductive destiny. If it is a prerequisite of "pro-life" status to consider a fetus a full-fledged human being (in which case, is an egg a bird? is an acorn an oak tree? is a caterpillar a butterfly?) particularly on religious grounds, then one must acknowledge the absoluteness of the Commandment "Thou shalt not kill" (which has no "except," "unless," or "but") and literally not swat a fly.

In actuality, however, it's difficult to imagine anyone outside the serial killer class who is not actively pro-life. "Pro-choice," conversely, has come to mean pro-abortion, believing that a woman undergoes the procedure out of convenience, spite, or even just for the heck of it--a notion no less insane than the one about women being obligated by God to have their rapists' babies.

I wonder if a soldier has ever refused to going to battle on the grounds of being "pro-life" (in its literal sense) or believing "Thou shalt not kill." After all, war, like abortion, wouldn't exist in a perfect world.

Well said. Anti-abortion does not mean pro-life. Look at Mr. Akin's own platform: he would put an end to abortions, but also to free lunch programs for poor children. If he's pro-life, then life for him must begin with conception and end at birth. Maybe it would be better to call such people "pro-fetus" or "anti-choice", or, in Mr. Akin's case, simply "anti-woman."

One could similarly argue that to be consistently "pro-choice", one must also support a person's right to euthanasia, the right to smoke weed if they want, and to ride a motorcycle without a helmet - all of which I would support.

The odd dichotomy is that such a choice-based society has its ideological underpinnings in the libertarian movement, which has largely been co-opted by the GOP and supports their candidates regardless of where they personally stand on abortion or choice.

I think a pro-life libertarian is probably the worst kind of hypocrite!

It's an upside-down world when the things we ought to be doing collectively - like ensuring clean water and preventing climate change - are seen as "big brother" government over-reach, while things that ought to be private - like anything that happens in a bedroom or a doctor's office - are subject to scrutiny by moral arbiters bent on protecting their version of "values".

It is funny how much of politics comes down to semantics. Taking charge of what words you use to define yourself and others is a major step to empowerment.

Mourdock, Santorum, Murphy, Akins all have one thread running through their rhetoric and it is a dangerous one. Romney and Ryan try to hide their true feeling by dancing around their positions. Each of these intellectually deficient politicians ignores basic science in the name of religion. They all have adopted a position not seen since the onset of the Renaissance when the Catholic Church persecuted those scientists, who believed the Sun was the center of the Universe and those artists, whose celestial depictions included unclothed men and women. These mis-directed politicians with the support of their allied religions overlook the very basis of all the life sciences and that is that a species evolves, sometimes slowly and often times backwards for a step or two before regaining its forward thinking course. Savonarola's bonfires of the vanities burned for a relatively short time before he himself was set afire.

It is during these interims that society has had to tolerate the behavior of the scientifically unenlightened yet science continues to prevail and in doing so sounds a loud message and that message is so plain that even dim-witted fellows like Santorum, Akins, Mourdock, Murphy, Romney, Ryan and their ilk can understand.

Science is truth.