Talk:Pro-choice/Archive 1

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Contents

Old talk

This is suppose to be an encyclopedia. Why are people who are suppose to know better erasing pages to redirect them? This is a valid page. Make it better if you don't like it, but stop erasing them!

I am glad to know Alec Baldwin's position on abortion I realize the majority of people assume that the word choice automatically means the abortion issue but isn't the term choice to general to apply to one specific issue. i mean should this page be redirect to say [[Pro choice (abortion issue)] or something like that

The last sentence in the first paragraph violates NPOV. "right of women to choose what to do with their bodies" doesn't describe the Pro-Choice movement's actual political goals so much as it describes the reasoning behind their beliefs. IOW, Pro-Choice refers to advocating the legality of abortion, and "allowing women to choose what to do with their bodies" is the reason given for this advocacy. To include this phrase in the definition of Pro-Choice without noting that it is what they believe the question of legalization of abortion concerns is to write from the Pro-Choice perspective. On the Pro-Life page, the reasoning behind the Pro-Life position (the right to life of human beings) is rightly listed as their belief, rather than as the definition itself. If the Pro-Life article were written like the Pro-Choice article, it would say "Pro-Lifers are opposed to the decriminalization of abortion, and they defend the right to life of human beings". Just as that would be obviously biased, the equivalent Pro-Choice sentance is also biased.

Neutrality should never be an Admin. He's proved it!

I kindly tried to talk above the fray to User:Neutrality and sent this message. He erased it and did not respond. He ceratinly should never be an administrator.

I believe that Pro-Choice and Pro-Life are legitimate articles. If you want to re-direct the pages, why don't you do it officially and we can have a vote? There was no reason for a re-direct since the pages both had links to Morality and legality of abortion. Since you obviously have nothing to add to the pages I would thank you to keep from re-direcing them until the time there is a vote to remove the pages to re-directs. Timothy001 19:13, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Agree neutrality does not really believe in NPOV, and is a political hack. --   NERD42    EMAIL  TALK  H2G2  UNCYC  NEWS  18:04, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Viewpoint

"If you can't trust me w ith a choice then how can you trust me with a child." That is what some women are saying about abortion. A woman's right to choose (pro choice) or not to have the choice (pro life) is a very controversial issue in this country right now. The country is divided. What do you think? I believe that abortion should be a legally protected right of women in the U.S.
The choice to have an abortion should be available to a woman who has neither the means nor the education to support herself, let alone a child. Poverty, crime, drug abuse, child abuse, and alcohol abuse are at a higher rate with teenage mothers than any other part of the population. Is that a good thing? No. For those people that believe in Pro life think about this possible situation. Abortion becomes illegal and a teenager becomes pregnant. She abuses drugs and alcohol while she's pregnant. When the baby is born it is addicted to drugs that the mother abused while she was pregnant and is born with fetal alcohol syndrome. The baby must suffer the consequences for the rest of it's life. As if this is not tragic enough we cannot forget the cost to society for not only providing the basic needs for this child but also the enourmous amount of medical care that the child will also need. Is it better for the embryo not to be born at all or for the child to go through that situation. Most women have an abortion because they know they could not support a child. They are being smart by making that decision.
Outlawing abortion will not eliminate the practice. Women that will want an abortion badly enough, will find a way to get one. Most likely when these procedures are done illegally, they will be done in unsafe and unsanitary conditions. Here's another situation. Abortion is made illegal and a woman gets pregnant. She cannot have an abortion legally anymore so she finds a "doctor" that says they know how to perform the procedure. They perform the abortion in unsafe and unsanitary conditions. The woman gets extremely sick with an infection. The cause of the infection, an abortion that was not performed correctly. This would not be better than a woman having a safe abortion legally.
I certainly agree that both sides have a valid argument. However as shown, the consequences of changing the law would be far too severe, than keeping the law the way it is now.
(above posted by 152.163.101.11, copy-edited by Wisq)

Revert war

OK, this has got to be discussed. Should this be an article or a redirect? Please post your views here, with reasons, rather than just keep changing this page about. Darksun 19:58, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • I think an article on the term Pro-Choice is completely valid. It isn't completely there yet (When did it begin? Who coined it? What do its opponents use instead of it?) but it's a great idea. I feel the same way about Pro-Life as well -- they're both important American 20th-century political terms and great examples of political framing. I reverted to the non-redirect because I saw that Pro-Life had an article. This isn't a dicdef if it has content, which it does and will probably get more (it won't get anything as a redirect). I don't know all of the history behind this term myself but I'm sure that somebody has researched this before. Furthermore there are dozens of articles which link to this term specifically (though that isn't obvious since all of the other equivalent redirects, "Pro-choice" were changed to link to the Morality of Abortion at some point). --Fastfission 20:02, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Generalisation/NPOV

In the United States, the Democratic Party tends to be more "Pro-Choice" than the Republican Party.

While this is most likely true, I have two concerns. Number one, this is a generalisation despite the veiled conditional "tends." Secondly, I don't think "pro-choice" is an exclusively American term despite the fact it has its origins here. Referring to America political parties and no others seems Americo-centric, which we try to stray from in respects to neutrality. Any thoughts? --Thorns Among Our Leaves 21:16, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I don't see why the generalization is all that off. They do tend to be but it's not necessarily a party plank. I don't think that concerns about being "Americo-centric" should ever be used to omit data. I think it is better to have a US-centric article (which states it is US-centric, which this one does) than no article at all. If we can add more scope, excellent. But don't let concerns with this highly strange form of "neutrality" lead you to think that if you can't include France, then you shouldn't talk about the USA. That's just silly. If you have more info to add there, please feel free. If you really want to include other countries, take the time to look up that information, don't just delete. --Fastfission 23:58, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Thank you for responding. I typically don't delete any material before I get verification unless it's vandalism or blatantly wrong/NPOV. --Thorns Among Our Leaves 02:41, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

After glancing at the article, this article does indeed have a biased lean... Can we get a clean up and some more info? An issue like this deserves more than two sections. --HoO8MyRiCe

There's no "tends" about it. The Democratic Party, in its platform, expresses directly its commitment to being pro-choice. Likewise, the Republican party in their platform expresses directly that it is pro-life. Smokingmaenad 23:12, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Pro-Choice = anti-Informed Consent?

However, opponents of abortion argue that "pro-choice" is a misnomer, because pro-choice activists fiercely oppose legislative reforms which can influence how a woman chooses, such as "Informed Consent" or "Right To Know" laws, even when such laws do not restrict a woman's legal right to choose abortion.

Now, I'm pro-choice, personally. But I don't see any problem with laws to ensure that women know what they're getting into and what their options are. (And I think the thing about 'not trusting physicians' or whatnot is bullsh*t, because it's not just an ordinary surgical procedure -- there's two lives at stake, one of which may be ended or prevented from occurring, depending on how you look at it, but which the doctor may not consider as 'living'.) Anyway, should the above paragraph be a little less absolute? Or do I not count because I'm just an armchair pro-choicer and not a 'pro-choice activist'? (Serious question, BTW.) -- Wisq 15:38, 2005 May 12 (UTC)

I used to live in a rural town in Georgia, where abortions are severely hard to come by. Both my wife and I have a family history of birth defects. When our pro-life doctor discovered our child would most likely not be viable, he waited until the second trimester to tell us, then flat-out refused to perform an abortion or refer us to someone who would. We didn't have a car at the time, and arranging an appointment and getting transportation to a clinic that would see us (some 50 miles away) was a nightmare. We both worked, but both of us had to be there for the "informed consent" lecture (little more than 2 hours of guilt and Bible study) and schedule a second appointment at least 24 hours later for the actual procedure. It was commonly believed (and told to us by an ultra-Christian nurse) that by having so many hoops to jump through they could prevent abortions. I'm not implying this is the intent of the informed consent rule, but it's one way it can be abused. Some people are just unable to find transportation, time off work, a clinic willing to see them (regardless of medical condition) for the purpose of abortion.

Proposed move to "Pro-choice"

It's not a proper noun, most in-text hits seem to be lowercase, and the WP manual of style discourages capitalizing the letter after the hyphen in hyphenated words. Most inbound links are looking for l/c, as well. Niteowlneils 02:52, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~

Move is done! Talrias (t | e | c) 10:41, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

User:Neutrality moved this page from pro-choice to abortion-rights movement on August 28, 2005, without any discussion here. I have reverted the move for consistency with the title of the pro-life article. Note that pro-life and anti-abortion movement are separate articles. One possibility to consider is that pro-choice and abortion-rights movement be separate articles, with pro-choice focusing on the usage (including both support and criticism) of the term "pro-choice," and abortion-rights movement focusing on the subject indicated by its title. —Lowellian (reply) 06:00, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Needs some editing?

Just a reader here, but I noticed that this article repeats itself several times. I'm not entirely sure how to go about cleaning it up a little without rewriting the whole thing, which is frankly effort I can't put forth at the moment. Thought I'd call attention to it. --K.M.

Cleanup tag

I added {{Cleanup}} to the page, because I feel this has a lot of doubled uses, and isn't really that helpful as a resource in its current form. I'll get back to it when I can, but please feel free to cleanup in the meantime. -Mysekurity (have you seen this?) 01:31, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Requested move

Pro-choice → Pro-abortion – not my request, I'm just making this section so I can vote oppose. Rhobite 20:00, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Voting

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your vote with ~~~~
  • Oppose, due to self-identification. Also, this article discusses debate over use of the term "pro-choice", so that should be the article's title. Rhobite 20:00, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose; "pro-choice" is used far more commonly. — Knowledge Seeker দ 20:44, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose. per above Vegaswikian 23:21, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose - being "pro-choice" is not the same as being "pro-abortion," per "keep abortion safe, legal and rare." The belief that criminalizing abortion is wrong is not incompatible with the belief that abortion should be an option exercised as little as possible. FCYTravis 03:28, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose - as article clearly describes, these are loaded terms. Given the POV's held over these contentious topics, terms used should be as per preference of each side (ie Pro-choice/Pro-life are seen as positive attitudes; unlike Pro-Abortion/Anti-Choice which are negative terms and also not in common usage). Current articles help separate out the revelvant ideologies from the historical movements. Furthermore those considering themselves under the labels of pro-life/pro-choice have viewpoints not just on abortion, but also about passive & active euthanasia and many othe r ethical issues (allbeit there is a spectrum of views and people differ on specific sub-issues). David Ruben Talk 13:48, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose as clearly tenditious. Jonathunder 23:44, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose, obviously. -R. fiend 08:28, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Support - pro-choice and pro-life are both rather ambigius euphemisms. Since this is an encyclopedia, why don't we get straight to the point and call it abortion? I'm sure there are people reading the Wikipedia who aren't that updated on American politics, and would appreciate not having to get through a jungle of euphemisms. --GSchjetne 11:53, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it to be moved. Jonathunder 20:57, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments

'Pro-choice' is, probably, a more commonly-used term than 'pro-abortion': see [1] for the Google test. However, a case might be made for a move under the naming conventions for the title 'pro-abortion' being less ambiguous (although whether 'what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize' trumps ambiguity I don't know). (It's also arguably more NPOV.) --Nick Boalch ?!? 22:13, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

  • I disagree. The movement self-identifies as 'pro-choice'. The most NPOV term I'd be able to think of would be 'abortion rights supporters', but no one other than the media uses that term. Most people think of the debate in terms of 'pro-choice' and 'pro-life'. Common useage prefers 'pro-choice'. Wisco 21:13, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I also disagree. The term "pro-abortion" is POV, because almost nobody self-identifies that way, and most pro-choice people say that they do not support abortion. It's primarily used by anti-abortion people in order to cast a negative light on pro-choice people. The term "pro-choice" may not be entirely neutral, but it's the name that the movement uses to refer to itself. Catamorphism 22:08, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I too disagree. I don't think women like to have abortion if they don't need to. Abortion is both emotional and physical. It not like anyone would like to have abortion for fun. Pro-choice people are not pro-abortion, they are pro for allowing them to make a decision rather they need abortion. Period! Chrishomingtang 01:02, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Intro....

From the intro:

...should be able to choose on issues relating to the life or death of themselves or any part of their body.

So - they're pro-amputation? This statement makes no sense - the life or death of themselves, yes, but any part of their body, no.....if this is an attempt to describe the fetus, say as much - as it stands, it seems a bit like weasel wording to me. DonaNobisPacem 17:38, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

They support that women should be able to choose whether to have an amputation, which is reasonable, yes? Catamorphism 00:19, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Whilst we are all aware that pro-life/pro-choice centres mainly about the issue of abortion, recent US case also indicates a similar divide over issues such as advance directives to restrict commencement of treatment/feeding or its withdrawal, thus leading to death of a patient. There are other "rights issues", some of which seem less contentious in the UK, either not having gathered much media or political commentary, or being addressed through doctor's requirement to only treat competent adults with expressed consent (even if absence of treatment causes patient's death) and seek social services or the court's intervention if concerns for a child occurs. The two movements appear to be more active in the USA and seems in essence to be about "rights of individual" against "right to life" or "life is precious".

To try and clarify where the two groups take a wider position on various other medico-ethical issues, I present below some issues. In essence I wonder if there are broader movements to which pro-life/pro-choice views over abortion belong to - what I might term religious/conservative vs secular/liberal movements re human rights & consent. I do not seek debate about the specific points' pros or cons, just if people with awareness of the spectrums within both pro-choice & pro-life could indicate where a greater or lesser part of the "broad" movements have particular concerns (vs. individuals' concerns). Please just indicate whether pro-choice/pro-life have in general strong support, general sympathy, take no overall group stance, broadly disapprove or strongly object:

  • Abortion - clearly pro-life object to the notion of a "routine" right, but there must be degrees of opinion re non-routine situations:
    • Rape victims
    • Where health of mother at risk from continued pregnancy
    • Where life of mother at risk
  • Consent for procedures:
    • Refusal to have a treatment thought by majority/state to be beneficial - e.g. vaccination (I have no wish start pro/con vaccination debate, just issues of state coercion vs. right-to-choose as it applies to the general pro-life or pro-choice movements)
    • Refusal for treatment that places others at risk - e.g. anti-TB therapy leaving the patient infectious to others, or psychiatric medication for psychotic illness.
    • Refusal life saving procedure e.g. antibiotics for pneumonia
    • Refusal for caesarean leading to death of foetus
    • Refusal to act as live-organ (e.g. kidney, part of liver, bone marrow) transplant donor for a member of ones family (there are risks to being a donor)
    • Refusal by parent for a child to receive treatment (e.g. antibiotic for pneumonia)
  • Request unnecessary treatment (in the view of medical opinion):
    • Insisting on unnecessary treatment of little harm e.g. antibiotics for a case of the common cold (rights of individual to request treatment vs. society's right to restrict either through concerns cost, development of bacterial resistance etc)
    • Request for corrective plastic surgery when no apparent deformity.
    • Request for plastic surgery by a parent for their child when no apparent deformity (eg breast augmentation in teenagers).
    • Request for amputation (I agree very rare, but interesting case what for majority would view as intentional self-harm)

David Ruben Talk 02:28, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I think you missed my point, Catamorphism - abortion is not having a part of your body die, it is having a fetus die - common biology identifies it as a separate organism (albeit one that relies on the woman's body for survival), not as a part of the woman's body, regardless of pro life/pro choice standpoint.
Davidruben - I get that the pro-choice terminology applies to many different aspects of choice, such as euthanasia, refusal of life-saving treatment, etc. The matter of unnecessary amputation does not really fit under this bracket though - that would be at best a fringe movement, more likely a psychiatric disorder, and I doubt the pro-choice movement as a whole concerns themselves with the rights of an individual to unnecessary amputation. I would basically reword the intro to read
...should be able to choose on issues relating to the life or death of themselves or their dependents, including abortion, the refusal of life-saving treatment, the requesting of unnecessary medical procedures, or the refusal of treatment that could potentially protect others (e.g. vaccinations).
That removes ambiguity, potential weasel-wording, and broadens the scope of the topic beyond abortion in one sentence. DonaNobisPacem 07:26, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Problem with Formatting

The "Category:Pro-choice celebrities" belongs in the see also section, but it keeps getting transfered to the categories section. Anyone know how to fix it?

That happens with anything labeled Category. I guess we could fix it by putting the entire hyperlink in see also instead of a wikilink. Trying now....--Pro-Lick 01:55, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Successful. Now, if someone could make sure Swatjester doesn't revert it.--Pro-Lick 02:00, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm removing it because it doesn't belong there. You keep putting it in the wrong section, and it does not apply as a category. ⇒ SWATJester Ready Aim Fire! 02:01, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
I added it as a see also, then Freakofnurture reverted.--Pro-Lick 02:05, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
It doesn't belong there either. See also is for internal links only. ⇒ SWATJester Ready Aim Fire! 02:06, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
That is an internal link. Simply reformatted so it doesn't end up being listed as a category.--Pro-Lick 02:11, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Correction. I meant wikilink. ⇒ SWATJester Ready Aim Fire! 02:16, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposed overhaul

I overhauled this article only to have it reverted. So I am seeking consensus about my changes. You can view a comparison here. You'll notice that I did the same things for Pro-life.

First of all, "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are adjectives, not nouns! The first sentence of each article says that "Pro-choice is a political movement...". No, it's not. It's a term that describes a political movement or idea.

Second, the soliloquy about informed consent is entirely misplaced. In attempting to justify pro-choice opposition to informed consent laws, it only serves to suggest a pro-choice POV and undermine the credibility of the article. You can MENTION informed consent laws in the context of a list of restrictions that pro-choicers oppose (as I tried to do), but otherwise keep that debate out of the article. Plus, even if you want to cover the debate, you only chose to represent one side!

Third, saying that restrictions "impede a woman's choice" is highly POV. That can be toned down, for example, to "limit the right to abortion."

Fourth, the introductory monologue about how pro-choicers don't like being called "pro-abortion" is also misplaced. It belongs in the "Term controversy" section. But since it is highly suggestive of a pro-choice POV (by going on and on about the justification for calling oneself "pro-choice" unbalanced by a counterargument), I simply deleted it and figured the "Term controversy" section would suffice.

Fifth, this paragraph is highly suggestive of POV: "People who identify as pro-choice fall along a spectrum of political opinion, ranging from the view that all abortions should be legal, to the view that abortions should only be legal until a certain date in the progression of the pregnancy (such as the third trimester, which is the approximate gestational age at which a fetus can survive outside of a woman's body)." The parenthetical comment about viability (without actually mentioning viability, because it is in fact FAR earlier than the third trimester) is irrelevant to the topic of the sentence and the topic of the paragraph. It is also horrible from a stylistic POV.

Sixth, referencing Roe v. Wade's "trimester" framework is kind of silly without mentioning that Planned Parenthood v. Casey dispensed with that framework. "In its 1973 landmark case of Roe v. Wade" is too pedestrian; how about "In its landmark 1973 case, Roe v. Wade"?

Seventh, "people who believe the opposite view" is clunky and wordy. How about "opponents of abortion"? Or "pro-lifers"?

Eighth, "Within that term also exists a spectrum of political opinion". That is horrible writing. How about "Pro-lifers also hold diverse opinions"?

Ninth, the consistent framing of the abortion issue in this article in terms of a hypothetical "woman" serves to advance a pro-choice POV. It personalizes the issue and makes it emotional: "A woman's health", "a woman's right", "the uterus of a woman" instead of "health risks", "abortion rights", "uterus". Which reflects a more NPOV? The latter.

In sum, this article is a mess (grammatically and content-wise) and should be overhauled along the lines I attempted here. I am asking for a consensus on this. (And I'm doing the same thing over at Pro-life.) Thanks, --Hyphen5 01:37, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Briefly...
1) I won't quibble about parts of speech. If you want "pro-choice" to clearly be an adjective, we can say "Pro-choice refers to a political...".
2) The only problem with the second paragraph is its positioning. The issue of informed consent laws is more specific than the general support for reproductive rights, so it should be moved down so that it becomes the third paragraph. That should fix it.
3) How is "impede a woman's choice" anything but neutral and accurate? The stated goal of the "pro-life" movement is to criminalize abortion. Doesn't jail count as an impediment? In addition, the goal of "right to know" laws is to add an additional layer of impediments to abortion by requiring pro-life propaganda (including lies about breast cancer) to be pushed onto anyone who wants an abortion.
4) There's nothing wrong with touching on the terminology early on, then going into more detail later. However, if you want to trim the front, you have to move the material down, not delete it.
5) If you have some citations from reliable sources on the earliest time of viability, then you have an argument for modifying this text slightly. On the whole, the text is quite good before your changes, and does the important job of pointing out the variability among those views classified as pro-choice.
6) I'm ok with your changes here, although the language could be cleaner.
7) No, "opponents of abortion" is highly misleading. For example, I might oppose abortion, yet support the right of a woman to choose one. A more accurate and neutral phrase that avoids the awkwardness might be something like "Those who oppose the pro-choice view often...".
8) Fine, this is minor.
9) Most of the "women" in the article used to be "mothers", but that was fixed. As it happens, no men have ever had abortions, so it's quite accurate to refer to women. If you see a POV problem here, you'll have to explain in more detail. Alienus 02:25, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
2) You can't give all the justifications for pro-choicers' opposition to informed consent without giving the other side of the argument. In any event, informed consent has nothing to do with anything that this article is about. We already have an informed consent article.
3) "Impede a woman's choice" is POV for three reasons. "Impede" has a negative connotation and suggests that the impediment is unjust. Since that is a subjective debate, we should stay out of it and use less provocative terminology. Do voting laws "impede" minors from voting? Yeah, I guess. But "impede" suggests that it is unjust; "restrict" or "limit" is more appropriate. "Woman's choice" is POV because "choice" is the political rhetoric used by the abortion rights groups. We acknowledge that it is nothing but political framing in our article. So it's unjustifiable to employ it ourselves. Stylistically speaking, "a woman's choice" is vague and unspecific. It's like saying, "a farmer's option". Uhh... a farmer's option for what? A woman's choice for what? Furthermore, to personalize the issue by speaking of "a [hypothetical] woman" also reflects the political framing of the pro-choicers. Which is fine, but not for an encyclopedia. You can't deny that "limit the right to abortion" is more neutral than "impede a woman's choice."
4) I guess we can move it down, but once again, if you want to keep it, it's going to have to be balanced by an opposing view. In any event, it seems to reflect one editor's pet peeve (being called "pro-abortion" when (s)he really likes to think of him/herself as "pro-choice") than any meaningful or relevant phenomenon.
5) Maybe we could keep the paragraph, but (1) there must be mention of Planned Parenthood v. Casey replacing the trimester framework, and (2) the parenthetical note has to be deleted. It has nothing to do with the larger paragraph, and it comes across as intended to be persuasive rather than informative. In any event, why mention viability as a cutoff if you're not going to mention other proposed cutoffs like consciousness, heart beat, brain activity, etc.? It is arbitrary.
7) Fine, then "opponents of legal abortion".
9) It may be accurate to refer to "women", but it is suggestive of a POV to refer to "a woman". It is a rhetorical tactic for debating and influencing public opinion; it is not proper neutral/expository style. --Hyphen5 04:48, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I support Hyphen's attempts to have this article comply with guidelines. {{POV|date=March 2008}} and {{Original research|date=March 2008}} tags are a serious matter. Do not remove them while issues are under discussion. --WikiCats 02:44, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Your unqualified, religious-based support is of little interest. Alienus 03:17, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Hmm. I don't see anything about religion in WikiCats's comment. WP:AGF. See my point #11 over at Talk:Pro-life#Proposed overhaul. --Hyphen5 04:48, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
WikiCat is a Catholic who is supporting another Catholic's pro-life edits. Assuming good faith does not mean playing dumb or being disingenuous; keep that in mind. The first step to neutrality in writing is admitting that your thinking is not neutral. Alienus 08:01, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Jeez, I was reading the edit history wrong (I'm used to seeing the newer edits on the right side). I was thinking "Hmm... this does seem like an improvement, what is the fuss about". But when I realized that you are not Joelr31, I was initially shocked by the amount of blanking. But you are right about informed consent discussion not belonging in the first paragraph (move it perhaps?) I don't know why you blanked the part about fetal deformities. #6, #8 make sense. I would say go right ahead on some of your minor changes, and for bigger POV issues and blanking, flesh it out here on the talk page. And thank you for coming to the talk page after noticing other editors' concern over your changes.--Andrew c 04:33, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your kindness. I deleted the part about fetal deformities because I think that there is very little debate in the pro-life movement about whether aborting the handicapped is wrong. But we need to decide if this and the other article are about the pro-choice/pro-life movements (in which case I'd delete the fetal deformity info) or simply about those who identify as pro-choice/pro-life (in which case I'd include that info, as there are polls to suggest that many people make "exceptions" for the fetal deformity situation. --Hyphen5 04:54, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I feel that the pro-life page should be about anyone who holds that view. There are pages already about the anti-abortion movement and specific organizations (not to mention right to life and Culture of Life.) There seems to be less about the pro-choice movement, but there are articles like Planned Parenthood and NARAL.--Andrew c 05:35, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Okay, that seems reasonable to me. --Hyphen5 08:46, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

A few comments. The hard numbering is that of the original. 2) I think you are dead wrong here. Pro-choice and pro-life do not refer only to abortion. Informed consent is an important part of it. It's neither a "soliliquy" or "one-sided", just needs wikifying. 3) You suggest replacing "impede a woman's choice" with "limit the right to abortion." I think your suggestion is worse. I suggest "impede a woman's right to chose". There is nothing POV about that. Restrictions literally do prevent people from being able to chose. If you have a choice between A, B, and C, and C is restricted, your choice has been restricted. 4) You were wrong to delete this section. It think a brief intro to the terms is warranted in the intro, but your deletion resulted in a net loss of information. It is notable that pro-life people dislike being called anti-choice in the same way pro-choice people dislike being called pro-abortion. That's why these terms are self-applied rather than externally-applied. 6) I agree, but remember this article has to cover history as well as the present state of affairs. 7) "opponents of the pro-choice movement" would be better as calling them anything else probably risks POV problems (see my comments on #4). 8) I don't think your rewrite is an improvement here: try again. 9) You are dead wrong here again. "Abortion rights" is just as POV as "a woman's right". Please don't make any of your changes until some consensus emerges here. savidan(talk) (e@) 07:39, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

2) Um, "informed consent" does indeed refer to abortion (at least in this context: informed consent laws require the disclosure of certain information before an abortion can be procured; those laws specifically are what that paragraph refers to). But you cannot say that that paragraph does not only present one side of the argument. Read it again it goes out of its way to justify why pro-choicers oppose informed consent laws. It is the second paragraph in this article, which is not about informed consent, but rather about those who identify as pro-choice. It doesn't strike you as misplaced? (3) Excuse me? There's nothing POV about "impede a woman's right to choose"? A woman's right to choose what? We admit in this very article that vague language like "right to choose" is mere political framing and not appropriate for an encyclopedia to endorse. You are correct about restrictions (indeed, you seem to be making the case for my suggestion: "limit the right to abortion". it fulfills the criteria you outline), but why not say "restrict" or "limit", then, rather than using the verb "impede"? (4) I was not wrong to delete that section. That issue is well enough covered already in our "Term controversy" section -- which is six paragraphs long already. There is no reason to repeat it. (7) How about "opponents of legal abortion"? That was easy. (8) Uh... The original sentence is gramatically horrible whereas the revision is grammatically correct. How is that not an improvement? Perhaps you just don't like the term "Pro-lifers". I am open to changing it... but not to: "opponents of the pro-choice movement". (9) You make no argument here; only an assertion. How am I supposed to respond to this, other than by asserting my own opinion again? "a woman's right" is POV political framing. I laid out the reasons why, and you didn't respond to them. How in the world is "abortion rights" suggestive of a POV? The NYT uses it. AP uses it. ?? --Hyphen5 08:46, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I second what Hyphen said. The phrase "impede a woman's choice" is POV. Simply mentioning what the choice is would make it more neutral; referring to abortion as "a woman's choice" is political framing.--Maiaminna 14:52, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

We can't please everyone all the time. I'm happy with the current text, even though it displeases you. It is quite literally correct, so you don't have an objective objection. Alienus 18:06, 4 April 2006 (UTC)


Oh yes. You can't have "impede a woman's choice". --WikiCats 11:59, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

As it happens, I can. Even though you think that a woman ought not have this choice, any attempt to criminalize abortion would necessarily impair a woman's choice in this matter. Alienus 18:57, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Today's NYT: "Abortion-Rights Side Invokes God Too"

Goodandevil noted this New York Times story over at Talk:Pro-life: The Abortion-Rights Side Invokes God, Too. Since religious affiliation was discussed over at Pro-life, I think it's only fair that we add a paragraph about pro-choicers' religious affiliations. --Hyphen5 17:57, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Pro-what?

I found this little gem pro-abortion. I like how there is a concluding sentence ;) It used to redirect here. I was hoping the editors here could either rework it, or agree to redirect it again. There isn't much content to merge, because the term is discussed a little already in the "Term controversy" section. What do you think?--Andrew c 04:09, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Obvious POV fork. Term controversy handles this. Redirect can be sharpened and then should be protected, as anonymous users are bound to continue to add their personal essay's on the matter. savidan(talk) (e@) 07:41, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Out of curiousity - any idea why there is "Anti abortion" and "Pro life" as two separate articles, but "Pro Abortion" redirects to "Pro Choice?" I know there's been a debate over both that I stopped following a long time ago - should we try to be consistent on the matter? DonaNobisPacem 07:46, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I would think that articles entitled either pro-abortion or anti-abortion should not exist on their own. Instead, they should be redirected to pro-choice and pro-life, respectively. Is there anyone who can put forth an argument against this suggestion? Alienus 07:59, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Some people, such as Hillary Clinton, have defined themselves as anti-abortion but pro-choice. One can morally oppose abortion and seek to reduce the abortion rate, but still favor abortion rights. Therefore, I believe that the terms anti-abortion and pro-abortion merit their own pages.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Mr Beale (talk • contribs)
In this case, though, the anti-abortion view is simply a sub-section to the pro-choice - ie, some pro-choice individuals, while supporting a woman's right to choose, either oppose abortion on ethical or moral terms. That pretty much sums up that POV. If they don't fit into that category, it makes them pro-life in philosophy, if not in name. Do we really need a separate article? DonaNobisPacem 06:01, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I doubt anyone is pro-abortion, in the sense that they feel that abortion is good. As long as it is made clear that when one is said to be "pro-abortion" it really means "In support of abortion being legal", then I think an NPOV issue could be avoided. ColdSalad 02:15, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
You shouldn't assume that because you don't believe something, nobody does. For example:

I'm not one of those people who decry abortion as a necessary evil. I'm not one of those self-righteous misogynists who would pass judgement on pro-choicers, pregnant women, or women who chose to abort. I don't hate abortion. I think it's wonderful. I think it's wonderful because it frees women from unwanted pregnancies, it keeps women from enduring the risks and complications that can arise from pregnancy, and it gives them say over when they will have children. If ever. So I will not give the whinging line, 'Oh, abortion is horrible, but I guess I'll have to allow it.'

– "Sheelzebub", Pinko Feminist Hellcat blog

Recently, prominent pro-choicers have been chastising those who say they're "personally opposed" to abortion because it kind of gives away the argument. So there are people who are pro-abortion, even if you adopt a strict interpretation of that term. --Hyphen5 18:36, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup of lead paragraphs

These have become a real mess with all the back-and-forth editing as of late, so I went ahead and cleaned them up. Feel free to comment here. Alienus 18:58, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

You didn't just "clean up the lead paragraphs"; you basically reverted all the changes throughout the article that got consensus above. --Hyphen5 19:41, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

No, a revert is what you did right now. Also, a revert is what I will be doing as soon as it's convenient to do so. The change that you are trying to remove is called a cleanup because it cleans up a lot of messy nonsense and repetition. Now, if you have any specific suggestions, I'd like to hear them. If you just want to revert, then you're edit-warring instead of doing your job as an editor. Alienus 19:57, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. I would like to know how many reverts you do each day. Judging by your contributions page, you seem to have a special place in your heart for edit warring. Any fair-minded reader can plainly see that you did far more than "clean up". It looks like you worked from an old version of the page, anyway. If you want to clean up repetition, make changes one-by-one, and do it based on the MOST RECENT revision, not your revision from a long time ago. Because since then I have added a bunch edits that have gained consensus on this very talk page. --Hyphen5 20:28, 3 April 2006 (UTC)


RfC at Anti-Abortion

Editors of this page may want to comment at Talk:Anti-abortion_movement#RfC:__Merger_of_article_with_Pro-Choice_and_Pro-Life.. Thanks. DonaNobisPacem 21:19, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

2nd paragraph stuff

Here is how it stands now:

Many pro-choice activists believe that abortion should be a legal option for any pregnant woman. They often highlight situations such as when a pregnant woman has no other form of birth control available, finds it morally or emotionally unacceptable to surrender a child for adoption, is unable to raise the child, or if the pregnancy risks endangering the life or health of the woman.

And this is what it was:

Many pro-choice activists believe that abortion should be a last resort, if the pregnant woman is unable to raise the child or give it up for adoption, or if the pregnancy risks endangering the life or health of the woman.

I find the current wording problematic for a number of reasons. The second sentence is a gramatical nightmare. The clauses don't follow form: "as when.." "finds.." "is.." "if..". Here is one idea:

Some pro-choice activists believe that abortion should be a legal option for any pregnant woman. Other pro-choice activists believe abortion should be a last resort, and focus on a number of situations where they feel abortion is a necessary option. Some of these situations include if the woman was raped, if the woman's health or life is at risk, if birth control has failed, or if the woman is unable to raise the child.

Still not perfect. We need to make it clear what we are trying to convey in the 2nd paragraph. What do others think?--Andrew c 23:28, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Check out the changes I made. I didn't restore the mention of rape yet, but I think that I should. I think your suggestion is reasonable. Would you like to try to merge it in? Alienus 01:38, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Pro-choice reasoning and philosophy

You have not read enough of the pro-choice literature - that is the exact belief of the pro-choice movement. During the eighties, when China was vigorously enforcing the one child limit, this philosophy was expressed over and over again. Just stop and think about it - choice refers to the choice the individual is making. It means that the individual, not the government. There is NO OTHER interpretation than that one. I would say it's an equally liberal reasoning.

I am just absolutely flabbergasted. I'd love to know what you think "pro-choice" means. Seriously.

I didn't realize that either. What can I say, I'm just not a pro-choicer in the advocate sense and don't keep up to date on how the movement is describing itself. It did seem consistent with pro-choice stuff I've read, so I'm not against it being there.--Pro-Lick 01:47, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I've been involved with the pro-choice movement since the early eighties. If you stop and think about it, it will become abundantly clear and Roe V Wade will actually make a lot more sense to you. This is the basic philosophy of the choice movement. I think it should be put back. I'm not gonna get in an edit war but in order for people to understand pro-choice rhetoric, that explanation needs to be in place, and it should upfront as it is the essential point of view. Smokingmaenad 03:03, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm willing to support it. What's needed are some citations from some well known Pro-choice organizations. Link us to some sites where they write something similar to what you wrote, or some articles where a pro-choice leader is quoted saying something similar. The more the better.--Pro-Lick 03:12, 7 April 2006 (UTC)


Your wish is my command:)

Here's a reference to Hillary Clinton deploring forced abortions

WASHINGTON – Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., long an outspoken advocate of abortion on demand in the U.S., is speaking out against the forced abortion policies of China, a direct result of Beijing's strict limits on the number of children parents may bring into the world.

Clinton wrote a letter to President Bush urging him to address the human rights violations occurring in China when he travels there next week. The first issue on the list was forced abortion. She says the Chinese government is using "psychological and economic pressure and threats to force women to terminate pregnancies," according to the New York Sun. http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47367

Ooo la la! Here's the head of the NY chapter of NOW expressing it directly:

We hear about state forced abortions in China and in other countries and we gasp in disbelief! We hear about baby girls being put to death because girls are not valued and respected. We read stories about women having their feet bound, being forced into submission, and being beaten if they do not comply. Yet, if the landmark US Supreme Court Roe v Wade decision legalizing abortion is overturned, we are but one step away from this manner of government intervention. After all, any government that prohibits abortion has also the power to force it. http://www.nownys.com/presmessage.html


And here's Catholic pro-choice feminist Francis Kissling:

In the legal realm, CFFC favors laws on abortion that support the right of women to make the decision of whether or not to have an abortion with minimal state involvement. Because we believe abortion is a moral matter on which one can legitimately have different views, we think it is the responsibility of the state to protect the right to choose, but not to make the decision for women. We are as opposed to forced abortions, such as those which take place in China, as we are to forced pregnancy as preached by the church. http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/news/op-eds/2001/20011001theplaceforindividualconscience.asp


Here's the Feminist Majority descrying forced abortions in the Marianas:

http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=2611 The report included accounts of rampant trafficking of minors from the Philippines and China for forced prostitution, and of the importation of more than 100 Russian women for work in brothels.

Several foreign women garment workers stated that their employers ordered them to have abortions or face losing their jobs. Investigators concluded that garment manufacturers force abortions because they do not want to be liable for the extra cost of lost productivity during pregnancy and childbirth.

And here's the Pro-Choice network:

http://www.prochoiceactionnetwork-canada.org/articles/realchoice.shtml A fundamental misunderstanding of the abortion issue lies in the way people often refer to anti-choice and pro-choice as "two sides." In fact, the anti-choice are in favour of forced motherhood, and the opposite of that is forced abortion. We oppose both of these extremist positions.

Bay Area Coalition to Stop Operation Rescue:

http://www.holysmoke.org/sdhok/fem059.htm To be "pro-choice" means to work to eradicate situations where people are not offered choices - as in forced sterilization, forced abortion, infant mortality, forced motherhood, rape, domestic violence, hunger, and the objectification of women's bodies.

And here's a Planned Parenthood piece:

http://www.ppae.ab.ca/index.php?m=9&s=4 Abortion is one way to allow individuals to limit their childbearing voluntarily when a country's resources cannot support its population. Pro-choice people oppose forced abortion and support freedom of choice for all women in all countries.

And Joyce Arthur:

http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/realchoice.html In fact, the anti-choice are in favour of forced motherhood, and the opposite of that is forced abortion. We oppose both of these extremist positions.

Is this enough quotes to return my entry to the pro-choice page? 05:45, 7 April 2006 (UTC) Smokingmaenad 05:45, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Looks like the answer to that was yes. Looking over it, I'd say you're trying to compromise between a detailed explanation and something short and to the point. Maybe a Foundations section or a "Pro-choice Philosophy" section would be better for an elaboration and instead use something quick and eloquent like the NY NOW president that wrote "any government that prohibits abortion has also the power to force it." Then elaborate in a dedicated section.--Pro-Lick 20:10, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Foundations of Pro-Choice

Regarding:

(rv most of Smokingmaenad's changes, as they make pro-choice appear to be fundamentally libertarian, which is not the case. The text insertion also had other issues, which prevented salvage.)

Pro-life presently has a foundations section. Why not create a similar section here and add libertarian, etc. views on what pro-choice is. I didn't have a problem with what was added which is why I didn't revert it. Anyway, I'll do the section work and editing if it seems OK.--Pro-Lick 01:44, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm fine with view-specific sections, but I'm not fine with the entire article being distorted. As it stands, though, we have a link to libertarian views on abortion, either here or on the main article. Among other things, libertarians often take pro-life positions. Alienus 01:56, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Alienus - the idea that the woman gets to make the choice either way is the essence of what pro-choice movement is about. There is no other interpretation. It may be a POV that is in sync with certain Libertarians but it is NOT derived from Libertarianism, but from the view that it is inappropriate for the government to be deciding either way what a pregnant woman should be required to do. By you claiming that it's simply a Libertarian POV, you are, in effect, arguing the pro-life postion that pro-choice is "pro-abortion". It is not. Pro-choice means that it's the woman's right to decide whether her body will carry a pregnancy to term.

Unfortunately, the NOW archives online don't get back far enough. But when the stories first came out about China forcing abortions one women, the pro-choice movement took a strong and active stance against that. Either way, it's the government making the choice - not the individual. The Nazis who banned abortion were anti-choice. The government made the decision as to what would happen. The Chinese were also anti-choice - they, too, chose rather than the woman.

If you don't know the history and philosophy behind this stuff, you shouldn't be making edits.

Now, please what were the other issues?

Smokingmaenad 02:59, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

See, that's not necessarily true. Consider the question of whether a woman who intends to carry her pregnancy to term should be allowed to use crack. On a purely libertarian basis, it can be argued that the government has no right to tell her what to do with her body. However, I don't think it's safe to say that those who would allow abortion would necessarily endorse allowing the use of crack. Alienus 04:11, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Alienus, I have no idea how that relates to what I'm saying. I'm pointing out, quite simply, that the choice refers to the individual not the government making the decision, and that the pro-choice movement supports the woman's right to choose either way. We aren't talking about crack - we're talking about pregnancy. Whether you agree with that philosophy or not is irrelevant. Smokingmaenad 05:09, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm giving a contrived example of how the people who support a woman's right to an abortion (and a woman's right to refuse one that's forced upon her for reasons such as a single-child policy) don't necessarily support the woman's right to choose in all cases. For example, some would say that a child has the right to be born without debilitation, so they would endorse mandatory abortion for, say, Tay Sachs syndrome. This is not inconsistent with a general pro-choice position, although it conflicts with a libertarian one. Alienus 05:19, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Can you substantiate the broad mainstream of the pro-choice movement feels that way?

I put the lead back in. In the paragraph above, I provide several quotes from people as diverse as Hillary Clinton and Frances Kissling, and Planned Parenthood taking an official stance against forced abortions. Smokingmaenad 06:20, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think I've been very clear about my objection. What unites the pro-choice movement is their concern with the woman's right to choose to have an abortion, as well as to make a variety of other choices concerning reproduction. However, this is based on wanting what's best for the woman, which is generally defined in terms of her desires but not exclusively so. If it were defined exclusively so, then it would be libertarian in nature, and I want to make sure that this false impression is not conveyed. Alienus 07:48, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Is the opening phrase of my edit which says that government shouldn't have the right to infringe upon the bodily autonomy of individuals the one you object to? Because when I reread your post about Tay-Sachs above - which didn't penetrate my dense skull last night - I realized you're off on the wrong tangent there. The pro-choice movement would stand as one against a forced abortion in that case. What you're proposing there is fascism.
Though it isn't discussed often, the roots of the pro-choice movement are deeply concerned about the fall out from losing RvW that extends above and beyond abortion. If Roe falls, does this mean that a neighbor who needs your kidney could force you to turn one over so that they may survive? Legally speaking, it isn't far fetched. Anti-abortion legislation is based on the idea that one person can be forced to subordinate the resources of their body to the well being of another. If a fetus is sufficiently entitled to life that a person may be required to incur physical risk on their behalf, then why shouldn't a fully fledged person be entitled to the same rights in order to live? Why should a fetus have more right to life than, say, a three year old with leukemia that needs a bone marrow transplant? And if a three year old is entitled to that, then why not the thirty year old, or the fifty year old? Ahhh, you say - fetuses are different - we can carve out an exception there, and have a bright line cut off that protects people from having their body exploited for the benefit of others. Well, then you are saying that women alone can have their body violated on other's behalf - and that is not constitutional in any way, shape or form and will probably get your house burned down to boot.
May I remind you that when Roe was decided, the draft had already been decommissioned (yes, they are related issues- at least as feminists, who stood four square against the draft and initiated the abortion rights battle, saw it), and organ transplants were in their infancy. Wiki notes that over 100 heart transplants were performed in 68 and 69 but all of the recipients died within 60 days. It was in that brave new world that Roe was hatched.
Just as Libertarians have many common threads with conservatives, so do they with liberals. This notion of the importance of bodily autonomy is just one of them and is as equally organic to the liberal movement as it is to the libertarian movement.

Smokingmaenad 15:45, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

If you take a look at Tay Sachs, you'll find this text:

Infants with Tay-Sachs disease appear to develop normally for the first six months of life. Then, as nerve cells become distended with fatty material, a relentless deterioration of mental and physical abilities occurs. The child becomes blind, deaf, and unable to swallow. Muscles begin to atrophy and paralysis sets in. Death usually occurs between 2-5 years

It's a death sentence and a horrible one at that. Fortunately, genetic counseling has made it very rare. Couples who are carriers either adopt or they test for Tay-Sachs during pregnancy and selectively abort. To knowingly bring a Tay Sachs baby into the world is an act of cruelty and maternal neglect. This is why I chose it as an example of the sort of pregnancy whose forced abortion might be justified. And, contrary to what you suggest, this is neither fascist nor in opposite to the pro-choice movement.

I've read as much Larry Niven as the next nerd, but I think your comments about mandatory organ donation miss the mark. The "pro-life" movement may well use such arguments if they're handy, but it's not what drives them. Fundamentally, the movement is anti-choice; it wants to prevent women from having control of their bodies. If they choose to have sex, they should suffer as many consequences as possible. That's why, despite claiming abortion is murder, the majority of anti-choicers make an exception when the woman didn't choose to have sex.

In the end, the libertarians support the Republicans, which makes them the enemies of the pro-choice movement. To the extent that libertarians even give lip service to the right to an abortion, their notion of rights doesn't extend to government protections, instead substituting as much justice as money can buy on the wonderfully free market. Alienus 17:01, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

It's the courts that have concerns about organ donations. It was one of the discussions around Roe V Wade - iow, if we don't provide women with the ability to control their body on this level, considering where medical science is going, what's next? The concern among many in the legal field is that the fall of Roe v Wade, would unleash lawsuits demanding all sorts of stuff we'd be horrified by, and whatever reasoning was used to overturn Roe, could well work against us as a culture in the new law suits.
As for Tay-Sachs, I can't imagine that many people in the broad mainstream pro-choice movement (obviously, I can't say "no one" because we have our fringe nuts as well) would support forced abortion under those circumstances - I just can't. As horrible as that disease is, everybody has to make their own choice. There is a simple level of bodily autonomy that should be inviolate and that is what drives the pro-choice movement.
BTW, have you listened to this Rachel Maddow show from yesterday. It's five minutes or so. It's about El Salvador where all forms of abortion are completely illegal. It's a fascinating story.

http://alternet.org/blogs/peek/34576/

Smokingmaenad 17:43, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

That's an issue from the side of legality, but the reality is that the law serves the desires of those in power, not merely internal consistency. It may well be internally consistent to say that forbidding abortion means allowing forced organ donation, but that doesn't mean there's sufficient political might behind the latter to make it a reality. Paradoxically, what's going to fix the organ shortage in the long term is research into stem cells, which is often condemned by "pro-lifers".

I think your imgination here is limited, as shown by your characterization of such people as "fringe nuts". Everyone has their own choice, for their own bodies. Forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term can not be justified by the potential interests of the potential infant. However, forcing her to end a pregnancy that would create a nonviable infant is another matter entirely. It is protecting the actual interests of the actual person, not merely a potential one.

As it happens, I'm familiar with El Salvador. It's not a wonderful place to live, by any measure. It's at least as good a choice as Poland for use as an example of the opposite but likewise bad case of China. Alienus 17:58, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

But if you force an abortion, you've violating the tenets of choice - that one's own body should be inviolate. The trauma the woman would be feel would be horrendous and would provoke an enormous backlash. There is a fundamental revulsion at the idea of the government sticking their fingers into uterus, or the idea of the government forcing you to carry to term a pregnancy that is going to destroy your life, or break your heart that simply cannot be ignored. I don't think you really grasp what drives the pro-choice movement and how strongly most of these people feel.
I've enjoyed this conversation with you. Are you Libertarian?
Smokingmaenad 19:27, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm familiar with a number of views, including libertarianism. However, if I were a libertarian myself then I'd agree with the notion that the tenets of choice are inviolate. I do not. Choice is a good thing, in that it generally lets us act to further our interests. However, it's those interests that are the highest goal. So, all things being equal, having free choice is best, but not all things are equal all the time, therefore not all choices should be free.

Consider the case where someone is unable to make decisions for themselves, so a guardian is given fiduciary responsibility to decide for them. A good example would be the parents of an infant deciding whether it should have surgery. In this case, there is the risk that the guardians will choose to serve their own interests at the cost of their wards', which is why society may need to get involved and override their decisions.

One way society gets involved is in forbidding parents from harming their children through abuse and neglect. The issue, then, is whether allowing a Tay Sachs child to be born can be distinguished from neglect. In other words, do children have a right to be born without a disease that dooms them? That's not a trivial issue and it's not something that can be satisfactorily resolved merely by invoking a priori principles.

Having said that, the principles people invoke do constrain the kinds of results possible. The ones that drive the pro-choice movement amount to a a liberal concern for the interests of people, seen both as individuals and members of society. In contrast, libertarians are concerned with their personal interests and feel that these are best served by denying any positive obligations towards others while asserting a right to choose anything. Interestingly, quite a few libertarians use this to oppose reproductive rights.

This is why I edited your text: to remove the suggestion that the pro-life movement is fundamentally libertarian. Pro-choice is not libertarian and libertarianism is, at best, only incidentally pro-choice, and neither consistently nor wholeheartedly so. Alienus 23:08, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Citation request

Pro-lick, the article you cited is several pages long. Could you quote the sentence(s) in it that support the edit: "By this reasoning, China (which has, in the past, allegedly forced abortions and sterilizations on women and El Salvador (which protects from the moment of conception) are both equally anti-choice and therefore, are opposed with equal vehemence" i.e. that China and El S are opposed with equal vehemence by the pro-choice movement. Many thanks, SlimVirgin (talk) 19:53, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Slim, what you're looking for might already be here. Alienus 20:49, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
I have no idea how to add any of those quotes as a citation. If I need to provide something for someone else to do it, I'll be happy to. I think adding a citation would be valuable because most people do not understand what pro-choice means and many ( far too many) assume it means pro-abortion. Wiki could serve a real function if it helped disabuse people of that notion. Thanks.
Smokingmaenad 19:16, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

NPOV tag?

IIRC, the NPOV tag was added when hyphen5's overhaul was reverted by Alienus. However, the majority of hyphen5's changes were eventually added, and most of the disputes have quieted down. Can we remove the NPOV tag? If users still have a problem with parts of this article, they can NPOV tag sections, and fact tag specific claims. I do not believe the whole article as it stands now deserves the tag. What do you say? (copied from pro-life)--Andrew c 16:46, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Support ackoz 21:12, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Political Views

There are many citations that could be used to show growing suport for pro-life Democrats but try this one from Newsweek on for size. Briancua 01:29, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

It's your responsibility to add citations for the assertions you make to the article; if you don't do it yourself, others will just restore the {{Fact|date=March 2008}} tag. Catamorphism 10:23, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
The Newsweek article says "Four years ago, says Kristen Day, the executive director of Democrats for Life, she couldn't get other Democrats to return her phone calls." One year ago DFLA announced the plans for their 95-10 Initiative at "a national press conference at the Democratic National Committee. Last year the DNC, the DSCC and the DCCC were all recruiting pro-life Democrats to run. Today, one of the top tier candidates is Bob Casey, Jr., a very popular figure in Penn. who is going to knock off Rick Santorum. Congressman Tim Roemer, a member fo the 9/11 Commission and candidate for DNC has praised them. In their 2005 book, Take It Back: Our Party, Our Country, Our Future, Paul Begala and James Carville praise DFLA's 95-10 Initiative. In the book they say "The 95-10 Initiative is built around seventeen concrete policy proposals that would reduce the number of abortions.... We believe these proposals would do more to prevent abortions than all the speeches, all the marches and all the campaign ads the pro-lifers have used over the past 30 years." They go on to call it "both good politics and, we think, good policy." Finally, even DFLA's critics admit that they have a "huge following." When 4 years ago you can't get your phone calls returned but today Begala and Carville are praising you, when a few years ago Terry McCauliffe was throwing you out of the DNC becasue you asked for a link on their webpage and today Howard Dean is welcoming you in to announce your major legislative initaitves, I think this shows signs of growing support.Briancua 13:41, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Like I said, it's your responsibility to add citations for the assertions you make to the article; if you don't do it yourself, others will just restore the [citation needed] tag. Posting these on the talk page is non-constructive. Catamorphism 22:57, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Where to merge content?

There was a page on A woman's right to choose that was voted a long time ago to be merged here. I attempted to add a sentence about this slogan, but it was reverted. Could we decide where we want this information? Or is there no need to mention this slogan at all? Should we recreate the individual slogal page? Here is the content of the old article:

The slogan "a woman's right to choose" asserts the position that every pregnant adult female should have an absolute right to choosing abortion. It is primarily used by advocates of loosening legal restrictions on abortion, especially in the United States.
The slogan casts the debate over abortion in terms of the personal rights of the pregnant woman as recognized in United States Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade.

--Andrew c 14:57, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I have no problem with the usage of the slogan itself; it's probably a good thing to incorporate into the article. However, it seemed to have been dumped into an unfitting paragraph, which is why I reverted it. I think it would better fit in the section about terminology. Sorry about the accidental POV tag mix-up there! romarin[talk to her ] 15:34, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

common sense

Just wondering why the term anti-abortion is being used, but no the term anti-Life? People obviously do not like the word anti (Therefore being anti-anti) and it is only used to negatively portray pro-life. I think, either end the use of "anit-aborition" or use both "anti-abortion" and "anti-life" just as much. Am I right? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.129.247.188 (talk • contribs) .

There are certainly some who would agree with you, but there is, in my opinion, a clear difference here. Being "anti-abortion" means you are against abortion, right? Pro-life people are against abortion, thus "anti-abortion" could be deemed an appropriate term (although it is not all-encompassing; some people who consider themselves "pro-life" are also concerned with other issues besides abortion, such as the death penalty, and feel that the term "anti-abortion" doesn't apply to them in that light).
However, people who are in favor of legal and safe abortion, people generally referred to as "pro-choice", are not against life by any stretch of the imagination. The position is, among other things (see pro-choice for more information) very concerned with the lives of millions of women who are faced with unplanned, unwanted, or dangerous pregnancies. A term such as "anti-life" is simply not applicable to this position, and is generally used only by those on the extreme side of the pro-life movement.
Another thing to mention is that there is currently debate over the use of the term "anti-abortion", and you can see the conversations on Talk:Anti-abortion movement.
Hope this answers your question. Also, in the future, if you could sign your comments by writing ~~~~ that would be great. Thanks, romarin[talk to her ] 02:39, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Merging with Reproductive rights?

An anonymous user recently suggested merging this page with reproductive rights; please go to the RR talk page for discussion. Thank you! romarin[talk to her ] 00:04, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

As no one gave any feedback on the matter at all, I have gone ahead and removed the merge tag. Now, what about that other one? It's been up for quite a while, and unless I'm mistaken, no one is really discussing the matter anymore... romarin[talk to her ] 14:41, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Pro-Life, Pro-Choice, and Pro-Abortion - 3 Mutually Exclusive Policies

Wikipedia is about adding information and not removing information. I have been trying to add more information to the pro-abortion page regarding traditional usage and popular misusage, but it has been reverted. So, I'm posting the additional information here for the moment for discussion. The following is the proposed disambiguation page followed by short terminology and my 2 cents. aCute 03:34, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Pro-abortion

The term "pro-abortion" may be refering to the support for state-ordered abortions as a part of birth control policy in managing child birth rate and population size of a nation state.

The term "pro-abortion" is also a perjorative term for "pro-choice" in the context of womens's reproductive rights used by anti-abortion supporters.

{{disambiguation}}

Terms

In the context of abortion,

  • Pro-Life refers to the support for state policy to force women into not having an abortion in order to protect unborn fetuses.
  • Pro-Choice refers to the support for state policy to allow women to choose whether she could abort her pregnancy or whether she could continue with her pregnancy (even against doctors advice).
  • Pro-Abortion refers to the support for state policy to force women into having an abortion in order to control birthrates and/or population growth.

aCute 03:34, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

aCute: These distinctions do clarify that there are people/countries who could be considered "pro-abortion" in the strictest sense. However, with regards to "Pro-Life" I think it would be more accurate to say that it "refers to the support for state policy to restrict or outlaw abortions in order to protect unborn embryos and fetuses." In a free, democratic society, it is impossible to "force" a woman from having an abortion, just as it is impossible to "force" minors from drinking. LotR 13:50, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

My 2 cents

In my opinion, the three policies--Pro-Life, Pro-Choice, and Pro-Abortion--are completely and mutually exclusive with vastly different aims--protecting fetuses, protecting reproductive rights, and managing population size respectively.

  • Pro-Life policy is anti-Choice policy and anti-Abortion policy;
  • Pro-Choice policy is anti-Life policy and anti-Abortion policy; where as
  • Pro-Abortion policy is anti-Life policy and anti-Choice policy.

So logically, the pro-abortion page should NOT be redirecting to the pro-choice page.

Also, more research is still needed to improve the pro-abortion policy page to include the history of pro-abortion policy. That is the historical use of such policy to control the population of minorities and procreation of women with disabilities; as well as how present-day countries is using state abortion to control its own population size. Furthermore, a list of ancient scholars who supported such policies in the ancient times as well as a list of present-day countries (and political parties) with aggressive state laws (or proposing aggressive state laws) on birthrate control and population-size control. aCute 04:46, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

First of all, the "pro-abortion" as a perjorative term for "pro-choice" is already part of the content of this article, so making a seperate article about that use of the word is redundent. Second of all, I would like to see some citations on the use of "pro-abortion" as the same thing as state sanctioned abortions. Perhaps pro-abortion is or isn't the proper term here, and further more, I'd like to know how prevelent such a view/policy is. I think having a million spin off articles is not helpful to the overall scheme of things. We do NOT need articles on "anti-choice", "pro-death", "anti-life", "anti-abortion", "pro-abortion", etc. Having two different articles on pro-choice and pro-life almost seem like POV forks of abortion debate as it is. As you can see, look where Gun control redirects to. So, my advice would be to see if you cannot incorporate your information into one of the existing articles, and then to make sure that your information is verifiably sourced. --Andrew c 21:16, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Concur strongly with Andrew c. Without serious sourcing, this is all original research, regardless of how logical it may or may not be. KillerChihuahua?!? 21:33, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
The "worldwide" tag is added in the mean time since Pro-Abortion redirects to this page (Pro-Choice) but this page lacks actual Pro-Abortion information. aCute 04:17, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
Come to think of it, it may be best to have a single article to cover all the political movements on the issue of abortion ranging among the 3 position of pro-life, pro-choice, and pro-abortion. As least, that's how I was taught. So, should it be Politics of Abortion or Abortion (Politics)? aCute 04:42, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
abortion debate exists; politics go there —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.59.25.67 (talk • contribs)

The opening of the article is highly dubious, poorly structured, lacking in definition or a grasp of the concept. It is also completely focused on one country as if the rest of the planet didn't exist.

I've rewritten it to define:

  • concept
  • theory
  • definitionary questions that shape the argument
  • include other information on places other than the US. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 04:49, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
You've also inserted quite a bit of POV, so it's no improvement. Al 05:24, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

No. Toned down extremely strong POV. Neither the pro-life nor the pro-choice articles should be advocacy articles for that side. Both were. NPOV requires neutrality from both. This article is anything but neutral, as well as poorly restructured and chronically inaccurate. It even gets Roe versus Wade wrong (and that is Baaaad!) Roe versus Wade was not about abortion per se. It was whether abortion was a federal or state issue, and if federal (and the courts decided that it was a matter for US federal constitutional law, not the Texas criminal code), what form the rights should be in federal constitutional law. If you don't know the former then you don't know where the whole case came from, and the logic behind the decision. The campaigns against Roe versus Wade are not primarily about the latter issue (federal law on abortion) but to get the court to give leeway to the states to take ownership of abortion law, in the belief that individual states are more likely to add in anti-abortion clauses in their own state law and state constitutions than are ever likely to happen at federal level.

This article, frankly, is amateurish, substandard, confused in its elementary understanding of law and concepts and way off encyclopaedic standards. If written in a university it would be returned to the writer with a "not adequate" tag or a pass mark. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 06:03, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I suggest that, if you want your changes to be accepted, you should make a few at a time and carefully justify them. Al 17:33, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
I second Al's comments regarding these changes. If the article in question needs work, and I'm sure at least certain parts of it do, let's all work on it little by little, agreeing as much as we can as we go along. Making drastic, unilateral changes (which were, in my opinion as well, extremely POV) is not the way to go. And fighting is not going to help things. romarin[talk to her ] 18:09, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Under WP rules major rewrites are allowed. Blanking large parts of an article is not. It is seen as vandalism and those doing it are blocked. If you disagree with parts of the article, offer a critique. Reinstating an article that

  • has the definition wrong
  • no sources
  • no footnotes
  • no adequate references
  • no international perspective
  • POV links
  • no reading list
  • gets something as elementary as Roe versus Wade wrong
  • is littered with repetition, spelling mistakes, inaccuracies and substandard writing

is vandalism and will be treated as such under WP rules. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 00:57, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

As has been suggested repeatedly, if you have specific issues, bring them up and they will be addressed. Making these changes a bit at a time gives other editors an opporunity to see your reasoning. Making them all at once, particularly in a way that leaves the article with significantly different POV, is much more likely to be rejected.
In short, I'm not saying you shouldn't contribute, I'm saying you don't own the article and can't expect us to just smile and nod while you rewrite it to fit your POV. I urge you to start with the most important issues and work your way down to the minutiae. This sort of cooperative effort will be much more successful than what you've tried so far.
Let me give you a boost in the right direction: What's wrong with the definition of pro-choice? Al 04:00, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
There isn't one. Nor sources. Nor references. Nor coherent analysis. Nor a critique. It is so far from a good article much less a feature article it is almost a textbook analysis of how not to write an article. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 19:45, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Jtdirl, I don't understand your complaint. You say that there isn't a definition, and yet it starts with:

Pro-choice refers to a political movement supporting a woman's legal right to terminate her pregnancies by having an abortion. More generally, it refers to supporting reproductive rights, which includes the use of contraception and fertility treatments.

Is this inaccurate? Would you like a few citations to make this more clear? Would you like to offer citations that show it to be inaccurate? Throw me a rope here.

In the meantime, while we try to resolve these issues, please don't continue reverting to your preferred version, as this constitutes edit-warring and is highly unproductive. I've been forced to leave you a warning on your talk page.

Al 20:47, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

My edit warring??? lol. I rewrote an frankly crap article under WP rules. You deleted an entire article, all international information, all references, all links, all sources, all information that you didn't write, etc. That is unambiguous vandalism under Wikipedia rules and that is a blockable offence. Users deleting that information have been blocked by various admins. You offer not a single bit of evidence to support your claims, but blanket reverts. I am more than happy to discuss things. It would help if just once you discussed content, not mass deleted stuff. I didn't delete stuff. I turned it into someone less incoherent (how on earth could an article on pro-choice get something as basic as Roe versus Wade wrong??? There two key facts about Roe versus Wade — that it decided that abortion was a matter for federal constitutional law, not state statute law, and that the judgment was based on the right of privacy in the federal constitution. An article can't even get those elementary facts right, and that doesn't mention them, is so bad it beggars belief. It is like writing about George Bush and leaving out 9/11, the Iraq war and the fact that he was president!!!).

Your actions break all the rules on article writing. Try reading the rules on article writing. As for leaving a warning! lol. I have yet to hear a single justification for why a substandard, poorly written, confused, POV-laiden, barely coherent article of sub-high school level, without sources, without international comparisons, without a critique, without a reading list, with agenda-pushing links, without even an elementary grasp of the theoretical framework within which the abortion debate and the concept of rights (whether "right of the unborn" or "right to choose") in the debate, should be regarded as other than an embarrassment. About the only thing that mishmash of an article deserved was the tag "how not to write an article". FearÉIREANN\(caint) 22:09, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, let's try this again, only this time with civility.
Jtdirl, I don't understand your complaint. You say that there isn't a definition, and yet it starts with:
Pro-choice refers to a political movement supporting a woman's legal right to terminate her pregnancies by having an abortion. More generally, it refers to supporting reproductive rights, which includes the use of contraception and fertility treatments.
Is this inaccurate? Would you like a few citations to make this more clear? Would you like to offer citations that show it to be inaccurate? Throw me a rope here. Al 02:54, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Completely inaccurate, grammatical nonsense, completely POV.

  • As all the sources make clear, pro-choice is not a movement. (Anyone who has ever been to a course on the issue of abortion will have heard that point made in the first minute of the first lecture.) It is an ethical concept and set of beliefs and values. People who are pro-choice are part of a movement to implement their ethical beliefs on that issue. Saying pro-choice is a movement is like saying that the republicanism is a movement rather than a concept whose supporters may constitute a movement.
  • One doesn't write of pregnancies. The right is expressed regarding each single pregnancy and is always written in singular.
  • "terminate her pregnancies by having an abortion" is grammatical gobbledigook. The legal method to terminate a pregnancy is to have an abortion. That sentence means "to terminate her pregnancies by terminating her pregnancies" or "have an abortion by having an abortion". It is ridiculous. It also fails to point out an elementary fact, that the demand is a legal right for legal abortion, not merely a right of abortion. If it was a right to abortion it would mean that absolutely anyone could set them up as an abortionist without limit. Pro-choice campaigners oppose that and want such people imprisoned. They want "legal safe abortion" in hospitals and clinics, not abortion anywhere by anyone irrespective of medical qualification. The fact that the article does not even get that part of the terminology right is indicative of the sheer drivel in this article.
  • "supporting reproductive rights" is POV. To use the words "support" and "rights" in any context is validating those rights with a presumption of correctness, whether it is "supporting the rights of the unborn", "supporting the right to execute", or whatever. It is an elementary breach of NPOV. A neutral version would refer to a "belief in what is known as reproductive rights" followed by a clinically neutral interpretation.

A four line sentence manages to get the definition wrong, contain linguistic goggledigook and use POV language. And that is one of the better sentences in this mish-mash of an article!

My wording was carefully phrased to distinguish between the ethical concept and the movement of supporters, and to make it quite clear what legally pro-choice campaigners are looking for.

Pro-choice is a term used to describe a political and ethical belief that a woman possesses an inate legal right to terminate her pregnancy by means of legal abortion. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 20:15, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
Let's take this one at a time.
1) "Pro-choice is not a movement". You're misreading the article. It says that pro-choice refers to a movement. This is correct. Consider that pro-life starts with "Pro-life is a term used to refer to...".
2) Plural pregnancy. I'm fine with "pregnancy" instead of "pregnancies". I'll change it now.
3) "Terminate her pregnancy by having an abortion". In this context, an abortion means the medical procedure that induces abortion. This is a common usage and quite clear in context. Nevertheless, if you have a concrete suggestion for improvement, I will consider it. As for what you wrote about "legal safe abortion", even my most charitable interpretation failed to yield anything clear or persuasive.
4) "Supporting reproductive rights". You've failed to make a case for this being biased.
5) For the reasons stated above, I don't think your suggested intro sentence is an improvement. Al 06:28, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Admin rights

Jtdirl, in your most recent revert in your edit war against Romarin and I, you wrote:

(rv - deleting most of an article is regarded as vandalism and under WP may lead to a block)

Now, I'm going to WP:AGF here and avoid reading this as a direct threat to block us for reverting your WP:POV insertions. I'm sure you didn't mean to pretend that our content dispute constitutes vandalism, as much as I'm sure you know WP:BLOCK does not permit you to use your admin rights to win content disputes.

And I'm absolutely certain you know better than to threaten to abuse your admin rights to get your way on this article, because I know you don't want me to post a complaint on WP:ANI, much less launch a full RFC. I'm so certain that I'm not going to immediately report you. I'm sure it's just a misunderstanding. Right?

We are all equals here, admins or not, and we are all going to work together as equals to make this a better article. Nobody is going to muscle in and take over, and the sysop bit cannot grant immunity from the WP:NPOV requirement. I hope we're on the same wavelength here and look forward to working with you as an equal. See above for the first step. Al 04:17, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

That is a gross misinterpretation. I never said and never implied that I would block anyone. I pointed out that admins do block people for such behaviour. They do, all the time. All you are doing is shooting the messenger for pointing out that your behaviour could get you blocked. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 20:19, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

As a veteran of several contoversial articles I would highly endorse the incremental evolution rather than revolution approach to major rewrites. The proposed changes do have a POV slant to them but I suspect Jtdirl doesn't realise this as it's always difficult to see how what you write betrays your POV even when you try very hard to be neutral. The pro-abortion redirect mentioned above is a tricky one and I think the gun control solution suggested is a good one. Sophia 08:51, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately the article was so poor (unsourced, Americocentric, repeating the same point over and over, poorly edited, with the basic facts about Roe versus Wade wrong!) a major rewrite was called for. Over the years here I've been called "pro-life" by pro-choicers, and "pro-choice" by pro-lifers (and a republican by monarchists, a monarchist by republicans, a Unionist by Irish republicans, and Irish Republican by Unionists, etc). Actually on the issue of abortion I am in neither camp. I see the merits in both cases and voted for abortion in the Irish referenda on the issue. I remember some years ago a row over both the pro-life and pro-choice articles where the point was made that both sides protected their POV article to the death, and would not let anything remotely neutral into their article. The antics here just prove it. I'd love if people actually offered a critique of I wrote so that it can be improved, and any (unintended) bias could be fixed. Complete deletion is not an option. Starting from the substandard nonsense that was there is not workable. The article's inability to get elementary facts write made the article a joke. Wikipedia deserves better than that having substandard POV rubbish as its article on pro-choice. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 22:19, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
I'd love if people actually offered a critique of I wrote so that it can be improved ... I critiqued your edits on pro-life, and what did I get in return?--Andrew c 03:13, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
Jtdirl, we would like to have a chance to critique your changes. However, you are not giving us one. As as been said several times by various editors, it would be a lot more helpful if you would make changes a bit at a time, rather than all at once. Then, we would be able to look more objectively at what you're doing and start trying to come to a concensus about it. I really don't see any other way to go about it here. romarin[talk to her ] 22:01, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Redundant tags

Chooserr replaced the {{sources}} and {{not verified}} tags that I had removed as "redundant," asking how they're redundant. It's like this, Chooserr: the tag that I didn't remove says that the article is lacking in "neutrality of structure, quality of writing, objectivity with which the topic is covered, factual reliability of information, and lack of any sourcing and nature of external links." I'd say that covers the objections made in the other two tags. With their inclusion, the lack of sources is objected to twice (3 times, really), hence "redundant". If there's something missing from that list, please add it, instead of appending extra tags, thus forcing the entire content of the article below the fold. That's quite clearly going too far. Those templates exist to bring attention to an article langishing in cruddiness - the point is to use as few as possible, and get rid of them as quickly as possible, not to arrange them into the greatest possible eyesore, nor to use them as a weapon in content disputes.

Does that make sense now, why I used that word?

Now, part of the responsibility in adding tags to an article is to make specific objections that can be addressed to improve the article. What have you got? -GTBacchus(talk) 00:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

GTBacchus,
The one you didn't remove doesn't appear to be there now. What is there is the Suggested Merge, lack of sources, and non-world view templates. It says nothing about its possiblity of inaccuracies, or the quality of writing. I think I'll try to improve the article but in the mean time I still believe the best option would be to re-add some of the templates. Especially those that state what I paraphrased above. Chooserr 05:14, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I suggest that many of the things that these templates aim to express are already quite clearly expressed here on the talk page, making them additionally redundant. Al 05:36, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, GTBacchus, for summarizing the misuse of tags. I can see obtruding content with three or four tags if the article is in dire need of attention, due to poor formatting, grammar, or lack of sources, but, definitely not when the clear intention is to give an upper hand in a content dispute. -Severa (!!!) 06:34, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Is this article really so bad?

Everyone who thinks this article is terrible, and needs 5+ disclaimers at the top, could you perhaps make a laundry list of concerns so everyone can discuss and perhaps work on the article together. It seems that a number of folk are not seeing eye to eye, and if these concerns are voiced on talk, at least someone (like me) can be made aware of the issues and problems with this article. Thank you.--Andrew c 21:59, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll echo that. A laundry list would be great... and constructive! -GTBacchus(talk) 01:21, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Tags

This article is being tagged to death.

The purpose of tags is to help people recognize when an article has a specific need for remediation, both so that they can exercise care in trusting the contents and so that they can jump in to fix it up. When all a reader can see is tags, we have lost track of this purpose and allowed them to be abused so as to make an article look bad.

At this point, I've removed all tags. Perhaps some of them deserve to be restored, but not all of them. Let's decide which, if any, still apply, right here in Talk. This will avoid the silly edit war. Al 06:08, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

It's cheap editing to just keep replacing tags because you've lost the intelectual battle on the talk page - I support no tags unless someone has a very particular concern about a specific area. Sophia 11:34, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I have reinserted the tags and will continue to insert them as often as necessary unless this article hits adequate standards rather than the joke level it is at right now. Removing tags is seen as vandalism. Users are regularly blocked by admins for vandalism for unilaterally removing tags. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 19:23, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

There's nothing unilateral about it. Alienus' removal of those tags is supported on this talk page in detail, I haven't seen a sigle tag restorer make a productive point through this whole revert war. Please change that. -GTBacchus(talk) 00:21, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
And I will remove them as often as necessary, because they are excessive. You can insert one or two small ones, if and only if you explain your reasoning here. Otherwise, they're gone. Al 19:24, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

In that case a request will be made to admins that you be blocked as a vandal. FearÉIREANN\(caint)

Go for it. While you're at it, make the exact same request of all the other people who have removed your huge, distracting tags. Let's see how that works for you, eh? Al 23:34, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Jtdirl, it is the responsibility of someone tagging an article to make specific actionable suggestions on how it can be improved. What have you got? Let's fix the article and stop fighting over tags like we're all 8 years old. -GTBacchus(talk) 00:11, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Examples of how bad this article is

  • Worldview
    • A pre-occupation with the US, US law and US practice that doesn't mention the rest of the world anywhere and where mention of the rest of the world was deleted by Alienus.
    • A failure to use captions in photographs that highlighted the fact that it wasn't "the Supreme Court" but the US Supreme Court that people were outside. Guess what, there are 278 supreme courts in the world, not just one!
    • A reference (wrong) only to US law, not to legal systems, legal judgments and legal principles anywhere else on the planet but the US.
  • Quality and objectivity of writing.
    • Non-neutral language repeatedly used.
      • Using the word supportive before rights is loaded. Rights are presumed to be something to be defended, hence the deliberate use for promotional reasons of the word by both pro-life and pro-choice campaigners. "Supporting" a right implicitly implies a right exists and people are upholding that. Under NPOV we cannot say that, irrespective of whether it is the "right to choose", the "right to life of the unborn", the "right to execute criminals" or any other supposed right. It is elementary NPOV language. The term "right" is subjective in the debate. Any term that implies validity to the subjective claim by either side contravenes NPOV. There are numerous simple ways to neutralise the language, for example, Pro-choice campaigners believe in what they define as "reproductive rights", with the equivalent sentence in the pro-life article Pro-life campaigners belive in what they define as the "right to life of the unborn".
      • "Medical studies have definitely supported the latter." No. That study says that. We cannot say studies have definitely supported anything unless we link every study. A neutral wording would have said that that source reached that conclusion. Saying one study on any topic definitely supports anything is something no article can say, anymore than pro-lifers can claim in the pro-life article that because one study somewhere might say so, "medical studies have definitely supported . . . the view that abortion damages women." It is a basic NPOV faux pas to make such a claim or call studies "definitive".
      • The summaries and explanations of the pro-choice beliefs are unsourced, simplistic and POV.
      • Using South Dakota reproductive rights controversy as the page link to an article when that is not the name of the article. That name was rejected as POV and an NPOV name given instead.
  • Factual reliability of information
    • The definition of Roe versus Wade is rubbish. The US Supreme Court did not define a right to abortion per se. It made two rulings:
      • That abortion was a federal issue, not as before a state issue.
      • That the right to privacy contained within it an implicit right to terminate a pregnancy, and as the right to privacy was possessed by all born humans, other issues, like the alleged rights of the foetus, didn't arise as part of the judgment. If they had decided that abortion was a state matter, the whole issue of abortion would be different (which is why pro-choice campaigners are not campaigning to get the Supreme Court to change their minds on a right to abortion, but to change their minds on the issue of whether it is a federal or state matter, in the belief that individual states are more likely to reach a different conclusion on abortion as a right, and individual states' constitutions are more likely to be amendable to recognise the supposed "right to life of the unborn" than the federal constitution, which is extremely difficult to amend. Equally if they had relied on a different part of constitutional law, not the right to privacy, a different conclusion might have been reached. It is astonishing that an article on pro-choice can get Roe versus Wade so chronically wrong. If people were to rely on this article they'd have no understanding of why pro-choice campaigners are so determined to keep the abortion issue federal, and why pro-life campaigners are so determined to make the abortion issue state again. (Nor does the article cover the obvious requirement to explain how attitudes on abortion in the US have changed, from criminalisation from the 1820s to legalisation in the 1970s.
  • Constant repetition of the same sentences — the political framing argument is repeated in detail throughout the article over and over again.
  • No sourcing
    • No references.
    • Little sourcing to any of the claims.
    • No footnotes.

Among the many many things missing from this article are

  1. An accurate definition. Pro-choice is not a campaign. It is a set of values that leads those who share those values to be involved in a campaign.
  2. No mention of the theoretical framework which shapes the abortion debate. Without that it makes it sound like pro-choice and pro-life campaigners disagree simply on the issue of termination as an abstract concept. They disagree because they define pregnancy differently and because they disagree on whether there are one or two lives involved. That point is explained in the first minute of the first lecture anyone takes on the issue of abortion. How an article purporting to be about pro-choice could fail to cover that is mindboggling. It is like the article on the pope not mentioning the Roman Catholic Church or an article on foreign policy under Bush not mentioning the fact that he is a republican or the impact of neo-cons on current US foreign policy. If you don't explain the basics then how do you explain how some pro-choicers oppose abortion in some contexts and some pro-lifers support it in some circumstances. They do that because the underlying beliefs they hold are marginally different than others in the broad category of pro-choice or pro-life, eg, the abortion is always wrong/always right view, based on an absolute belief in the rights of the unborn/of the woman exclusively, versus the belief that pregnancy involves two lives but with varying rights (woman superior in first trimester, co-equal in second, right of the foetus in the third, subject to exceptions).
  3. Any mention of pro-choice activists in the UK, which legalised abortion in the 1967 Act, having moderated the law somewhat in the 1930s, in France, where Simone Veil introduced the abortion law in the 1970s, the abortion battles in Italy, Spain and Ireland, the legalising of abortion in South Africa in the 1990s and the impact of pro-choice campaigning on the ANC in pushing for a right to choose, etc. Either they and everywhere else goes in, or the US is taken out. The current article cannot stand as it is, as an American article by Americans for Americans that ignores the rest of the planet.

That is only some of the flaws with this substandard, poorly written, shoddily defined, frequently inaccurate article. In its current state it has a snowball's chance in hell of being defined as a "good Wikipedia article" let alone a featured one. It is neither comprehensive nor accurate, neither reliable nor trustworthy. But then this article (and the pro-life one) is famed for that. It regularly has "article sitters" who use it to push their agenda (pro-choice here), as shown with the frequently absurd external links put on this page. At this stage most long-standing users have given up trying to fix this article. Most of them have been burned by the POV-pushing that happens here.

Re my comments on Alienus "vandalising" this article by deleting stuff over and over again, Wikipedia rules are quite clear. The removal of dispute tags is one of the links listed by Wikipedia as vandalism and defined as "official policy on the English Wikipedia".

Dispute tags are an important way for people to show that there are problems with the article. Do not remove them unless you are sure that the dispute is settled. As a general rule, do not remove other people's dispute tags twice during a 24 hour period.

Wikipedia's policy on that is quite clear.

Committing vandalism is a violation of Wikipedia policy; it needs to be spotted, and then dealt with — if you cannot deal with it yourself, you can seek help from others.

FearÉIREANN\(caint) 03:28, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, Jtdirl, that's very helpful. As for Alienus' "vandalism", I tend to think of that in terms of the spirit of the rule, i.e., it's vandalism if you're trying to make Wikipedia worse, not better. I don't believe that about Alienus; I'm fully convinced he's acting in good faith, therefore it can't be vandalism. If he were to decide he didn't care anymore, and just start capriciously removing tags without explaining himself, that would be vandalism. Anyway, wouldn't you rather improve this article than talk about Alienus? -GTBacchus(talk) 03:34, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

But I can't think of anything more interesting to talk about than me! Oh, wait, you were being sarcastic.

Well, I looked at the laundry list. It's huge. You interested in addressing it or do you just want to drag one item out at a time so we can poke at it? Al 04:02, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I've addressed two (and a half?) items just now. I'll wait and see how that feels to people before trying more. -GTBacchus(talk) 04:09, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Just briefly on the international aspect. I totally agree that balancing systematic bias is necessary, and any worldviews and international POVs should clearly be included. However, Jtdirl's international section addition seemed to have nothing to do with "pro-choice" and more to do with abortion law. That said, you also have a number of valid criticisms and suggestions. I'm sure we can work through this without edit warring if we give it some time and patience. Thanks for taking the time to write out all these concerns.--Andrew c 02:39, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Sources

These aren't super easy to find. Feel free to add to the list, and comment if desired. -GTBacchus(talk) 07:04, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

The following subsections contain sources compiled by Jtdirl:

Books

  • Ninia Baehr, Abortion without Apology: A Radical History for the 1990s South End Press, 1990.
  • Ruth Colker, Abortion & Dialogue: Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, and American Law Indiana University Press, 1992.
  • Donald T. Critchlow, The Politics of Abortion and Birth Control in Historical Perspective Pennsylvania University Press, 1996.
  • Myra Marx Ferree et al, Shaping Abortion Discourse: Democracy and the Public Sphere in Germany and the United States Cambridge University Press, 2002.
  • Marlene Gerber Fried, From Abortion to Reproductive Freedom: Transforming a Movement South End Press, 1990.
  • Beverly Wildung Harrison, Our Right to Choose: Toward a New Ethic of Abortion Beacon Press, 1983.
  • Suzanne Staggenborg, The Pro-Choice Movement: Organization and Activism in the Abortion Conflict, Oxford University Press, 1994.
  • Raymond Tatalovich' The Politics of Abortion in the United States and Canada: A Comparative Study M.E. Sharpe, 1997

Articles & Journals

  • Mary S. Alexander, "Defining the Abortion Debate" in ETC.: A Review of General Semantics, Vol. 50, 1993.
  • David R. Carlin Jr., "Going, Going, Gone: The Diminution of the Self" in Commonweal Vol.120. 1993.
  • Vijayan K. Pillai, Guang-Zhen Wang, "Women's Reproductive Rights, Modernization, and Family Planning Programs in Developing Countries: A Causal Model" in International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Vol. 40, 1999.
  • Suzanne Staggenborg, "Organizational and Environmental Influences on the Development of the Pro-Choice Movement" in Social Forces, Vol. 68 1989.

Jtdirl's first paragraph

What do we think of this, as opposed to the current first paragraph?

Pro-choice is a term used to describe a political and ethical belief that a woman possesses an inate legal right to terminate her pregnancy by means of legal abortion in some or all circumstances. Political organisations that seeks to have this belief enshrined in constitutional and or statute law are generally described as being part of the Pro-choice movement. The movement sees a right to legal abortion as central to its campaign for what it defines as reproductive rights, namely the right of a woman alone to decide on all issues concerning her fertility, from pregnancy prevention using contraception to pregnancy termination using abortion and pregnancy creation through fertility treatment.

Input, please. -GTBacchus(talk) 16:43, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Made a minor adjustment. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 20:10, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
I've used your paragraph as a starting point, and made some edits. I'm posting it to the article now, what do people think? -GTBacchus(talk) 23:23, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I personally think the most notable aspect of "pro-choice" is their view on abortion, with the other issues taking a secondary role. I mean, this intro works, but I also thought the last intro worked. a woman should be allowed to make all the choices pertaining to her fertility seems wordy oddly to me, but I can't think of a better phrasing. Maybe get rid of "be allowed to". or maybe "a woman should control her fertility" or something like that? I wouldn't say all the pro-choice movement does is "lobby". Think of Planned Parenthood and NNAF and any number of pro-choice organizations that provide services or any number of other things not dealing with legality issues. Overall, the paragraph still needs work, but I'm not opposed to it or anything.--Andrew c 02:35, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Andrew, it's interesting. You think the most notable aspect of "pro-choice" is their view on abortion, but then you mention Planned Parenthood, which is notable for lots of non-abortion related services. I suspect that, from a pro-life perspective, the most notable thing about pro-choice is that they support legal abortion, just like from a pro-choice perspective, the most notable thing about pro-life is that they don't. On the other hand, if you ask a pro-lifer what pro-life is about, they'll paint a more general picture, in which abortion is just one of the things they oppose, the death penalty, euthanasia, and cloning being others. Neither side considers itself to be primarily "about" abortion.
Maybe we should do something like the first paragraph at pro-life currently does, where they get a general statement in their chosen terms (we're about "bioethics"), and then a list of issues in which abortion is highlighted as the most visible and controversial one. -GTBacchus(talk) 14:49, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
I support any effort to make the format of the pro-life and pro-choice articles parallel. Also, I think you misunderstood my concern over saying the pro-choice movement (basically) just lobbies. PP has clinics that provide abortions. NNAF gives money to low income individuals so that they can have abortions. These are fairly primary aspects of both organizations, and they clearly deal with abortion, yet it isn't lobbying or related to the legality of abortion. All that said, the current version that mentions legality and availability seems to address the concerns.--Andrew c 19:41, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, it turns out PP also provides an example for a different point, about pro-choice not defining itself in terms of abortion, but in terms of something more general. Your point about lobbying not being the only activity of the pro-choice movement is also correct. -GTBacchus(talk) 19:47, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

External links

Media reportage

Abortion law internationally

Pro-choice advocacy groups

United States

Ireland

United Kingdom

Groups disagreeing with pro-choice groups

Abortion statistics

"Ethical" is a POV term in its current usage -- this needs rewording

I would not object if the sentence said something along the lines of "pro-choicers believe this (the woman's right to control her fertility) is ethical," but in its current form it is making a factual claim to what is a POV. Consider the counter-point: "Pro-life is a term used to describe the political and ethical view which maintains that all human beings, including the unborn, have the unalienable right to life." Would this be acceptable? If so, then I will consider including it as counter-point on the pro-life page. LotR 17:09, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you understand what this term means. To call something an ethical view is to say that it is a view on ethics, not that it is in some way morally correct. So, for example, the ethical view of lawyers allows them to keep their silence while innocent people are convicted. Is this morally correct? Perhaps not, but it's still their ethical view.
Frankly, I don't see this as being the least bit ambiguous or biased. Al 17:17, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
That's absolutely acceptable. The adjective ethical describes what type of view it is: it's a view regarding ethics. Is there a clearer way to say that? -GTBacchus(talk) 17:16, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
The word "ethical" is used in precisely the same sense as the word "political" next to it: it's a view on politics, and on ethics. -GTBacchus(talk) 17:20, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Do not agree -- the statement is not saying that "pro-choice is an ethical view"; it's saying that it is "the ethical view" implying that the counter-point-of-view is, in fact, unethical. I provided a counter-point statement: "Pro-life is a term used to describe the political and ethical view which maintains that all human beings, including the unborn, have the unalienable right to life." Would you approve if that were the first statement on the pro-life page? Instead, we find the following: "Pro-life campaigners argue that these issues concern the inalienable 'right to life' of what they believe are human beings." Key words: "campaigners argue," "what they believe are"; "right to life" is in scare quotes. Contrast that with "the ... ethical view which maintains that ..." LotR 17:45, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry you don't agree, but you are demonstrably wrong about what these words mean, so I will have to disregard your opinion on this matter. Thank you for understanding. Al 18:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, but you haven't demonstrated anything, aside from an unwillingness to work with other editors who may not share your personal viewpoints. LotR 20:55, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Again, yes, I whole-heartedly approve the counterexamle you suggest, as the first page of the pro-life page, no less. Please put it there now. Note that, in order to bring out the meaning you're reading, it's necessary to include the definite article "the" before the phrase "ethical view". Reading "political and ethical view" to mean "a view about politics, which is also ethically correct" is abuse of English.
That other sentence you quoted from pro-life is crap. That article being poorly written is no excuse to screw up this one. -GTBacchus(talk) 17:55, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
OK; I did read the statement to mean "a view about politics, which is also ethically correct." English is subtle sometimes; but I now understand your distinction. I certainly will have no problem with the statement with the counter-point on the Pro-Life page. I think it would be appropriate to replace the current sentence on that page with this one. LotR 20:55, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Note this page of Google search results for the phrase "opposing ethical views", a phrase which, by your reading, would be an oxymoron. Note the highly reputable sources (National Institute of Health, US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation, The Heritage Foundation) using that phrase, clearly intending the word "ethical" to mean "related to ethics". -GTBacchus(talk) 18:00, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
No, this was precisely my point -- there are opposing ethical views on this issue and that one of those views shouldn't be presented as the correct one. LotR 20:55, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
We're very close to understanding each other. If "ethical" means "ethically correct", there couldn't be two "opposing ethical views". If "ethical" means "having to do with ethics", then there can certainly be two opposing ethical views. -GTBacchus(talk) 21:20, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes -- thanks for clarifying. I was taking "ethical" to mean the opposite of "unethical." But "ethical" does have more than one meaning, and I had not considered this first meaning of "having to do with ethics," which is perfectly acceptable. I would like get consensus about the counter-point. I have no problem with Al's modification of the sentence. LotR 22:13, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Al, would you agree that the counterexample sentence offered by LotR is perfectly acceptable for describing the pro-life position? -GTBacchus(talk) 18:38, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Let's see, are we talking about:
"Pro-life is a term used to describe the political and ethical view which maintains that all human beings, including the unborn, have the unalienable right to life."
If so, my problem with it would be "the unborn". I'd change it to:
"Pro-life is a term used to describe the political and ethical view which maintains that all human beings have the unalienable right to life, and that this includes fetuses."
Of course, this change has nothing to do with the phrase "ethical view", which is just fine. Al 18:40, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with this wording. LotR 20:55, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think you understand the context of the work ethical in the sentence. It is not in any way taking any stance on the rights or wrongs of the issue. It is simply saying that the subscribers to the pro-choice belief believe it is an issue of right and wrong, ie, it is an ethical issue. So do Pro-lifers. They too see it as an ethical issue. That is standard usage that features in textbooks, in academic courses, and in millions of uses worldwide by everyone. You are attaching a meaning to it that simply does not exist. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 21:17, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes; I think we clarified the misunderstanding above. I was taking "ethical" to mean the opposite of "unethical." LotR 22:13, 29 May 2006 (UTC)