Why no argument for abortion has ever worked.

[Bootstoots]

If morality is relative then it doesn't exist.

Knowing what is moral or not, that is not guaranteed. But if something is moral, then it was always moral, regardless of culture, acceptance, tradition, or legality.

One does not subscribe to the theory that morality is objective because they have all the answers and can write them down in a book and therefore have the final word. Morality, like scientific truth, like mathematical truth, is not fluid. While there's always going to be an epistemological argument about whether or not the truth can be known with certainty, I'm of the opinion moral truth exists, just like scientific or mathematical truth, or historical truth.

It is there to be explored and discovered, weighed carefully, and debated. But if for instance, raping someone is morally wrong, then it is so independent of whether or not it is legally permissible, traditionally acceptable, popular, or even if it is thought to be morally correct.

Then, it is our understanding of what is moral that is incorrect. The rightness or wrongness of a particular moral value hasn't changed based on our understanding or interpretation of things, any more than the value of 2+2 would change if someone didn't quite understand arithmetic, nor would the Earth be the center of the universe if someone erroneously thought it was.

Our personal understanding of morality may be flawed, but objective morality exists, or there is no morality, only popular opinion or one's private opinion. If all opinions are equally valid or morality were to change based on a popularity contest then morality isn't real.

I do not agree with such a premise. Objective morality is the only kind left that exists as an option. Whether I personally have mastered understanding it or not, it is out there to be understood as much as possible.

But why do you believe this? How is it that there's actually an answer to what is morally right, or is it just your personal preference?

I also take issue with one specific thing: the claim that if no objective morality exists, then morality as a whole doesn't exist. It can absolutely still exist, but in a diminished form: it's just a set of preferences built into a human brain by evolutionary processes. Some moralities work better than others at keeping human society functioning well enough to provide a survival advantage, so naturally we ended up with moral preferences that mirror that. It's still not clear that this proves slavery wrong, but there are good game-theoretic reasons to believe that a society that doesn't punish murderers while valuing sharing of food is not going to make it for long against a society that has the opposite preference.

 

[Askthepizzaguy]

But why do you believe this? How is it that there's actually an answer to what is morally right, or is it just your personal preference?

It is self-evident in many cases and has absolutely nothing to do with opinion, mine or otherwise. Unless you count the definitions of words as being subjective. They can be used subjectively, but can also have objectively defined constraints.

Let's say we weren't talking about morality, but we were talking about chess. Is a move that we make right or wrong? Well, the answer is complicated, and there isn't always one correct answer, but sometimes, there is an objectively correct answer. If you make a move which leaves you vulnerable to a checkmate in one, and you had other, better options, then you made the wrong move. If you make a move which is checkmate, you've made the correct move. If you make a move which creates a forced checkmate in the least number of moves, it is the correct move. In some positions, the outcomes of every move can be fully and completely calculated out, leading to objectively correct or incorrect moves, some to varying degrees of correctness or incorrectness. These could be quantified mathematically- forced mate in one, forced mate in two, a forced draw, or a forced mate against you in X number of moves, as ranked correctness. In any position where the possibilities of every outcome hasn't been fully analyzed (yet), and as is pertinent to real life where the outcomes of our actions cannot always be fully analyzed, there are still some objectively correct or incorrect choices that we can make.

I can choose to try to forcibly rape someone, for example. And I could lay out a very objective and rational case for why that is self-evidently immoral.

Taking rape as an example for the purposes of this discussion, because it is something very self-evident and quite uncomplicated. (Morality is not binary or absolute, however, and some moral questions are difficult to guess.)

If we are to objectively define "incorrect" moral choices in this discussion, we could define them quite similarly to the above example regarding chess. In chess, what is correct is what leads to a win, or a draw if the alternative is a loss. What is incorrect, in the field of morality, depends on what "moral" means. If moral means whatever I want it to mean, then it is simply opinion and everyone has opinions and they sometimes are in conflict.

But if you define morality in objective terms, such as objective "harm" or objective "necessity", you start to get somewhere.

For example, in a moral thought experiment, you are asked to give your response to one of the examples of the Trolley Problem, there are choices presented to you. Doing nothing is a choice, and your choices are limited to what is actually a real option to you (wishing or magic is not allowed, you're bound by the laws of physics and the constraints of the real world, as you would be in real life moral decisions).

Under these defined parameters, you are placed in a situation where you are forced to make a choice that you cannot avoid, and inaction is a logical choice.

This situation can be discussed quite objectively. "Necessity" here can be defined as the fact that you are in this situation and have no choice but to make a choice. Necessity can also be defined as the limited options presented to you. To avoid outcome A, necessity dictates you must choose a different option, and the options are limited.

Those terms can be defined, rigorously, moreso than I have done here for illustrative purposes. "Harm" can be defined as well, as the likelihood or near-certainty of death is harm by an objective and logical definition.

Using these terms and standards, we could observe that all outcomes lead to harm or near certainty of harm, and necessity dictates that one outcome will be the result. Under those constraints, one could argue the action taken which results in the least harm, is objectively the least immoral choice.

Rape, on the other hand, is not something that lends itself to a necessity. While one could construct absurd thought experiments (less plausible than the trolley one) where somehow, a rape was the least immoral choice, in the real world and in everyday situations, rape is a willful choice that is never the least immoral one. Inaction would be less immoral in basically all situations, by an objective definition of "immoral", meaning harmful. And one does not realistically consciously and without being mentally impaired put themselves into situations where inaction is no longer an option, as pertains to rape.

Therefore, it is quite easy and self-evident to show that rape is by its intrinsic nature always an immoral choice, and realistically, only in carefully constructed and definitely absurd thought experiments could it ever be considered the least bad choice. As such, rape is for all intents and purposes objectively immoral.

At no point is personal opinion entering into this. It all flows rationally, logically, and consistently from purely objective definitions. The only conceit is that we're describing something using terminology that suffers from the imprecision of language itself, which is why we have to be rigorous when defining terms. Otherwise, the concepts stand on their own merits.

Some situations or positions are more unclear, but that is the easiest example I can think of to demonstrate why an objective morality or at the very least, immorality, exists, in a manner we can define with language.

What remains is to quibble over whether or not rape is always harmful, or to quibble over the definition of harm. But this is merely semantics, akin to arguing that two doesn't actually mean two, because either one of the two could be split into fractions of a whole, and therefore are not always objectively two items forever. But that is semantics, 2 = 2 is an objective mathematical truth, supported by the self-evident nature of reality.

Rape is supportably and self-evidently immoral, by definition. In essentially all circumstances. I only need to prove it by defining it, the evidence is itself. It's not even a difficult question. The only "opinions" entered into the discussion would be that words can be defined and used with logical self-consistency and objective or scientific rigour in the field of moral philosophy. Which is necessary to construct any theory of objective morality anyway.

I also take issue with one specific thing: the claim that if no objective morality exists, then morality as a whole doesn't exist. It can absolutely still exist, but in a diminished form: it's just a set of preferences built into a human brain by evolutionary processes.

I can accept that there are behavioral preferences in a human brain, but given that my own opinion on what is moral has changed over the years, I do not believe that those preferences are absolute and solely a result of evolutionary process. If I can be persuaded to change my position, then evolution has not forced me to take a position.

Some moralities work better than others at keeping human society functioning well enough to provide a survival advantage, so naturally we ended up with moral preferences that mirror that. It's still not clear that this proves slavery wrong, but there are good game-theoretic reasons to believe that a society that doesn't punish murderers while valuing sharing of food is not going to make it for long against a society that has the opposite preference.

Some moral questions may be difficult to answer or are unanswerable in our lifetime. Morality is not a solved game, nor is life, nor (at the present) is chess. Even given our incomplete understanding, knowledge is still possible, and some things are knowable.

Suppose life is like a chess position which has not been fully calculated, all the outcomes are not known yet. But, one can still objectively make a blunder that leads to a forced loss.

Morality is somewhat analogous, in that while there is much we still do not know about it, and it is beyond our capability to fully and exhaustively analyze every single possible moral predicament, some things are still objectively knowable.

Rape is immoral, and it is a (fairly easily) objectively knowable and definable moral stance to have, and factors such as popularity or tradition or my own personal opinions or the culture I am a part of have nothing to do with it. One simply accepts language as being definable, and the rest follows.

If one defines morality as "whatever the mob decides" then, sure, morality is subjective. But then it isn't morality. Then you're taking a distinct other concept (popularity) and amending its definition to suit your purposes, contrary to what an objective measure would be.

Difficult to define, difficult to argue, and easy to dismiss, certainly. But if people are actually concerned with "what is moral?" as opposed to "what I want?" then they have to accept the premise of objective terminology.

 

[Bootstoots]

That's a very interesting answer. I don't think I totally accept it - one thing that jumps out at me right away is that rape is essentially defined as immoral the way that bachelors are defined as unmarried - but I won't be sober awake enough to make a full response until tomorrow technically later today..

 

[Askthepizzaguy]

I probably won't be interested in a full and exhaustive debate on defining what is moral, as it is beyond the scope of this thread and well beyond my own personal reserves of patience. But I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

I'm certainly not the source of answers to all these moral questions, because I don't have all of them answered and I'm still working on them. What I can say is that we have a reasonable framework from which to point out certain things are immoral or not immoral.

Why is being gay not immoral, for example? Why wasn't it immoral even if our society, culture, law, and tradition said it was not that long ago?

Just by using terms like harm and necessity I can point out that objectively it has no moral difference from being straight. And I can point out that attempts to criminalize it do cause real harm, and so does hatred or ostracism of gay persons. That is only the beginning of a rigorous examination of the subject. Conscious choice is another factor I haven't covered fully (and won't) and applies in every moral situation.

If you're looking for absolute conclusions on every subject matter in an easy to read and already finished list, you will be disappointed. But you wouldn't find them in more established and scientific or structured fields of knowledge either. Math is not so simple, physics is not, even the legal system isn't simply a list of what is or isn't legal. Each discipline is a process and there are always more answers to be sought and more and more complex problems to solve, and errors inside the process which need to be resolved.

But it would be pretty easy to frame the woman's right to choose argument in definable moral terms, and it is very easy to demonstrate that removing the option to choose will necessarily cause harm. It would also be easy to prove that forcing people to undergo unwanted abortions also causes harm. Like with the Trolley Problem, sometimes the choices are limited, and either choice causes some measure of harm.

What we choose to do is not always decided by a careful or objective measure. Sometimes our choices are based upon culture, tradition, legal opinion, personal opinion, popular opinion. Sometimes we take a position and defend it because our identity is tied to our politics, and when ideas become our identities we defend them out of pride, ego, and vanity, instead of choosing whichever idea is objectively the most morally correct. Sometimes we're not at all interested in that, we only care about arguing that our position is correct whether it is or it is not. Sometimes we do whatever is the most selfish option.

Sometimes people are capable of reasonable and rational assessment and they'll actually change their minds when presented with an objective and moral argument. Some people aren't capable of doing so, because they've chosen not to. It's far easier and far more gratifying to feel righteous rather than act righteously.

That is the case in pretty much every debate about public policy and private rights, and it is the case here.

What I see are people beginning with different assumptions here.

On the one hand, one set of assumptions are as follows:

A) That certain living human tissue is exactly equivalent to a fully formed human being, at any stage of development or viability, regardless or whether it is a zygote, embryo, or fetus.
B) That such life has preferential value over the human being who is carrying them to term (or choosing not to), and giving such a preference is not immoral and doesn't cause sufficient harm.
C) That any act that causes any form of death to any living collection of unique human cells is exactly equivalent to first degree murder. And to prevent this, all pregnancies must be enforced to term wherever possible by the state, and that this is not immoral.
D) Consent is not a concept that matters to this process, and does not apply to the mother's life. Personal freedom, personal bodily integrity, personal consent, and personal privacy are all secondary concerns, and their removal is not immoral.

Any or all of these assumptions are at work in the anti-choice position. Three of those are objectively immoral stances, the last one is simply a misunderstanding of biology, willful or otherwise.

Sometimes the assumption also involves religious ideas. But if a religion is moral, then it is objectively moral, and therefore objective morality applies here. And we're talking morality which applies to everyone and law which applies to everyone, not religious ideas which apply to a segment of the population which believes it.

If one isn't concerned with morality, but one wants to paint their positions as being righteous and the opposition as being evil, they can do so. But it's not particularly convincing to people who have examined things more objectively.

Another set of assumptions are as follows:

E) A person can choose to become a mother, or they can choose not to, and this is a biological and inarguable fact.
F) That removing the legality of their choice will essentially force unwilling people to bear offspring against their will, and without their consent in many cases, and criminalize one's choice to protect one's own body.
G) That criminalizing abortion may even criminalize miscarriages which occur naturally (if we were to leave it up to a jury to decide), and it isn't always possible to tell whether the miscarriage was deliberate or accidental, and enforcement of the law criminalizing abortion will further invade the privacy of women, and make the internal processes of their own reproductive organs subject to the scrutiny of the state. Whether this is a tolerable condition is left up to the individual, but to force those conditions onto others is an unnecessary harm and therefore immoral.
H) The harm that results from making consent invalid is real, and changing personal choices into a criminal act is unnecessary and immoral.

That's only barely scratching the surface of this issue.

I had an anti-abortion political position a long while ago. When I realized it was objectively immoral, I changed my political position. It's probably impossible to persuade me on the subject, but if it were possible, the way to persuade me would be with objective morality and reasoning and definitions that apply to everyone, not simply an opinion backed by poor assumptions and a whole lot of self-righteousness. Demonizing the opposition is also unlikely to change their mind.

As others have pointed out, the title of the thread "Why no argument for abortion has ever worked" has problems, namely that choice is legal, so the arguments have been working, and that the argument is about legality of choice and consent, not trying to convince people to get abortions or to make them mandatory.

But when you begin with a slew of really bad assumptions, well, threads like these happen. I thought the debate so far has been pretty well argued from the pro-choice side. I think reasonable people can disagree. But I would point to the assumptions made by the anti-choice side as being full of moral failings and the implications of their political position leads to disastrous consequences. The consequences in question would turn the stomach of many a staunch anti-abortion crusader, and cause them to reverse their opinion if confronted with the reality of it, if they had empathy and access to the information showing what happens.

It may be easier to ignore the consequences, but I'll resist that outcome to my dying day.

 

[Askthepizzaguy]

More about consent, especially as pertains to those who toss around the term "murder" so casually-

I bring the subject back to topics like rape and unwanted medical procedures, and ideas like bodily integrity, privacy, consent and choice. These topics aren't unrelated at all. In some cases, removing legal choice from women will involve a person having to suffer through having no recourse in instances of rape, suffering through state mandated medical procedures, and having their privacy and bodily integrity violated, and having their natural ability to consent stripped from them by the state.

To assign as much or more value to zygotes than to fully formed people, individual females supposedly with legal rights and protected freedoms, is to diminish an adult woman to a status of being less protected by legal system and having fewer legal rights than a man. To tell someone they could cut their own hair, remove a tumor from inside themselves, that they can have elective plastic surgery, and undergo any voluntary medical procedure they want, but they have no right over what happens inside their own uterus, and to remove anything inside of it is a crime, is the worst kind of violation by the state.

The pain of childbirth and the complications which may arise are not things to be hand-waved. Caesarian section surgery may be necessary, vaginal tearing or ripping of the perineal tissue may occur, and that's just for starters.

I heartily encourage any opponents of legal choice who casually toss around the word "murderer" to imagine that someone was going to cut their abdomen open against their will, and that it is possible their perineum will be ripped open, not surgically cut, and that they don't really have any choice in the matter. And if they try to stop this from happening, they will be called a murderer for the rest of their life and prosecuted as a criminal.

And now imagine this choice has been given to you after you have already been the victim of a rape.

Sure, it sounds pretty drastic, and maybe it won't be as awful and complicated as all of that. But I'd remind opponents of legal choice, that this is the reality for many underaged women whose bodies aren't ready to give birth. First a child is raped, then the state tells her that she can do nothing about the unwanted mass of tissue growing inside her own body, and that it's possible they'll have to cut her open, and her most sensitive places may literally tear apart due to a childbirth that shouldn't be happening at her age, and that there's even a risk she will die from the trauma, even in our modern age of medicine, because her body just isn't built for this.

Meanwhile, any man anywhere can have any elective surgery he wants and the state cannot force anything inside of him against his will.

Doesn't seem moral or equal or fair to me. But I tell you what, if people want abortions to be illegal, I invite them to demonstrate their commitment to their cause: Get an elective episiotomy. You can of course get the proper pain-killers first, I'm not cruel, you know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episiotomy

No vagina? Any orifice will suffice in a pinch.

As long as you're willing to make something like that potentially mandatory for a little girl who has been raped by her own father, which will happen to some poor girl if you take away the legality of choice...

(and is, tragically, often the case even in a world with technically legal abortion but the girl is a minor and can't get access to the help she needs...)

...then I will at the very least admire your commitment to your cause, and your willingness to live by your own moral standards.

I will still think you're crazy for calling the little girl a murderer. But if you're going to sink to that level, please go ahead and volunteer for an unnecessary elective episiotomy. It's only fair we get really grotesque and graphic and resort to cheap posturing like this instead of debating the matter like civilized adults. I suppose it makes people feel righteous, and we all know feeling righteous is exactly the same as being righteous.

 

[Lexicus]

I disagree entirely, morality is a perspective. Things can only be logically and self-evidently moral in relation to axioms that don't derive from anything.

I think it's possible to argue for things on a moral basis while simultaneously accepting that morality is hazy.

 

[Phrossack]

But why do you believe this? How is it that there's actually an answer to what is morally right, or is it just your personal preference?

I also take issue with one specific thing: the claim that if no objective morality exists, then morality as a whole doesn't exist. It can absolutely still exist, but in a diminished form: it's just a set of preferences built into a human brain by evolutionary processes. Some moralities work better than others at keeping human society functioning well enough to provide a survival advantage, so naturally we ended up with moral preferences that mirror that. It's still not clear that this proves slavery wrong, but there are good game-theoretic reasons to believe that a society that doesn't punish murderers while valuing sharing of food is not going to make it for long against a society that has the opposite preference.

If we're just going by the belief that whatever helps a society outlast others is good, we'll end up in pretty perverted places.

Let's say we have Society A, where most people personally know each other, sustainably produce food, gain meat through hunting, avoid pollution, and abstain from forcing anyone from doing anything, as every adult is recognized as having the inalienable right to make their own decisions without coercion.

Society B has millions of members kept in line through fear of punishment by both the government and by deities who just happen to punish disobedient subjects of the emperor in the afterlife. It has a work force bolstered by enslaved enemies and criminals, ecologically harmful agricultural practices, polluting industry, a set of strict laws with a strong government, a tendency to conquer, forcibly assimilate, enslave, or exterminate every weaker society it encounters, and a practice of ending famines by killing and eating its weakest members. The second society sounds truly awful and immoral--but you can bet Society B will swallow up every Society A it encounters.

In the long run, unless things change, this will inevitably lead to powerful, warlike, increasingly advanced Society B's causing an ecological collapse and probably nuclear war which will bring about their demise, while a world of Society A's would have kept going much longer. But once you introduce a single Society B into the mix, all Society A's must eventually change or die.

Morality and survival are not necessarily the same thing.

 

[Tahuti]

There is a big difference between understanding that cultural hegemony affects people's sense of morality, and claiming that the hegemonic morality is the correct one. Like, yeah, hegemonic narrative affects people's moral sense. Duh, that's a relatively trivial observation. But to then say that the hegemonic narrative is the the right one simply by virtue of its being hegemonic? I will never agree to that. It's also very poor analysis in that it doesn't explain how the hegemonic narrative shifts.

Well, my point being that hegemonic actors frequently change and that if your needs are being violated, it is absolutely valid to break the morality emanating from political hegemons, as to make sure your needs are being fulfilled. These needs may be psychological or physical.

In fact, if you allow yourself to be trampled by conventionalism even though you should know better, you are being lazy.

Rape is immoral, and it is a (fairly easily) objectively knowable and definable moral stance to have, and factors such as popularity or tradition or my own personal opinions or the culture I am a part of have nothing to do with it. One simply accepts language as being definable, and the rest follows.

It actually isn't very easy. The definition of rape has been changed many times: In Roman times, the rapist was a thief; he stole the exclusive rights from her husband to have sex with her. The Romans applied the term to common theft too.

Later, it became redefined as forced sex. I guess you operate from this definition.

Anyway, you might as well argue that its evolutionary advantageous for the human species to do so and thus claim it is right, or at least morally gray. If you consider forced sex unnatural, you will be more easily opposed.

One has to note that the perceived moral consequences of rape, as well as its definition often seemed to have changed in reaction to the way a society works: Modern societies (i.e. advent of modern criminal punishment c.a 1800s) can lock away real or perceived rapists. Once tucked away, they won't be needing to do any social obligations, lest that be tainted by being done by the rapist. That is a luxury smaller sized human bands do not have in case the rapists turns out to be an essential asset to the survival of the group because of his or her skills.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

I oppose people who are anti-choice. I am in favor of a woman's right to choose abortion, if she deems that to be the best choice for her situation. Yes, there are some situations for which I think abortion is the only logical, sane, and even compassionate choice. But I'm not about to scamper around, waving signs in these women's faces, and harassing them into actually having an abortion.

I don't deem it factually inaccurate to label that stance as pro-abortion.

 

[Tahuti]

I don't deem it factually inaccurate to label that stance as pro-abortion.

And there is nothing wrong with that.

Btw, Pro-Life is effectively Natalist. Pro-Choice still takes a middle-ground between Natalism and Anti-Natalism.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

And there is nothing wrong with that.

I never said anything was wrong with that.

 

[Lexicus]

Not even people who get abortions are pro-abortion.

Abortion is a "best of multiple bad outcomes". It's literally like saying someone is pro-amputation because they had to saw off their leg after it got caught in a trap.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Semantics dude. If you're in favour of a thing existing and being available as an option, then you're in favour of a thing. Being in favour of it makes you pro-it.

Also, if some anti-amputation group came along and pressured for the banning of amputation on moral grounds (every limb is sacred or whatever), then I'd absolutely be more than happy to call the opposing group, who pointed out how amputation saves lives and is beneficial, "pro-amputation", because that's exactly what they would be and it would be a good description of them. One doesn't have to try and enforce a thing on everyone, or think that it's the best thing ever, in order to be generally in support of the concept.

 

[Lexicus]

If you're in favour of a thing existing and being available as an option, then you're in favour of a thing.

No, I'm not. I am pro-choice but not pro-abortion.
I would put the question: have you any real-world experience with abortion? Or is this just logic-chopping on the internet totally divorced from reality?

 

[Manfred Belheim]

No, I'm not. I am pro-choice but not pro-abortion.

Pro-"choice to have an abortion", hence pro-abortion.

I would put the question: have you any real-world experience with abortion? Or is this just logic-chopping on the internet totally divorced from reality?

None of your damn business and not relevant in the slightest.

 

[Lexicus]

It is highly relevant because if you had actually gone through this with someone you love, you might realize how ridiculous it is that you're saying that if I think abortion ought to be safe and legal, I must be, in any sense, 'pro-abortion.'

 

[Manfred Belheim]

It is highly relevant because if you had actually gone through this with someone you love, you might realize how ridiculous it is that you're saying that if I think abortion ought to be safe and legal, I must be, in any sense, 'pro-abortion.'

Of course it's not relevant. I'm talking about what words mean. Personal experiences and emotions have literally zero relevance to this.

I also resent the implication that going through an emotional experience would erode my sense of logic and make me agree with you.

 

[Commodore]

Semantics dude. If you're in favour of a thing existing and being available as an option, then you're in favour of a thing. Being in favour of it makes you pro-it.

Not really. I am pro-smoker's right to smoke cigarettes, but I myself would never smoke because I think it is an unhealthy habit. That makes me anti-smoking but pro-choice because while I dislike the idea of smoking I believe people should have the right to make their own choices about what they want to do with their bodies.

 

[Traitorfish]

Of course it's not relevant. I'm talking about what words mean. Personal experiences and emotions have literally zero relevance to this.

Problem is, "pro-abortion" does't have a clear meaning. Taken literally, it says that a person is in favour of abortions, that they want abortions to happen. But does it mean that they think abortions are, in themselves, a good thing, that we should want abortions for their own sake, or does it mean that, taking a pragmatic approach to the world, accepting that a certain number of unwanted pregnancies are just going to happen, at least in the short term, it's for the best if at least some of them end in termination? It can either, depending on what you want to say, or what the listener wants to hear.

This becomes contentious because people will use terms like "pro-abortion", knowing that they can take advantage of that ambiguity to different audiences. They can justify the use of the term in reference to the second definition, that pro-choice advocates support abortions taking place in the here and now, but knowing that a large part of their audience will hear the first definition, that pro-choice advocates want more abortions for their own sake, whether that's because they dislike "responsibility", because they're trying to exterminate [white/black/disable/insert conspiracy theory here] people, or just because they hate babies.

You can't appeal to blunt semantics over emotion when the semantics of the term are dependent on the emotional response of the listener.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Not really. I am pro-smoker's right to smoke cigarettes, but I myself would never smoke because I think it is an unhealthy habit. That makes me anti-smoking but pro-choice because while I dislike the idea of smoking I believe people should have the right to make their own choices about what they want to do with their bodies.

This is why I said it's semantics because you can interpret "pro-smoking" in different ways which depend on the context. If the context was entirely a debate about whether smoking should be legal or banned outright, then "pro-smoking" would mean an entirely different thing to if someone just asks you "hey, do you like smoking?". If the item on the agenda is "should abortion be available legally and safely to those who want it?", and one side is anti-abortion, then obviously the other side is pro-abortion. Just like they would be pro-amputation in the other example, or pro-chemotherapy, or pro-homless shelters, or pro-prisons. No-one's saying these are all brilliant things that everyone should enjoy or even be forced upon everyone, they're just things that you believe should exist because they're better than the alternatives. You support them existing, therefore you're pro-.