Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Labels Damage the Abortion Debate

Since her dad hit the campaign trail with his tiny, grabby hands, Ivanka Trump has had women’s advocates shaking their heads in disapproval for keeping her mouth shut about his policies. Now we’ve found out that she secretly met with Planned Parenthood months ago, but that meeting certainly didn’t bring the Trump administration any closer to coming up with abortion policies that both pro-lifers and pro-choicers are willing to accept.

Why the need for secrecy in the first place? God forbid pro-lifers hear that the daughter of the conservation President wanted to hear out the (gasp) murderous pro-choice Planned Parenthood. Clearly, the hot-blooded nature of the pro-life vs. pro-choice debate is still alive and well today.

Using the rhetorical terms “pro-life” and “pro-choice” to label our stances on abortion is a large reason why having constructive conversations about abortion policy seems near impossible. One thing’s for sure, if we keep drawing a line in the sand between the pro-life and pro-choice camps and allowing a rhetorical firefight, we’ll never reach common ground.

I went to Catholic school for twelve years. Many of those years were spent learning about Jesus and the Ten Commandments, but some years involved being deliberately exposed to a clear pro-life agenda. Gruesome pictures of aborted fetuses and teary-eyed mothers served as lessons that abortion is immoral and should be illegal. We were indoctrinated with the view that pro-choicers who advocate for the legalization of abortion are advocating for the legalization of murder.

While those “lessons” didn’t have too much of an effect on my personal stance on abortion, they did expose me to the tactics that extremists on both sides of the debate are willing to use. The seemingly innocent phrases “pro-life” and “pro-choice” are rhetorical devices used to glorify those on one side of the debate and condemn those on the other side. The term pro-life implies that those who are not pro-life are against life. On the other hand, the term pro-choice distances its speakers from actually advocating abortion and implies that opponents are “anti-choice,” therefore being against women making choices for themselves.

These pro-choice and pro-life labels encourage a nasty fight in which each side portrays the other as the villain, which causes more reasonable people to want to stay out of the conversation altogether.

Americans actually have much more complex opinions about abortion than could ever be condensed in the pro-life and pro-choice labels. Popular belief is that America is rather evenly divided in their stances on abortion, with about half of the population being pro-life and about half being pro-choice. In fact, a 2015 Gallup poll shows that 50% of Americans consider themselves to be pro-choice and 44% of Americans consider themselves to be pro-life, while only 3% answered mixed or neither (“Abortion”).

However, this clear divide in opinion is only apparent when the question is framed in terms of either pro-life or pro-choice. The reality is that most Americans actually do have mixed feelings about abortion and aren’t purely pro-life or pro-choice as polls might suggest. That same Gallup poll shows that 51% of Americans believe that abortion should be legal only under certain circumstances, 29% believe that it should be legal under any circumstances, and 19% believe it should be illegal in all circumstances (“Abortion”). The reality is that a majority of Americans are neither truly pro-life nor pro-choice but rather fall under some grey area in between.

Instead of an honest discussion about our stances, the conversation about abortion is one in which neither side attempts to understand the other’s perspective and find points that both agree on. In fact, there might be more points that can be agreed upon than we seem to believe. About a quarter of those who call themselves pro-choice support what is commonly seen as a strongly pro-life position: They would limit abortion to cases only of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother (Anderson). However, such common ground is often lost because advocates, either pro-life or pro-choice, are unlikely to listen to their opponents’ opinions when they begin the conversation with the idea that the opposition is their mortal enemy. The only thing in mind is their goal to “win” the debate for their respective sides.

These terms limit our perspective from considering even obvious compromises or solutions. For example, generally speaking, Europe has moderate laws about abortion that give concessions to both pro-abortion and anti-abortion advocates. Even though there are significant regional differences in abortion policies and political discourse in Europe, the abortion issue rarely garners as much attention as it does here and it is almost never a point of controversy during elections.

Unfortunately, such cooperation seems impossible in the US when the terminology used in the abortion debate is inherently combative, resulting in a winner-take-all mindset about legislation that jeopardizes the prospect of making any progress with the issue.

It shouldn’t be so taboo to try to understand the opposing side of the debate that leaders feel the need to have secret meetings about the issue. We need to cut out the need for secrecy and the inclination to condemn the other side by shifting the nature of the discussion. Instead of fighting about what pro-life and pro-choice advocates disagree about, we should focus on finding the common ground where they actually do agree.

Works Cited

Anderson, Carl. "The Surprising New Normal in the Abortion Debate." National Review Online.Web. 28 Mar. 2016.

"Abortion." Gallup.com. Web. 28 Mar. 2016.