Rhetoric Watch
by tristero
From Think Progress:Stupak is an attempt by the pro-life movement to use health reform as a vessel to ration access to reproductive health services.
No.
Stupak is an attempt by the pro-coathanger movement to use health reform as a vessel to ration access to reproductive health services.
As long as we provide the foes of women's reproductive rights the opportunity to cast themselves as being "for life," and do so voluntarily, we will continue to lose ground on a fundamentally moral issue in which we, supporters of unrestricted health care for women, hold the high ground.
Do you think "pro-coathanger" is needlessly confrontational, even if true? Ok, Digby's formulation, "coerced birth," is a more than reasonable substitute. Or if you insist, "anti abortion rights" is fine.
But an important note about that last one: the issue is one of rights, not whether we think a specific set of procedures agrees with our abstract moral code. We can't leave the word "rights" out of the phrase without rhetorically handing the opposition - which is headed by people that genuinely hate women, especially poor women - a powerful concession.
Words matter. And the rightwing would never, ever, make the mistake of calling us anything milder than "pro-abortion," despite the fact that is not our position, nor what this is about. It is about rights, rights to healthcare without restrictions for about half the people in this country.
Think Progress does great work; I'm not raking them specifically over the coals. The rhetorical problem I'm pointing out is so commonplace as to be nearly invisible. My hope is that decent people will focus on how very important it is, always, to resist casting cultural debates in the loaded rhetoric of the right. "Pro-life" is one of their most egregious formulations. And one of the worst.
UPDATE: Short answer to commentators who claim that "pro-life" is just a morally neutral label for one side in a political controversy: You're kidding yourself. You may think the nuanced meanings of a specific phrase don't matter, but they do,