A G K Y R A

Lately I’ve heard from several sources that a small but vocal number of evangelicals don’t think abortion is as important an issue as it has been in the past. They think there are more important issues to consider since it doesn’t look like anything is going to be changing on abortion anytime soon.

Say what???

These poor misinformed souls obviously don’t know the work being done by folks like Steve Wagner at Stand to Reason. Steve has given years of his life traveling to college campuses around the country and challenging young people to think more carefully and more clearly about abortion. Steve has spoken to thousands and thousands of college students (as well as others, through media appearances and his book, Common Ground Without Compromise) and helped them to draw their own conclusion that abortion is not morally neutral. His clear thinking and communicating is slowly but steadily changing the way young Americans think about abortion.

Here’s an example from his article “One-Minute Pro-Life Apologist.” This comes from a real dialogue he had with a college student:

If the unborn is growing, it must be alive. And if it has human parents, it must be human. And living humans, or human beings like you and I, are valuable aren’t they? From conception, all that’s added to the unborn is a proper environment and adequate nutrition. But those are the same things all of us need. And not only that. There’s one quality all of us have equally that demands equal treatment: we all have a human nature. Racism and sexism are wrong because they pick out external differences and ignore the underlying similarity between men and women, blacks and whites. And my concern is for your rights as a woman,that you can vindicate them against the will of the majority, but you can only vindicate your rights if you base them on your human nature. But the unborn also has that same human nature, so shouldn’t we protect him from discrimination just like we protect minorities and women?

Perhaps you’re wondering why my wife and I have given several thousand dollars to support Steve’s work over the years? Two reasons:

The first is that just a minute or two of careful thinking about abortion will be enough to convince most reasonable people that we must end legalized abortion — or so we hope.

The second is that our nation won’t move past this issue unless most ordinary Americans are convinced in their hearts and minds that there is no possible moral justification for abortion on demand. Political maneuvering won’t do it. Stacking the courts won’t do it, at least not for the long term.

Steve isn’t a lobbyist. He talks with ordinary people and helps them to think through these things for themselves. He’s an advocate for children to the people themselves, to the grass roots. Because of his work and the work of others like him, I have hope that we can change our nation’s attitude about abortion from the ground up.

But that’s why evangelicals should put abortion foremost in their minds when they go to the polls this year. With people like Steve educating young people, there is real reason to hope that Americans of the coming generations won’t be as morally confused about abortion as Americans have been in recent decades. But if the next president stacks the courts with pro-choice judges and justices who will serve for 20 or 30 years, how many millions of unborn children will die, even against the will of ordinary Americans, until a future president has a chance to replace them? It won’t matter what the people believe or want if the courts are already stacked against children.

I read a post yesterday in which the author thoughtfully reasons through the question of whether pro-lifers are really pro-life or just anti-choice. He concludes that many, if not all, pro-lifers are really anti-choice. I won’t now go into his argument for that (you can read it, and my comment in response, if you care), but do want to take up the question of what terms we should use to refer to the sides in the abortion debate. Is it a debate between pro-abortion people, on the one hand, and anti-choicers, on the other? Or perhaps the anti-abortion side and the anti-life side?

Here are some reasons we should get away from all this terminological silliness and stick to good old-fashioned “pro-life” and “pro-choice” as ways to refer to the two sides in the debate:

1. The abortion debate is about both life and choice. The two sides in the debate have different main concerns that meet up in the question of legal abortion. The pro-choice side is primarily concerned about–you guessed it–choice, by which they mean protecting the legal right of a woman to have an abortion. The pro-life side is primarily concerned about protecting the rights and lives of the unborn. Naturally, each side’s arguments focus on persuading people about the importance of that side’s main concern, so the pro-life side really is best characterized as “pro-life,” and the pro-choice side as “pro-choice.”

2. Therefore, to characterize either side as “anti” this or that is to distort that side’s arguments and primary concern. It isn’t as though pro-choicers are “anti-life” in general, or that they’re pro-abortion. Obviously, pro-lifers aren’t anti-choice as a general proposition. Pro-choicers don’t usually like to argue about the life of the unborn because that’s not the issue in their view, nor do pro-lifers think that subsidiary legal rights are germane when fundamental rights are in jeopardy (the “right to life” movement).

3. “Pro-Life” and “Pro-Choice” are not loaded terms. They’re not rhetorically loaded because they’re widely used and widely understood, which means that they don’t draw attention to themselves and don’t get people upset. After their long history, they are practically technical terms, so using them doesn’t imply any value judgment. They simply identify which party in the debate is being referred to. Get it? They’re terms of reference. Clear and non-distracting terms of reference are an important element in clear communication and substantive debate.

4. “Anti-Life” or “Anti-Choice” or other terms are rhetorically loaded. Let me give you two reasons. First, they’re loaded because they’re not common and thus draw attention to themselves. Second, they describe one side from the perspective of the other. Pro-lifers only look anti-choice if you’re in the pro-choice camp. If you use these loaded terms, you have identified yourself as a partisan, and you’re calling people names. Apart from being not nice, it doesn’t contribute anything substantive to the debate, and what’s more, insofar as it distracts or inflames the participants, it actually detracts from the substance of the debate.

5. “Pro-Life” and “Pro-Choice” as a pair are the only neutral terms. Editors and journalists, you need to print this out and add it to your style guide right now. The only way to be neutral in your writing is not to choose sides. The only way not to choose sides is to refer to each side using its own preferred term. Whatever you do, you must not refer to one side using the other side’s preferred term for its opponents. For the pro-life position, that means you ought to refer to it as “pro-life,” and likewise with the pro-choice side. To use “anti-choice” or “pro-abortion” or similar is explicitly to take a side in the debate (see Abortion in the Movies, Advocacy in the Newspaper).

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