Regular readers of my award-winning column know that for many years I have been saying that the term “choice” does not cut it anymore. I’ve argued that the term does not resonate with people anymore, especially the younger generation that. And it has been co-opted by numerous banks, telephone companies and the like. Everyone has climbed on the “choice” bandwagon and supporters of legal abortion have suffered as a consequence.
Well, there is finally some movement on this end. But it’s the usual good news, bad news scenario.
According to the New York Times, the term “pro-choice” has “fallen from favor, a victim of changed times and generational preferences,” which is exactly what I’ve been saying. ”This is particularly true of a generation of women who have lived with legal abortion since they were born.” The change “is something that we have been talking about for several years,” said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood. “I just think the ‘pro-choice’ language doesn’t really resonate particularly with a lot of young women voters. We’re really trying to focus on, what are the real things you’re going to lose? Sometimes that’s rights. Sometimes that’s economic or access to health care for you or for your kids.” No pithy phrase has yet to replace “pro-choice” but, according to the article, activists are considering “women’s health” and “economic security.”
And that is the bad news.
For about forty years, the most controversial issue of our time has been about whether or not ABORTION should be legal. Numerous groups have been formed for opponents and proponents of abortion rights. Supreme Court decisions, books, movies, and endless columns and opinion pieces have been devoted to ABORTION. But the groups that advocate for this right have for too long cloaked their message under the label “pro-choice.” ABORTION has been this big dead elephant in the middle of the room and our side has run away from it. This has confused or at least failed to influence a new generation to the point where we continue to lose support for the basic right. Not to mention the endless attacks – many successful – on access to this right.
And what is the result of our not talking about ABORTION? It leaves a pretty big vacuum in the public discourse that has been successfully filled by opponents of the procedure. Thus, there remains today a very negative stigma about abortion – and the women who receive them.
So, while I am thrilled that our friends are getting ready to ditch the term “pro-choice,” it looks like they are still not ready to talk about the real issue: ABORTION. And that will only help perpetuate the abortion stigma. And that plain sucks.
Abortion - Abortion Clinics, Abortion Pill, Abortion Information 
August 3, 2014 at 1:44 pm
If choice means abortion, Pat, even many women are anti-choice. And of course the people who are murdered are 100% anti-choice.
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August 5, 2014 at 9:16 am
Oh, I have no doubt that there are women who are not pro-choice. Whether or not it’s “many” is a question that we probably cannot answer. As for those little ones who were “murdered”, I’m not sure how you polled them and got their opinions but …..
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August 5, 2014 at 11:33 am
Comon Pat, that’s quibbling. And as for polling, comon again. Would any sane person say yes if you asked her or him for permission to poison him, to pull off his arms and legs, to crush his head so you could pull him through a narrow opening?
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August 3, 2014 at 2:30 pm
Most young women don’t believe that they will lose the right to choose whether to continue or end their pregnancies, but in some states, they effectively already have.
The term pro-choice will return when it again has the meaning it had when it arose. That is, when those young women figure out that the restriction of abortion access in particular states is just the beginning of the anti-choice onslaught, and that they don’t have what they thought they did. They will be outraged by the invasion of their privacy and perhaps the insulting refusal to acknowledge that a woman’s body grows into a person something that is not capable of growing into a person in a petri dish supplied with oxygen and nutrients. Then, they will understand what pro-choice means.
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August 4, 2014 at 6:03 am
I share your sentiments. When there is sufficient outrage and sufficient women who vote, then pro-choice sentiment–regardless of the favored term–will be the driving force. Pro Choice, as badly as it has been coopted, really means having the choice to abort, to parent or to adopt. The co-optation of the term is evident in the rhetoric of activists who call themselves pro life. Their choices are abstinence, parenting or adoption. Not much of a choice for women who do not want to be pregnant. Not much of a realistic set of options for women who are sexually active with men who are sexually active. I purposefully point out that men are part of the sexually active equation, in heterosexual coupling, because all too often the so-called pro life crowd focuses only on women for their special brand of judgment.
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August 5, 2014 at 9:18 am
I guess that’s the point of my piece, “prochoice.” I think the term will never come back or at least not be as effective as it was. And, indeed, I hope it doesn’t back. We’ve just got to stop skirting around the issue, and the issue is legal abortion.
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August 3, 2014 at 4:27 pm
Please rewrite this: “They will be outraged by the invasion of their privacy and perhaps the insulting refusal to acknowledge that a woman’s body grows into a person something that is not capable of growing into a person in a petri dish supplied with oxygen and nutrients.”
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August 3, 2014 at 5:30 pm
I personally laud the change because it’s clear that the younger generation is appalled at the dweebs making laws that violate women’s human rights, disgusted with the trolls outside abortion clinics [realizing that they are dinosaurs from another long gone generation] and, most laudable, enthused that they will take over their own bodily autonomy. They don’t need the direction from religion, lawmakers or horny old Catholic men who hang out hoping to talk to a pregnant woman about her sexual life.
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August 4, 2014 at 4:47 am
Alice…wonderful comment!! You have said it all!! Pat and I have always thought that “OUR SIDE” has always tried to RUN away from the “A” word!! They dressed it up with PRO-CHOICE feeling that it made people in social circles more comfortable…others don’t seem to re-act quite as strongly to that word!! I have found myself that most people get confused about the “choice” issue!!
Pro-choice….Pro-life!! John-Q public that doesn’t have a “dog: in the fight gets confused as to “which” side is “which”!! Because yes PRO-CHOICE to me and PRO-LIFE are the same!! We believe that PRO-CHOICE means you believe you have a right to decide whether or not you want to have an abortion….PRO-LIFE means to me that you are for the LIFE of the woman!! You believe that her LIFE is valuable and she is entitled to SAFE & LEGAL ABORTION services!! Her LIFE is valuable and and NO-ONE should be able to legislate to take away a woman’s right for a SAFE & LEGAL MEDICAL PROCEDURE….because of RELIGIOUS beliefs!! After all… the pilgrims came to “new world” because they wanted “FREEDOM” WHEN IT CAME TO THEIR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS!! NOW IT SEEMS THAT THE RELIGIOUS FANATICS ARE TRYING TO “RUN THE SHOW”!! BY IMPOSING THEIR BELIEFS ON US….We can NOT stand for this any longer!!! We have to make sure our elected officials are NOT going to impose their RELIGIOUS BELIEFS INTO THE LAWS THAT ARE PASSED!! If you are against abortion….you should NOT have one!! However, if I am pregnant…and need or want to terminate that pregnancy…it is NOT your business,,,except to make sure that I am entitled to have a SAFE & LEGAL PROCEDURE given to me by me physician using his medical expertise …NOT regulated by federal government that knows NOTHING about my medical history!!
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August 4, 2014 at 5:39 am
Many of the young adults have been misinformed at schools by the misguided ignorance of abstinence education which is nothing more than puritanical fear and shame wrapped up in simpleton phraseology like that promoted by Nancy Reagan’s “Just say No” campaign on drug use. And while her philosophy, if you could call it that, was a clever PR stunt, history shows that the Reagans made the drug war worse. The parallels to alcohol prohibition and sexuality prohibition is appallingly obvious. Prohibition was a disaster foisted on the American people, like anti sexuality, by legislators and by tyrants who protested outside places of business. Now, here we are again, trying to legislate morality according to a narrow religious sect that resembles Sharia law but is known as the conservative GOP. Their followers push legislation based on faith and not fact or science, write abstinence-only education programs into school curricula, protest outside abortion clinics and push pamphlets full of SSDD [Same Stuff—lies, fears and more lies–offered in a Doom and Damned framework] and drive their daughters to purity balls, thereby reducing these young women’s worth to their hymen, all for the perverted effort to save their virginity. In other words, the schools do little to educate adolescents about their human sexuality while inflicting too much misinformation. By the time they are sexually active and on their own, both males and females learn really quickly how little they know that is valuable to their well-being and how very little most of the conservative christians in the GOP gives a rat’s patootie about their lives.
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August 4, 2014 at 9:08 am
LDM, juxtaposing capital letters drives me crazy; Alice, stop disparaging faith. We all live by it. Mine says you are a human being even before you are born, yours says you are a raccoon. We try to select a faith that makes sense.
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August 4, 2014 at 1:13 pm
Faith is how you feel about the complexities of life as you understand them; belief is the rationale you develop to explain your faith. Religion simply employs both concepts for its own ends.
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August 4, 2014 at 5:56 pm
next question
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August 5, 2014 at 9:22 am
Yeah, what Charles said
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August 5, 2014 at 9:22 am
I was once a raccoon?
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August 5, 2014 at 11:38 am
You were something alive and growing. Take your pick — carrot, raccoon, great white shark, human being. Now which of those picks makes sense?
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August 5, 2014 at 9:21 am
And Lorraine speaks from experience: she used to run an abortion clinic.
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August 5, 2014 at 11:38 am
IT STILL DRIVES ME NUTS.
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August 3, 2014 at 6:57 pm
So they take direction from Satan.
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August 4, 2014 at 4:37 pm
Here’s a woman who writes about the week BEFORE she has an abortion:
http://act.alternet.org/go/50011?t=1006&akid=12087.282896.dlmtw7
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August 5, 2014 at 11:45 am
“my life will go on once I carry out this decision that is totally and completely right for me” and her life will end in a most horrible way — ah, the me generation
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August 5, 2014 at 4:43 pm
At the killing mill I often present myself as the voice of one who has no voice yet. Let me be here the voice of Jenny Kutner’s daughter:
As Mom waited to speak with a counselor at a New York Planned Parenthood last weekend, I felt a wave of horror at the thought of being so far from home. Really, it was horrible to realize Mom could easily decide to have me tortured to death in this horrible city where no one would persuade her to question, regret or alter that choice. There are no mandated ultrasounds in New York; no possibly life-saving scripts for the doctors to read; no shortage of dens of horror because any legal help for me is non-existent and they can grow like the cancer they are. I cursed the stars, for maybe the first time in my life, that I was not in Texas.
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August 6, 2014 at 8:58 am
I finished that article, Chuck. All my best stuff comes from pro-deathers. Read Jenny and you’ll see why I changed the name of my newsletter from skyp (Stop Killing Young People) to aim (Abortion is Murder) to cim (“Contraception” is Murder).
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August 5, 2014 at 3:27 pm
Young adults I’ve listened to, say that their own bodily autonomy is paramount. And while they have a measured respect for the potential of a fetus, they certainly don’t quibble about the nonsense surrounding the term “choice” because it has been used, abused, coopted. Nor do they waffle about abortion talk. They know that adoption is an alternative to parenting, not to abortion. They know that abortion is an alternative to pregnancy, that they are not interchangeable options/choices. They respect that people have very real reasons to discontinue their pregnancy and that none of their reasons are any other individual’s business.
Frankly, I see this as a sign of a healthy and informed perspective on sex, sexuality, pregnancy, abortion and the sexually transmitted infections. Perhaps, our nation will finally get out of their puritanical, shame-filled darkness to embrace the fullness of our humanity including our sexuality.
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August 5, 2014 at 4:15 pm
Alice, did you actually write this: “Frankly, I see this as a sign of a healthy and informed perspective on sex, sexuality, pregnancy, abortion, the sexually transmitted infections, and murder.”?
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August 6, 2014 at 12:46 pm
I believe we need to consider that pro choice originally meant that a woman had the knowledge and power to control her life—both politically and personally. But those who attempt to control women’s reproductive lives are reluctant to speak about the intersections of knowledge and power. For example, when so-called prolifers offer their version of choice, what they are really offering is a take-it-or-leave-it deal to remain pregnant to either parent or adopt. This is not a choice if the woman does not want to be pregnant. It’s a power play to control the outcome of a pregnancy.
In another example, Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) are predators that mimic reproductive health care facilities. Like predators in the wild, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, CPC staff prey on vulnerable women. Rather than offer scientifically accurate information, in the spirit of knowledge-is-power, they bombard women with misinformation, stigmatize abortion and birth control, shame them for their sexuality and intimidate with aggressive tactics.
And other examples include what follows. When legislators use their power to pass ideologically- and politically-based laws and regulations allegedly to protect women’s health at abortion clinics, they are essentially creating backdoor bans on abortion. When professionals use their power to refuse health care to women because of their conscience, women are harmed and their human rights are violated. When health care to women is refused by the power of an institution, women are harmed and their human rights are violated.
The above are just a few ways that power and knowledge intersect and a few points to ponder as we consider new candidates for prochoice term.
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August 6, 2014 at 2:11 pm
A response to most arguments supporting legal murder pops into my head before I even finish reading the arguments. No here though.
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August 6, 2014 at 7:32 pm
Not here though.
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August 7, 2014 at 6:25 am
Rebranding on any issue can be the best way to deal with confusion or loss of understanding. It would be nice to think we are all “pro women’s health” – the zealous anti-abortion/anti-reproductive activists for all restrictive legislation and TRAP proposals have been misleadingly using that very term for quite some time…It will be interesting to see how PP plans to transition away from “pro-choice” to “pro women’s health” in a way that distinguishes, instead of muddies, the intent. Regardless how changing terms/labels occurs (or not), yes, Pat, “abortion” is acceptable and there should be no hesitation to use the term. It is, after all, a medical term…miscarriages are recorded as “spontaneous abortions” in fact.
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August 7, 2014 at 7:47 am
You’re right Kimmie. Before murder became legal, among medical people abortion meant miscarriage. That’s one of the reasons the killers and their helpers were able to get murder legalized.
Pro women’s health might work. Certainly pro female health wouldn’t when you realize more than half of the murdered are female.
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August 8, 2014 at 9:42 am
Murder is now legal??
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August 9, 2014 at 10:37 am
Yup, Pat, in every abortion someone is murdered. She don’t die by herself. She’s tracked down and squashed or pulled apart.
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August 7, 2014 at 8:07 am
It is interesting that the so-called “pro-lifer” response to all comments about “choice” here center upon the word “murder.” That tactic is central to the movement’s success: The more they can gull the public into focusing on an abhorrent concept, the less they will be held to account for their lack of nurture of children.
At bottom, the so-called “pro-life” movement is a collection of individuals who choose to deal with their own disturbing feelings by ascribing them to the fact that people will have an abortion. If they were to focus instead on the needs of children– food, clothing, shelter and nurture– they would be faced with the fact that a lot of what they find wrong with the world comes from people who are working through their own childhood issues, and that supporting women, mothers and parents rather than just compelling pregnancy will make the world far better.
In America, about thirty percent of people were never intended to be born. A good number of them wish they’d never been born. They can be very unpleasant in many ways. They were never nurtured by the so-called “pro-lifers.” Their mother could have made them very happy– and done a favor for themselves, friends, neighbors and society in general– by having aborted them.
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August 7, 2014 at 9:14 am
In my young life, I was forced to marry a man who, on learning I was pregnant, told me that I was damaged goods, that no one would have me except him. I believed that for quite a long time. Had abortion been an option, I surely would have had one. But I was so naive that I didn’t know enough to even seek such a procedure even though it would be decades before abortion was legal. Instead, I had a beautiful daughter who I love dearly. But the shame that this man inflicted on me and the shame that so many “pro-lifers” inflict on perfect strangers is morally repugnant to me.
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August 7, 2014 at 11:34 am
Chuck, very few people aside from yourself wish they had never been born. You think everyone’s like you.
Alice, you have a beautiful daughter you wish you’d been able to kill. Makes no sense.
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August 7, 2014 at 1:01 pm
People who are not sociopaths realize that they do not have a right to feel good at the expense of someone else’s suffering.
So-called “pro-lifers” could offer to pay the $240,000 it takes to raise a baby to age 18, ensuring almost 100 percent that the child would not only do del in school, but would be on track for college and given proper nurture every step of the way.
But they don’t.
They only want to be able to feel good knowing that something that bothers them– abortion– is not available to anybody.
Some years ago on this site I detailed the probabilities for dozen of fates that await every newborn. Nothing– from murdering to facing one’s own murder– bothered them as much as their fantasy about abortion. This is sociopathy.
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August 7, 2014 at 1:22 pm
I give up not
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August 7, 2014 at 4:58 pm
Linda Greenhouse’s article in the August 6, New York Times, “A Right Like Any Other: New Judicial Approaches to Abortion Rights,” is a smart response to the Alabama judge’s decision that will keep clinics open. Plus, it’s appropriate to Pat’s article. So, in addition to issues of power and knowledge, autonomy, and the humanity of women, perhaps a new phrase, a replacement for prochoice, would include or infer a rights issue. As one of the commenters wrote: “Rights without access are not rights.”
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August 8, 2014 at 4:07 am
imply
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August 7, 2014 at 5:11 pm
More from the NY Times, as the word —–ABORTION—- is openly and unashamedly discussed and printed in major newspapers. This time, letters to the editor, shared, in part, here:
From Jennifer Dalven Director, Reproductive Freedom Project American Civil Liberties Union, an astute observation about the GOP’s BS about having compassion for women. As she writes, “actions speak far louder than words.”
In the last three years, politicians have passed more obstacles for a woman seeking an abortion than were passed in the previous decade. In Texas, the Legislature gutted access not only to abortion but also to birth control. Other legislatures across the country put women at risk by ignoring the advice of the American Medical Association and passing laws to close down abortion clinics.
To demonstrate real compassion, politicians must stop stripping women of the right to make the best decision for themselves and their families, and support policies that truly help women and families, like paid family and sick leave and protections against pregnancy discrimination.
And from Susan Wysocki, board chairwoman of Catholics for Choice, “Advocates across the spectrum of labels, whether reproductive health, rights or justice groups, agree that women’s right to make the critical decisions about whether, when and how to form their families simply cannot be divorced from the reality of how those choices affect their autonomy and health.”
Note the word “right” cropping up.
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August 8, 2014 at 9:45 am
I’m sorry but using the word “right” ain’t gonna cut it for those of us who wish to remove the abortion stigma. And many women will continue to feel shame and it will still be difficult to find doctors who will perform the, uh, uh……ABORTION
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August 8, 2014 at 10:58 am
I’m confused, Pat. You use the word “right” yourself, several times but say nothing about stigma or shame. You also mention that the prochoice label confused or failed to influence the younger generation. I would agree that the label is tired. The good news, according to Pew, Gallup and other standard-bearing polls, is that the majority of the younger generation supports abortion, same sex marriage and a host of other social issues. It’s also true that while the numbers are low, there are younger docs, in med school and in their residencies, who are rising to the need for and right to abortion care.
As far as shame, that’s a cultural artifact that will take time to shift. When I was growing up, we never said the big C word (cancer) in polite company. Divorce was also a no-no. Times change and so will our culture’s view on talking about abortion.
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August 8, 2014 at 5:48 am
From an August 4 AdWeek article, six ad women talk about how to rebrand the tired term prochoice. And guess what? They use the language of rights and health equality and personal freedom that is pro woman.
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August 8, 2014 at 7:50 am
Hate to tell you this, Alice, and not only because it upsets Chuckles so, but the word you and the six women are trying like crazy to avoid, and never will be able to avoid, is murder. Deal with it.
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August 8, 2014 at 5:48 am
Here’s the link from AdWeek
http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/how-would-you-rebrand-pro-choice-159221
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August 8, 2014 at 12:38 pm
I’m with Sandy Sabean.
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August 8, 2014 at 1:25 pm
I agree with your vote for Sabean. She hits the nail on the head when she writes that those opposed to abortion are opposed to choice. They opposed to birth control, abortion, sex and, among some of the more radicalized, voting.
Imagine all the rage that these antichoicers would experience if they ever learned that their wives and daughters had abortions. Knowing all too well that their husbands and fathers would not “allow” them the choice to abort, these women, as all providers know throughout the period since Roe became legal, had their abortion and got on with their lives. Under the guise of visiting a sister, needing a D& C for allegedly having polyps, helping a friend in another city or taking the daughter on a college visit or shopping trip, women have and will continue to have reasons to abort, even in religious families, even in conservative families, even when happily married.
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August 8, 2014 at 2:02 pm
Worse than that is their inability to sacrifice for children they insisted come into this world. At least almost all of the parents who have unwanted children do far better. I think it shows just how self-centered the so-called “pro-lifers” are: They don’t care about children, much less the “sacredness” of human life; they just want to feel good. Dunkle himself is a good example of just that.
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August 8, 2014 at 5:46 pm
If they believed in the sacredness of human life, which you believe they do not (and I agree wholeheartedly), they would not treat women at abortion clinics with such egregious malice. They simply are incapable of seeing the sacred in those with whom they disagree. They delude themselves when they claim otherwise. As my mother, a southerner from way back, used to say, “them folks are just damn fool idgits, meaner than junkyard dogs.”
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August 8, 2014 at 7:24 pm
Ali? Chuck? Are the rants over?
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August 9, 2014 at 3:58 am
More than that, Al, every pregnant woman at one time during the pregnancy wishes not to be pregnant, and that’s when loving husbands and fathers, the stronger sex, should enter.
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August 9, 2014 at 4:27 am
cake flour grams to cups
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August 9, 2014 at 6:56 am
best brightest flashlight
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August 9, 2014 at 2:28 pm
17 & 18 you Chuck? You used to do stuff like this.
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August 10, 2014 at 6:40 am
Here’s something else to consider when rebranding prochoice—safety. The anti women, anti choice folks have a dreadful history of violence. They continue to use violence as a weapon against the very women they want to help. From micro aggressions outside abortion clinics to bullets in the head, the [anti] pro lifers have been and continue to be violent.
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August 10, 2014 at 8:05 am
Absurd, Al.ice. Every year more than a million innocent people are tortured to death. Every five years one of the serial killers is terminated quickly. And you conclude from that that we prolifers “have a dreadful history of violence”?
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August 10, 2014 at 6:42 am
Sorry, here’s the link from MSNBC http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/women-choice-abortion-violence.
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August 10, 2014 at 12:18 pm
I got about half way through and concluded every word is a lie including “and” and “the.”
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