General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Have democrats largely given up on protecting a woman's right to choose? [View all]Ms. Toad
(34,060 posts)By truly pro-life, I mean people who find war, capital punishment, lack of access to resources which support life, and so on reprehensible.
Calling what a woman carries in her uterus just a fetus, embryo, or a clump of cells, is disingenuous. Every parent-to-be I know, anticipating the birth of a wanted child, thinks of what she is carrying as a child long before the day of birth and so do those around her. Every parent-to-be I know who miscarries a wanted child, particularly later in the pregnancy, grieves the loss of his or her child - not a clump of cells.
I support a woman's right to choose at least through the second trimester, but the rhetoric and intellectual dishonesty used on DU and in discussions outside of DU to disparage people who struggle with the reality of abortion, because it really is difficult to reconcile with a deeply held pro-life view, and the condescension which ignores the reality of how we all think of what a woman is carrying - except when we talk about abortion - make it a discussion which is not possible to hold on DU.
The question is not as black and white as the insistence in recent discussions (not just on DU), and I choose not to engage in a discussion which insists I am imagining the grey. Frankly, until we acknowledge and can have honest respectful discussions about the grey areas, I think the threat to women's right to have safe and legal abortions will always be one bad election away.