Minor rant...

[conuly]

I hatehateHATE the phrase "pro-life". Hate it with a vengeance. Many people who call themselves "pro-life" actually support the death penalty, and apparently don't see the hypocrisy. To my mind, unless the phrase is "pro-human-life", the only people who should be allowed to call themselves "pro-life" are antiwar, antideathpenalty, antiabortion VEGETARIANS. Possibly vegans, as all those animals get killed eventually. Still, reasonably, I'll allow them to pretend that pro-life means just humans. Guess what? They still shouldn't use that unless they're anti-war/deathpenalty. Anti-abortion works just as well and is less misleading, and it doesn't create a false sense of moral superiority. That attitude only works unless there isn't a moral dilemma, such as "is the mother's life at stake?" (unbelievably, some activists would not support abortion in such cases) or "does the fetus have some invariably fatal/painfully incurable disease?". Or even "can the mother afford to take care of the child?" Very few of the self-proclaimed "pro-lifers" are willing to adopt children to prevent them from being aborted. There are a few organizations which do do that, and they are to be commended.

Now, mind you, when I talk about "a false sense of moral superiority", I dislike "pro-choice" on the same grounds. However, I am less antagonistic towards it because 1. choice is not as strong a moral term as life and 2. I can't think of any good alternative. Pro-life could be anti-abortion, but it's absurd to call pro-choice pro-abortion, as many pro-choicers are against abortions, but feel that it is not society's place to condemn them. If somebody can come up with a good alternative name for "pro-choice", I'll gladly adopt/promote it.

Comments

[feathered.livejournal.com]

This isn't at all related to your post, but I came across these icon sites while randomly googling, and I thought of you because you'd mentioned star wars icons, I think? Anyway, here they are: http://www.livejournal.com/community/starwarsicons/ and http://www.angelfire.com/stars3/details15/icons/starwars/starwars.html

There's prolly tons more, but I wasn't searching specifically for star wars icons, so I dunno.

[conuly]

Thankies! Can't take one now, full up....