There are over 300 M people in the US, 4 million is a small fraction. They are an activist group.
With a lot of political stroke.
AIPAC has only 3 million members, to put that in perspective, and that's an organization that basically dictates our middle east foreign policy and can kneecap a candidate with the stroke of a pen.
It's not the position of advocates (activists). So what. Show me where they attack the use of that phrase as "anti-woman" or anti-choice or what ever thing you claimed.
Hey there! If you care about abortion access—and we hope you do—you probably don’t want to use stigmatizing language about abortion. Our “Destigmatizing Abortion” series breaks down some of the mistakes a lot of us can make in our advocacy journey. Today, let’s talk about the phrase: “abortion...
nwlc.org
"This idea comes directly from the anti-choice movement"
The just society we want to see includes anyone being able to have an abortion—for any reason, at any time. It’s a safe, effective medical procedure, just as getting your blood drawn, having an IUD inserted, or getting a vaccine. Why would we ever want that to be rare?
Jessica Valenti: Agreeing with anti-choice activists on even that single word hurts women and the cause of reproductive rights
www.theguardian.com
Agreeing with anti-choice activists on even that single word "rare" hurts women and the cause of reproductive rights
There is a third alternative: it is a neutral thing. I would have thought a reflexive centrist like yourself would find that nugget of neutrality.
It's not neutral, in the same way I don't see things like Narcan or needle exchanges as neutral.
I see it as an unfortunate thing that's slightly less bad than the thing it's aiming to mitigate.
I use the that comparison because that's another thing where it's unfortunately sometimes needed to stave off a worse outcome, but that we as a society should be striving to make the need for it as rare as possible.
But happens when the "emergency last resort" thing ends up being viewed as an "everyday convenience" is that it makes people less careful and enables bad decision making.
While we shouldn't make "marginally better" the enemy of "perfect", the flip side of the coin is that we shouldn't be getting so complacent where we're content with just "marginally better than the worst possible outcome".
In order to be neutral, it should at the very least somewhere close to the middle of the spectrum between the best possible outcome and the worst possible outcome.
On the spectrum of
Responsible safe sex practices <-> Unsafe sex that ends unwanted parenthood
"Let's just go ahead and do it unprotected because the abortion option is on the table if something bad happens" is something I see as being much closer to the right hand side of that spectrum.
Per the NIH estimates (and Guttmacher, although, they may be relying on the NIH stats), fewer than half of people receiving an abortion between 2000-2014 were using contraception.
ScienceDirect actually delves into the data a little deeper:
They peg the number here:
Roughly 70% of unintended pregnancies are due to non-use of contraception.
The percentage of all married or cohabiting women who use no method despite wishing to avoid pregnancy and who are thus defined as having an unmet need for any family planning method was estimated in 2015 to be 9.7%
So even if we remove the fewer than 3% that take place due to rape/health issues. And remove the 9% who are dealing with an unmet need for a family planning method (whether it be lack of access, or lack of affordability)...
that still equates to a lot of people (who weren't raped, aren't having a health issue, and who could've been using birth control, but didn't) who've gotten complacent with the idea of using the procedure in place of contraception.
That type of irresponsibility should be as "rare" as possible, correct? At the very least, it shouldn't be incentivized by making it a "it's no big deal" type situation.
I don't remember what the Hyde amendment is.
Prohibits federal tax dollars from being used to pay for abortion services
OK, I stopped reading. I'm not interested in the "gun analogies".
But it's a valid analogy, because it shows the aspect of "reactive politics" playing out in the opposite direction.
There was a time when republicans were more "centrist" on guns (even Reagan was against people owning certain types of guns that he referred to as
weapons of war that shouldn't be out on the streets). The left didn't really ramp up their efforts to crack down on guns until a noteworthy number of people on the right started suggesting that they should own the types of guns that are hotly disputed today.
The comparison has parallels. Sure, there were some on the left who weren't thrilled about guns, but when "well, I'm not thrilled about my neighbor having a shotgun and a 357 magnum...but I guess it's a reality I'll have to learn to live with" turned into "my neighbor's got a virtual armory in their closet of high power rifles with drum mags", that's when you really started seeing some aggressive pushes from the left for gun control.
Much like the left's aggressively-ramped, noticeably upticked pushes for things like assault weapons bans and more stringent guns laws didn't magically appear in a vacuum in the 90's (it was a reaction to something that was occurring in society). The right's big pushes for abortion restrictions that aggressively "went up a notch" in the 2010's didn't occur in a vacuum either.
