New Stanek poll: Do you prefer “pro-life” or “anti-abortion”?
I have a new poll question up:
There is growing sentiment the term “pro-life” has become corrupted & absconded by the other side. Should we start using “anti-abortion”?
This is in line with the success of other “anti” campaigns, such as anti-drunk driving, anti-smoking, anti-meat, anti-fur, anti-slavery, etc.
Vote on the lower right side of the home page.
Unfortunately the online poll I was using (Vizu) went defunct, so I can’t give the results of my previous poll.
As always, make comments to either the previous or current poll here, not on the Poll Daddy website.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Just simply say “Viva!” …and no other explanation, too much …messes up the message.
I am anti-abortion and I am also pro-life. I prefer pro-life because that encompasses so many different issues that we need to confront but I am not opposed to being called anti-abortion. As for our opponents, I prefer to call them pro-death (rather than pro-choice).
us = prolife them = prohell
I go with pro-life but I am fine with anti-abortion. Pro-life is better for me because I’m also a vegetarian, anti-death penalty, anti-war, etc, and I feel like that term matches my views overall more than just anti-abortion does.
I prefer to say that I support due process for unborn persons. “Personhood” would be the short form of that I suppose.
I prefer pro-life, but anti-abortion is good as well.
I prefer Pro Life because it covers life from conception to natural death. I’m definitely Anti-Abortion as well.
But if I’m Pro-Life, why isn’t the other side Anti-Life?
No preference for me. At times pro-life is more appropriate, such as when the topic is euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, assisted suicide, etc. And other times anti-abortion is more specific. I have to admit I haven’t really seen the term pro-life being corrupted and absconded by “the other side”.
People who injure or murder abortionists are anti-abortion. Yet they are not pro-life. The two terms are NOT synonymous.
Very true Cranky!
I think right to life is probably the best label that exists. It’s positive, it includes the word life, and most importantly, it’s clear.
Pro-life and anti-abortion suffer from the similar flaw of allowing wiggle room for legal abortion. Everyone wants to say that they’re (generally) in favor of life, and almost everyone wants to say that they’re (generally) against abortion. But there are so many who will not make the logical leap to the right to life.
Anti-choice – now there’s a label we ought to think about reclaiming. Are you ashamed to be anti-choice on the issue of, say, honor killing? Then why should we be ashamed to be called anti-choice on abortion?
“Anti-choice – now there’s a label we ought to think about reclaiming. Are you ashamed to be anti-choice on the issue of, say, honor killing? Then why should we be ashamed to be called anti-choice on abortion?”
I am totally fine with pro-choicers calling me anti-choice. Doesn’t bother me at all to say “yeah, I’m anti-choice on killing unborn humans”. I think it’s funny that they think they are needling me when they call me that.
The problem with “pro-choice” and “anti-choice” is that they are lacking in specificity to the point of being meaningless slogans, like “Hope” and “Change”. Of course this is intentional, as the pro-abortion side is morally bankrupt. I reject the idea that “good people can disagree on abortion”. Only those who are deceivers or who are deceived can be “pro-choice”.
Prolife, they are prodeath. Simple
We are anti-aborticide. An abortion is a legitimate operation for removing a dead baby. We are NOT PRO-LIFE! We believe in the death penalty when biblically applied. We do not have a double standard for the justification of the use of force for born and unborn children as most pro-lifers.
The legality or illegality of abortion does not AUTOMATICALLY and LOGICALLY connect to other issues whether the death penalty, euthanasia, or whatever. The positions are pro-abortion outlawed and pro-abortion legal.
dan holman, who is this “we” you refer to?
dan holman says:
“We do not have a double standard for the justification of the use of force for born and unborn children as most pro-lifers”
Huh? Are you saying most pro-lifers have a double standard?
I prefer Abolitionist. Strongly anti-abortion, with no compromise. “Pro-life” has been diluted to mean, “mostly life-supportive with exceptions”. That is compromise, and the unborn are ALL equally entitled to LIFE. The traditional pro-life movement has done nothing to abolish abortion. Prolifers have accepted too many moderates, who essentially do nothing to protect life. Taking the less of two evils doesn’t accomplish total anti-abortion efforts. The time to stop compromising is now. If you support LIFE, then support it wholly.
I’m mostly anti-abortion, and I prefer the term. I’d be WAY more supportive of the death penalty if initial trials were more thorough, the juror selection process wasn’t engineered to get idiots, and prosecutors were rewarded more for seeking the truth and less for “winning” cases. Unless a person can be determined to be mentally ill in some way, and if they have a legitimate reason for wanting to do so (like an unbearably painful illness), I’d even support someone’s decision to end their own life-I’m all about personal freedom, and that’s their choice. I’d want them to make certain it was the only way out of what they wanted to get out of, and I’d be sorry that they chose that option, but I think it’s still their choice. I haven’t thought enough about stem cell research yet to make my mind up once-and-for-all about it, and I won’t until abortion is illegal, because I think that’s a FAR more pressing issue and deserves the lion’s share of my attention. So, yeah. I’m anti-abortion, and anti-elective abortion if you want to get even more specific about it. I’m really flexible about a lot of other things.
Wait a minute…. How is it that “the term ‘pro-life’ has become corrupted & absconded by the other side”?
They don’t talk about life….
Given your reaction to the banner that included something other than the abortion issue, “pro-life” is now as amorphous if not inaccurate as “pro-choice”. Maybe pro-unborn life? But that would not include the women slaughtered in the clinics.
And rename the upcoming march, “[the] March against Abortion”.
Even pro-innocent-life would also require being against capital punishment (in practice, not some abstract theological-philosophical argument), as well as targeting non-combatants with sanctions. Too many would not merely agree with Madeline Albright’s statement that starving a half-million children in Iraq was “worth it”, but would probably say it was merely a good start and we should do much worse to Iran. “collateral damage” is innocent human life just as a “fetus” is.
There are many evils, many paths to hell.
As a Catholic, and the traditional protestant view is that Contraception is anti-life. What is it trying to prevent or do the semantics change to those of our opponents?
Yet somehow “Gay-‘marriage'” seems to be getting sucked into the “pro-life” amalgam.
Pro-life used to be unified. All human life was precious and sacred. Now we pick and choose which human lives we consider precious, which are sacred. Too many could properly be described – and this is not co-opting the term – as “pro life except for the unborn”. (Even an exception for rape like Ryan backslid to).
In the origins of the movement in the mid-1970’s, (orthodox) Catholics were against the Vietnam War as well as contraception and for social justice.
The only difficulty might be the implicit “life of the mother” exception.
and also, I loooooooove me some meat. Oh man. Do I ever enjoy ingesting the flesh of tasty critters. And, I really don’t feel badly about it at all, because I know a lion would eat me too, if he could get his paws on me. A pig would eat me if it were hungry enough. Cows are gross and really not that bright, but I do feel the worst about eating them, but still not very because they’d be hunted by creatures like wolves in the wild, anyway, and killed much more painfully by them than how we do it.
CHICKENS ARE THE WORST THOUGH! MUCH, MUCH MORE DUMB AND GROSS. Also loud. Chickens will even eat each other for stupid reasons like, one in the pen has different colored feathers than the majority. Dumb. And also they poop constantly, and everywhere. I wish it were socially acceptable in The States to eat cuey, just because I personally think they’re the mammalian equivalent of chickens.
I’ve lived around most these animals my whole life, and we have a duty to them to care for and respect them as caregivers, because they’re not as cognizant as we are. And I do! There have been food animals we’ve raised that we’ve loved dearly, despite how dumb and gross they were.
…But once they reached the magic weight, they went on the plate, and tasted soooo great.
I prefer Anti Choice Extremist. It makes me sound scary.
I perfer never to work under a label (not just in pro-life/pro-choice/anti-abortion, but in all sorts of aspects of life). You never know what the label means to the other person and whether they think the best of you or the worst of you, you can loose a lot of opportunity to clarify when you slap a label on yourself and proceed as if a foundation as been properly laid. If I am in a situation where I need to assign myself a twenty-four character label then I like to pick something outside the box that will prompt others to wonder “what do they mean by that” or will strike them as evidence that I’ve thoughtfully developed my position.
Definitely pro-life. Because I’m not just anti – abortion, but also anti – embryo research/euthanasia/assisted suicide/death penalty.
Prolife! I bellieve in protecting life from conception to natural death.
Since so many anti-choicers also support the death penalty then the movement as a whole needs to be labelled ‘anti-abortion’ rather than ‘pro-life’. It also clarifies your purpose and intent more accurately.
Maureen says:
January 7, 2013 at 4:07 pm
Prolife! I bellieve in protecting life from conception to natural death.
(Denise) The fact is that many people who support anti-abortion laws may not have all the beliefs you do.
Xalisae I seriously almost threw up at your post. That’s so incredibly gross to me. It’s like if someone was describing eating human babies lol.
Does not compute. :/
I guess it’s just being raised around the creatures like I was…the divide between species is so blatant to me the separation of species seems like the Grand Canyon. @_@
“Does not compute. :/
I guess it’s just being raised around the creatures like I was…the divide between species is so blatant to me the separation of species seems like the Grand Canyon. ”
The only person who wasn’t fairly terrible when I was growing up was my dog. :) Sooo I thnk I decided animals were just as good as humans early on.
I prefer anti-abortion because it focuses on the issue at hand. “Pro-life” often invites rabbit trails about hypocrisy with the death penalty, etc. among the folks I talk to.
Both are good to me. :) Pro-life, anti-abortion, whatever. I’m not ashamed of being anti-abortion! It’s a horrible crime. I’m not afraid of saying I’m anti-war or anti-murder or anything like either.
As a culture, we’re pretty squeamish about the negative feeling of the word anti. However, if you’re anti something bad, you’re good. So heck yeah I’m anti-abortion.
Also, it’s good to be back.
Jack,
That was the reason I went from wanting to be a doctor to wanting to be a veterinarian in first grade. People were terrible to me. But I still had no illusions about how the world works. Animals eat other animals eat other animals, eat other animals.That’s just how it goes. We can love them all we like, but when we start forgetting that we’re animals eating other animals and so are the rest of the kingdom animalia, it’s easy for people to build pedestals for other species. A dog or a cat would never treat you so poorly you’d want to kill yourself, but the people who made fun of me in school wouldn’t try to eat me like a wolf or a mountain lion, either. :/
Yes but we have reason, not just instinct! We can rise above and treat all living things with respect. And not eat them.
/vegetarian soapbox and thread hijacking.
I think both terms are fine. What’s wrong with “anti-abortion”? Would anyone have a problem with “anti-slavery”?
Personally, I prefer ‘pro-life’ over ‘anti-abortion’. I might be a little bit biased though because I fit in the “correct” form of pro-life according to the pro-aborts (vegan, anti-war, anti-death penalty, etc). But you know, anti-abortion works too.
Yes but we have reason, not just instinct! We can rise above and treat all living things with respect. And not eat them.
And my reason tells me that we have depth perception for hunting prey, sharp teeth for tearing flesh, and foods of animal origin, such as meat and poultry, fish, etc, are the richest dietary sources of the essential amino acids. Plant sources of protein are often deficient in one or more essential amino acids. :X
I knew it was only a matter of time before Jack saw x’s meat rant. This is for you, Jack.
;)
http://www.gocomics.com/poochcafe/2013/01/06
“And my reason tells me that we have depth perception for hunting prey, sharp teeth for tearing flesh, and foods of animal origin, such as meat and poultry, fish, etc, are the richest dietary sources of the essential amino acids. Plant sources of protein are often deficient in one or more essential amino acids. :X ”
Pssh, our nicely evolved brains can make a balanced meal without resorting to eating living sentient creatures. Beans, leafy dark grean vegetables, whole grains, etc… I eat all that stuff and never have any type of deficiency. Haven’t eaten meat in twelve years give or take. I just have to plan my meals a bit more carefully than meat eaters. Plus, my risk of heart disease and other issues is a lot lower (or it would be if I didn’t smoke lol).
“I knew it was only a matter of time before Jack saw x’s meat rant. This is for you, Jack.”
Lol I couldn’t resist. I’ll go all animal rights crazy here! :)
Jack,
You’re full of beans. But not as much as our trolls. ;)
“Beans, leafy dark grean vegetables, whole grains, etc… I eat all that stuff and never have any type of deficiency.”
Yep. My kids would starve to death. They’re almost entirely carnivorous.
“Haven’t eaten meat in twelve years give or take. I just have to plan my meals a bit more carefully than meat eaters.”
Bleh. I haven’t the resources, either monetary or chronographically. <_<
In the immortal words of Sweet Brown, “Ain’t nobody got time fo dat.”
I used to be a huge carnivore. All of my meals had to have meat in them. There was absolutely no plant life on my plate. Lol. I don’t quite miss it now.
Go veggies! :)
chronographically
x, where’d you get the time to learn that word? ;)
“Bleh. I haven’t the resources, either monetary or chronographically. <_<
In the immortal words of Sweet Brown, “Ain’t nobody got time fo dat.””
Well that sucks about time but you can eat super cheap as a vegetarian. I spend a lot less on food than anyone I know around here. I could teach you! :)
Why not just “pro-preborn life”? Lots of antiabortion people think it’s OK for corporations to poison the born so the executives can be wealthy and there will be jobs.