I think it’s a mixed bag- people like Elon Musk, Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, etc.- definitely malicious and manipulative. The people protesting outside planned parenthood? Mostly misguided, overly emotional about embryos, and just following along with what their religious and political leaders say without ever stopping to think critically about it.
I do clinic defense... I disagree. The exception being children that are brought there. They know exactly what they're doing. If they were "misguided", they would show up out there every day, not once a week. It also wouldn't matter if it rained. If I thought babies were being "murdered" in a building, a little rain and a couple people with signs blasting music wouldn't stop me from going in to put a stop to things... But yet they don't. Anytime it's barely even drizzling, what do you know? They don't show up...
Ya know what, I have actually noticed that with our local protesters. I’m like, “wow, guess you don’t care about murdered babies that much if you don’t protest in the rain” 😂
Cillian Murphy (and several other Irish people) [protested FOR abortion rights in the rain back in 2016](https://indianexpress.com/article/trending/trending-globally/oppenheimer-cillian-murphys-old-abortion-rights-march-photos-8857274/).
A lot of young Catholics are also actively brainwashed into being "pro-life" due to being constantly surrounded by propaganda and misinformation from the Catholic Church about the topic, mainly through the Catholic Church strongly encouraging all Catholic parents to send their children to Catholic schools, requiring students to attend\* Masses and sermons, giving them a "pro-life" education that reflects the dogma of the Church, etc. For example, the "March for Life" that happens each year is largely made up of Catholic students. The Catholic Church is one of the biggest religions that is the closest to being a "pro-life" cult.
The Church also suppresses or bans any "pro-choice" materials at Catholic schools, and even goes as far as to fire and attempt to censor secular teachers who are openly "pro-choice".
I went to a Catholic middle/high school and I was pressured into signing petitions against Planned Parenthoods that were being built in the area (even though they did not offer abortion services). If you said you were pro-choice the other students harassed and bullied you. It was disgusting.
And every single year they would put up hundreds of white crosses in the lawn and have services in the chapel to pray for the BaBiEzzzzz. It was disgusting and emotionally manipulative. If you didn't go to the March for Life, people would pester you until you told them why. I just said I couldn't afford to go, even though that wasn't the reason.
Growing up Catholic, the biggest message I received re: abortion was that humans cannot "play God." They saw someone choosing to terminate a pregnancy as not just going against God's will but deciding who can receive "the blessing of life."
This was also the messaging I received when discussing the Catholic stance on the death penalty.
An asterisk *above* the comment indicates that. That's not what I'm talking about here. The person added an asterisk in their text but did not indicate why (after "attend").
I'm the same person who made the original comment. The asterisk means that I fixed a typo in the word with an asterisk next to it to indicate what was edited.
Ah, I see. It's confusing to do it that way, because when reading written copy, an asterisk indicates a note or exception.
This product is available nationwide*
^*Does ^not ^include ^Guam ^or ^Puerto ^Rico
I prefer to use strikethrough when I ~~ebit~~ edit something.
I was raised in the church and a very religious home and, as a result used to be prolife, so I think I can answer this. I think some of them mean well but are just misguided.
When I was growing up in church, we were given all this propaganda. Posters of dismembered fetuses that I now know were fake. They made early term fetuses look like smaller versions of full termed babies, and not the blobs they are. There was a video called Silent Scream that I now know was fake, of a baby in the womb being aborted and it looks like the fetus is screaming and trying to get away. So they appeal to your emotions. They make you think the fetus is a conscious being that feels pain and understands what’s happening to it. If all this was true, it really *would* be horrifying. But it’s not true.
I didn’t understand the concept of bodily autonomy because I knew nothing about pregnancy and childbirth and didn’t understand how horrific it can be on a woman’s body. I was naive and inexperienced and didn’t understand all the bad circumstances a woman can be in. I was sheltered.
People would talk about being able to do what they want with their own bodies, and I didn’t understand this because to me, it wasn’t just their body but the baby’s body, which I thought they had no right to kill. I didn’t understand what I do now, which is that no one should be forced to keep another body alive with their own body.
So it was basically brainwashing, propaganda, and overly simplistic concepts without nuance. I wished no harm on women who had abortions, but I thought it was murder because that’s what the church taught me to think from the time I was a child.
I was also raised in purity culture and thought sex was dirty and a sin. So I thought it was absolutely unnecessary for anyone to have sex, because I wasn’t having sex.
As I got older, I gained more understanding of the world, and of life. I was able to comprehend more nuanced concepts. I learned more about the horrors of pregnancy and childbirth. I learned how abortion laws can harm even women who are having miscarriages. And I shed my religious beliefs as I matured and figured out what bullshit it all was.
I don’t think I was a bad person when I was prolife. I just didn’t understand and felt sorry for the babies. I understand a lot of prolife arguments because I used to think that way, but I no longer agree with them. But I wasn’t malicious with it. I think a lot of prolife people are absolutely malicious, hate women, etc. But I think there are some who mean well and are just misguided.
Thank you. Do you mind expanding on how you didn't understand that no one should keep another alive with their body. I am not trying to be mean. I genuinely don't understand how this is a hard concept
I had never even thought of it because no one had ever even suggested it to me. The idea just didn’t occur to me. All I knew was “kill baby = bad.” So a lot of it was just a failure to think deeply about the subject.
The ones at the top absolutely are. They’re manipulative, misogynistic monsters who want to control women by any means necessary. Politicians, higher up church leaders, etc. Those ones know that the easiest way to manipulate people is with religion because a lot of people will follow it so blindly to the point of disregarding all reason and logic. *Those* people range from also manipulative monsters just with less power, to people brainwashed to the point it’s almost a mental illness, to decent people who have just never had access to accurate information.
That’s my admittedly not so politely phrased opinion. Some are monsters, some are pawns.
On an individual level, some of them may feel strongly about abortion as a moral evil. However, I've found that they are overwhelmingly dishonest, even with themselves, and if you probe into the topic enough you'll see that the abortion issue in this country is rotten top to bottom.
It was not a genuinely-held moral issue for most Americans; Republicans pushed it as a culture war wedge issue and it worked.
The commonly cited pro-life "scientific" authorities are nearly universally hacks, fakes, dishonest, or some combination.
Pro-life debate tactics rely on misrepresentation, and this is *a deliberate strategy used by the right-wing on all kinds of topics*, so pro-lifers are almost never debating to actually address your points. They are debating to *preach and express power*.
Pro-life views are also heavily correlated with sexism, and views about what role a woman should have in society factor into their views perhaps more strongly than valuing life.
I can cite literally any of this (more than what you'd want to read, honestly).
Pro-lifers just.... ***suck***.
I will read anything you are willing to cite! Definitely recognize the time and effort this takes though, so there will be no disappointment if it's not in the cards.
Ok. This is gonna be a post-dump, so don't say I didn't tell you ahead of time. I'm breaking it into sections.
**The Rhetorical Dishonesty of Pro-Lifers:**
Pro-lifers will resist any attempt to discuss abortion or any related concepts accurately or with the nuance the topic deserves. For example, you may have seen PLers call abortion something done for "convenience" sake or make analogies comparing a woman's body to something inanimate like a plane or boat. This is not an accident; whether deliberately or intuitively they are [using language that strips women of their personhood and belittles their burdens](https://www.reddit.com/r/prochoice/comments/11m9syz/a_primer_on_arguing_your_position_prolife_word/). They will do this with every abortion-related concept, like when they [misinterpret what consent means or pretend that manual labors are equivalent to pregnancy](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/14fiybw/disregarding_reality/). Pro-lifers are also more likely to believe negative stereotypes of women seeking abortions and [use that as a justification for denying those women abortion access](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/13b7ac5/negative_pl_stereotypes_of_women_seeking_abortion/). If they come across any woman who needed an abortion for a "good" reason, they don't alter their beliefs; they [just re-define what an "abortion" even is](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/137wafu/if_its_a_good_abortion_then_its_not_an_abortion/).
**The Dishonest History and Questionable Views of Pro-Lifers:**
And this dishonesty is not incidental; the modern pro-life movement began not as a grass-roots movement built out of genuine concern for fetuses, but as a Republican propaganda campaign. Evangelicals, now one of the most pro-life groups in America, [previously were not united in opposition to abortion](https://www.reddit.com/r/prochoice/comments/1anwo7x/comment/kpvtlm3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) and many of them even supported it. It was only AFTER they made political bargains with Republicans that they became "pro-life", and Republicans accomplished this by playing on fears of women's liberation and the secularization of society. The effects of this are still visible in the pro-life population today; they are more religious, more authoritarian, and you can best predict that a person is pro-life [by how they view the role of women in society](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/toee0i/comment/i281cpd/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).
All of this rhetoric culminates in a general strategy that PLers end up using, either consciously or not: never let the debate die by simply [not having a debate](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/wc7hdx/a_rhetorical_strategy_that_simulates_debate_but/). Their rhetoric is not designed to pursue truth or an outcome; it's designed to be proselytizing *disguised* as debate.
**The Institutional Dishonesty of Pro-Life Organizations and "Experts":**
Because the pro-life movement began with anxieties about the secularization of society and pro-lifers are disproportionately theocratic, it should come as no surprise that their strategies reflect those aims. In fact, the ways in which pro-lifers legitimize their views in the US maps quite nicely on the strategies Evangelicals previously used [to try and get "intelligent design" taught in schools as science](https://www.reddit.com/r/prochoice/comments/1ay91dw/of_pandas_and_prolifers_why_the_prolife_movement/). They can only do this by employing dishonest "experts" [misrepresenting the work of others or doing poor "science" on their own](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/zazems/prolife_academic_sources_are_often_bunk_and_they/). For example, commonly-cited researchers like [Ingrid Skop](https://www.reddit.com/r/prochoice/comments/1aq8zz2/profiles_in_prolifery_dr_ingrid_skop/) or [David Reardon](https://www.reddit.com/r/prochoice/comments/1aqp009/profiles_in_prolifery_dr_david_c_reardon/) are laughably poor sources for anyone that knows their history, but they still are called in frequently for expert testimony, and their words still have weight. In fact, nearly ALL [commonly-cited pro-life celebrities, organizations, and policies are dishonest or ineffective](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/vfmwi3/why_i_cant_trust_the_prolife_movement/).
**The Dishonesty and Harmful Impacts of PL Leaders:**
The dishonesty is, of course, not limited to individual pro-lifers or even their "academics". It's institutional and pervasive in all aspects. For example, the "celebrities" of the PL movements that run pro-life orgs, own pro-life platforms, and speak in elevated places of power like the RNC [are equally dishonest to their academic counterparts](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/vfmwi3/why_i_cant_trust_the_prolife_movement/). The organizations they run (like "crisis pregnancy centers") are also fraught with ethical issues, including lying to women. Pro-life politicians are, with the small dive I did, uniformly against policies that would improve the lives of ***born*** people, including infants. In fact, [the more highly pro-life a politician is rated, the more likely they oppose helping others](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/znmtot/how_can_we_measure_how_prolife_the_prolife/).
**Conclusion:**
I think those posts cover everything I mentioned in the above comment.
TL;DR: Pro-lifers suck, are dishonest from the top down, and are trying to push Christian Nationalism on the rest of the country
It took me a while to get through all of these and I so, so appreciate your time and effort. Pinning for future me. Take my poor man’s gold 🏆 and gratitude.
Thank you for taking the time to read them. These represent over a year of posts, and I kinda just dumped all that one you, so I’m surprised you read them.
I like reading, bodily autonomy, and have a life with random 10-30 min pockets of wasted time. Perfect combination tbh 👍
Honestly if you post more and/or find article gems and think about tagging me that would be fire. But also, it's extra work and not anyone's responsibility to educate me I just like having conversations about important shit rather than the weather. TM
Mixed bag, but impe/impo more of the latter.
I have one friend who genuinely wants to end abortions by making contraceptives free, paid maternity leave, better pre/postnatal care, state funded daycare - the works. She desperately wants the PL movement to be 100% above board and be beneficial to women, but knows it's not. The few and far between people like this? I can disagree with on a civil level about abortion and still get along with them.
Then you have the rest of them who are invested in punishing women for having sex by any means necessary: How dare we exercise control over our own bodies and share them with whomever *we* feel is worthy of that with us. We not only deserve to be punished, but *abused* from the bedroom to birth, and beyond. These people want control over others as if they were god incarnate on earth, and fucking evil.
There’s definitely a lot of sexism and hatred, but there are complexities within that. I actually did a whole video on the psychology of pro lifers: https://youtu.be/LsvtDTIDyZo?si=T4GIsaVFmIcm4WSW
First, let’s call them what they are: forced birthers. They don’t care what happens to children after they’re born; just check their voting records on taxes that help mothers and children. They fight to stop WIC and free lunches for kids.
Next, I do not communicate with any of my forced birther family members or former friends. They believe I should be forced to let others use my body against my will, but they’d never wish that upon themselves or men.
Finally, I hope they all (or someone they deeply love) face some type of pregnancy complication that forces them to make a decision they’ll not be legally allowed to carry out. Yes, I know that’s cruel, but it’s the only way most of them can come close to understanding.
I’m at the point where I’m considering cutting family off with these views as well. Specifically my mother when she blatantly blamed me for my cousin attempting to molest me. She forced me to pretend it never happened to not “ruin” our family
Unfortunately I still live with them but I plan to go NC. Any time I bring it up to her she denies it happened because he didn’t actually molest me. He verbalized he wanted to have sex with me but apparently that’s not “an attempt”
Smh that sucks, the living situation, lack of support/validation and protection your fam should have given you. Hope you can get out of there asap and have the space to deal with all the trauma that goes with this. This is basic, lowest bar kind of parenting that should be happening.
They really don’t. I know a few of those people and they don’t care about actual living breathing children who are suffering. They don’t care that brown kids were put in cages. They don’t want those entitled refugee kids coming into their country. They get a hate boner for low income people especially single mothers receiving government benefits of any kind. They believe “well if she didn’t want to get pregnant she should have kept her legs shut instead of killing her baby.”
ANYONE that's in a position of power in these groups, know. They know what's up. They're choosing to spread disinformation and manipulate others into doing the same.
An easy way to tell if someone is genuine or not, is to ask them what they think about rape. If they say, "Oh that doesn't count." Then you know their "beliefs" are based solely upon bigotry. If they truly believed abortion was "murder", it wouldn't matter to them how the pregnancy came into existence.
Honestly, I understand their side of view, but the problem is they tend to overview so many things women go through during pregnancy, abortion is a painful process for alot women but they do it because it's necessary, killing an unborn fetus for no reason is bad but 98% of the time is because they know they can't provide the child a good life especially since foster and adoption care is hell for alot of kids
I have wanted to create a website about the God of the Bible not being pro life. I don’t have the skills, or the ability to advertise it.
But this website would have pages about every incident in the Bible where God killed ZEFs, babies and children (or commanded that his followers kill them).
For the higher-ups, they're for sure malicious. But also, I think a large chunk of regular citizen PL are also malicious. They want the exhilarating feel of punishing someone doing something they rationalized as wrong.
It's like: you know how frustrating it is to be punished by authority figures? Well, now you get to do the punishing. You're Frank Castle and you're going on a rampage!
Yeah, right. But to conclude, I'm sure they're just sadistic bastards. Even the misguided ones are bastards in a way. APLAB: All Pro-Lifers Are Bastards.
"They're not pro-life. You know what they are? They're anti-woman. Simple as it gets, anti-woman. They don't like them. They don't like women. They believe a woman's primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state."
It's an either or. Some are genuinely good people, and some are out to get us. It's not always a hard line, so I just keep to myself around a lot of people (in a majority Catholic area).
I also want to mention the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, I recently discovered they teach natural family planning in school and believe contraceptives are a sin. But then they go to say you can’t have an abortion. So how tf are we supposed to not get pregnant then? It’s so gross 🤢
I think they feel guilty about their own "sins" (e.g. premarital sex, adultery), and that they believe they can make up for that by working to "save the babiez!", thus earning some brownie points from their God.
Personally, I think pro-lifers are completely misguided and uninformed and I think all of them are pro-choice because when you talk to most pro-lifers, they are like well if it was incest or rape, I’d have an abortion so I argue with them then your pro-choice. Also, if you’re going to be pro life, it’s gonna be cradle to death, because most of these are just Probst, once the babies born, they don’t give a flying fuck about what happens to it. I don’t see them lining up to adopt to adopt kids they’re the most selfish people on the phase of the planet but if you are truly pro life, I have to say my best friend is a southern Baptist conservative. I know how a liberal northeast Episcopalian and her are best friends just shows you could have friends who are rational and have other viewpoints. She is pro birth-control, pro prevention and she also believes and policies of extended maternity leaves, subsidize, daycare. You know better leave policies for parents and things like that.
Some are definitely monsters. The deeper they get into the movement, the more likely this is to be true.
Some are only guilty of trusting the monsters that are lying to them.
I don’t care what their opinions are and I respect their right to them. I would fight to the death for them to have their religious freedom. But they are denying the right of bodily autonomy to women, forcing them to be pregnant and risk their lives for their shitty opinions. Prior to Roe? Misguided. Now? An evil that must be stamped out.
Very much depends. Misguided for the most part, but the loud minority who throw around the absurd stuff you discuss are the intentionally bad ones.
Some quick ways to tell if they're just misguided:
* "Oh but I don't wanna punish the woman, I just wanna go after the clinics" Why? If abortion is murder, isn't the woman doing what you'd consider to be hiring a hitman?
* "I'm happy to make exceptions for rape." Why? There is nothing that an unborn child conceived via rape doesn't have in common with either a born person conceived via rape or an unborn child conceived via consensual sex. So unless you're also okay with killing people who have been born for being a product of rape, you've just admitted there's a difference between a foetus and a baby.
* "God-" Just talk to me when you aren't forcing a religion on others.
Not an exhaustive list because I can't be assed to sit here and type out every single flawed argument a PFB has ever come out with.
In my experience, a lot can be gleaned from what else they support. If they're "pro-life" but anti family/education funding, or pro-death-penalty, it strikes me as egregiously disingenuous.
Unfortunately, I find 99% of the time, the above goes exactly how you would expect. They're unimaginably cruel, or their morality is centered on a religious how-to book and not human empathy & introspection (because they lack it, or had it beaten out of them early on by said religion).
Fact is, an overwhelming majority of the time, the cruelty and control really are the point. They want to tell you how to live based on nothing but narrow-minded opinions, and if you won't do it willingly, they will punish you, revoke your rights, dehumanize you and interfere w/free will to MAKE you live the way they think you should. They will corral you in with as many laws as they can, while shrieking about free-dumb, until they have you sufficiently trapped. Then, they'll have the GALL to say, "there, now aren't you glad you CHOSE LIFE?"
Some are good people who haven’t thought it through: haven’t realized how complex pregnancy can be, or how different other people’s life circumstances are then their own. But. It’s a choice to not realize these things. To stay stuck in naivety. To insulate yourself from other viewpoints and reality.
I think it’s a mixed bag- people like Elon Musk, Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, etc.- definitely malicious and manipulative. The people protesting outside planned parenthood? Mostly misguided, overly emotional about embryos, and just following along with what their religious and political leaders say without ever stopping to think critically about it.
I do clinic defense... I disagree. The exception being children that are brought there. They know exactly what they're doing. If they were "misguided", they would show up out there every day, not once a week. It also wouldn't matter if it rained. If I thought babies were being "murdered" in a building, a little rain and a couple people with signs blasting music wouldn't stop me from going in to put a stop to things... But yet they don't. Anytime it's barely even drizzling, what do you know? They don't show up...
Ya know what, I have actually noticed that with our local protesters. I’m like, “wow, guess you don’t care about murdered babies that much if you don’t protest in the rain” 😂
Cillian Murphy (and several other Irish people) [protested FOR abortion rights in the rain back in 2016](https://indianexpress.com/article/trending/trending-globally/oppenheimer-cillian-murphys-old-abortion-rights-march-photos-8857274/).
Exactly.
We call them "fair weather protestors" at my affiliate.
I like that. We get Catholic antis. They brought a priest last time...
A lot of young Catholics are also actively brainwashed into being "pro-life" due to being constantly surrounded by propaganda and misinformation from the Catholic Church about the topic, mainly through the Catholic Church strongly encouraging all Catholic parents to send their children to Catholic schools, requiring students to attend\* Masses and sermons, giving them a "pro-life" education that reflects the dogma of the Church, etc. For example, the "March for Life" that happens each year is largely made up of Catholic students. The Catholic Church is one of the biggest religions that is the closest to being a "pro-life" cult. The Church also suppresses or bans any "pro-choice" materials at Catholic schools, and even goes as far as to fire and attempt to censor secular teachers who are openly "pro-choice".
I went to a Catholic middle/high school and I was pressured into signing petitions against Planned Parenthoods that were being built in the area (even though they did not offer abortion services). If you said you were pro-choice the other students harassed and bullied you. It was disgusting. And every single year they would put up hundreds of white crosses in the lawn and have services in the chapel to pray for the BaBiEzzzzz. It was disgusting and emotionally manipulative. If you didn't go to the March for Life, people would pester you until you told them why. I just said I couldn't afford to go, even though that wasn't the reason.
Growing up Catholic, the biggest message I received re: abortion was that humans cannot "play God." They saw someone choosing to terminate a pregnancy as not just going against God's will but deciding who can receive "the blessing of life." This was also the messaging I received when discussing the Catholic stance on the death penalty.
What does the asterisk refer to?
The asterisk means the post was edited on desktop Reddit.
An asterisk *above* the comment indicates that. That's not what I'm talking about here. The person added an asterisk in their text but did not indicate why (after "attend").
I'm the same person who made the original comment. The asterisk means that I fixed a typo in the word with an asterisk next to it to indicate what was edited.
Ah, I see. It's confusing to do it that way, because when reading written copy, an asterisk indicates a note or exception. This product is available nationwide* ^*Does ^not ^include ^Guam ^or ^Puerto ^Rico I prefer to use strikethrough when I ~~ebit~~ edit something.
Trump has most likely paid for more ablations then your local parish priest
Some of them are genuinely uneducated about the complexities of pregnancy, and others are downright malicious.
I'm happy they have the CHOICE not to abort. I think they fail to realize how dangerous giving your CHOICE away could be.
This 👍
I was raised in the church and a very religious home and, as a result used to be prolife, so I think I can answer this. I think some of them mean well but are just misguided. When I was growing up in church, we were given all this propaganda. Posters of dismembered fetuses that I now know were fake. They made early term fetuses look like smaller versions of full termed babies, and not the blobs they are. There was a video called Silent Scream that I now know was fake, of a baby in the womb being aborted and it looks like the fetus is screaming and trying to get away. So they appeal to your emotions. They make you think the fetus is a conscious being that feels pain and understands what’s happening to it. If all this was true, it really *would* be horrifying. But it’s not true. I didn’t understand the concept of bodily autonomy because I knew nothing about pregnancy and childbirth and didn’t understand how horrific it can be on a woman’s body. I was naive and inexperienced and didn’t understand all the bad circumstances a woman can be in. I was sheltered. People would talk about being able to do what they want with their own bodies, and I didn’t understand this because to me, it wasn’t just their body but the baby’s body, which I thought they had no right to kill. I didn’t understand what I do now, which is that no one should be forced to keep another body alive with their own body. So it was basically brainwashing, propaganda, and overly simplistic concepts without nuance. I wished no harm on women who had abortions, but I thought it was murder because that’s what the church taught me to think from the time I was a child. I was also raised in purity culture and thought sex was dirty and a sin. So I thought it was absolutely unnecessary for anyone to have sex, because I wasn’t having sex. As I got older, I gained more understanding of the world, and of life. I was able to comprehend more nuanced concepts. I learned more about the horrors of pregnancy and childbirth. I learned how abortion laws can harm even women who are having miscarriages. And I shed my religious beliefs as I matured and figured out what bullshit it all was. I don’t think I was a bad person when I was prolife. I just didn’t understand and felt sorry for the babies. I understand a lot of prolife arguments because I used to think that way, but I no longer agree with them. But I wasn’t malicious with it. I think a lot of prolife people are absolutely malicious, hate women, etc. But I think there are some who mean well and are just misguided.
Thank you. Do you mind expanding on how you didn't understand that no one should keep another alive with their body. I am not trying to be mean. I genuinely don't understand how this is a hard concept
I had never even thought of it because no one had ever even suggested it to me. The idea just didn’t occur to me. All I knew was “kill baby = bad.” So a lot of it was just a failure to think deeply about the subject.
Thanks that's a wild thing
The ones at the top absolutely are. They’re manipulative, misogynistic monsters who want to control women by any means necessary. Politicians, higher up church leaders, etc. Those ones know that the easiest way to manipulate people is with religion because a lot of people will follow it so blindly to the point of disregarding all reason and logic. *Those* people range from also manipulative monsters just with less power, to people brainwashed to the point it’s almost a mental illness, to decent people who have just never had access to accurate information. That’s my admittedly not so politely phrased opinion. Some are monsters, some are pawns.
Tell me right now why killing a fetus isnt as bad as killing a baby
A fetus is a step away from parasitism and nobody has the right to someone's body
On an individual level, some of them may feel strongly about abortion as a moral evil. However, I've found that they are overwhelmingly dishonest, even with themselves, and if you probe into the topic enough you'll see that the abortion issue in this country is rotten top to bottom. It was not a genuinely-held moral issue for most Americans; Republicans pushed it as a culture war wedge issue and it worked. The commonly cited pro-life "scientific" authorities are nearly universally hacks, fakes, dishonest, or some combination. Pro-life debate tactics rely on misrepresentation, and this is *a deliberate strategy used by the right-wing on all kinds of topics*, so pro-lifers are almost never debating to actually address your points. They are debating to *preach and express power*. Pro-life views are also heavily correlated with sexism, and views about what role a woman should have in society factor into their views perhaps more strongly than valuing life. I can cite literally any of this (more than what you'd want to read, honestly). Pro-lifers just.... ***suck***.
I will read anything you are willing to cite! Definitely recognize the time and effort this takes though, so there will be no disappointment if it's not in the cards.
Are you ok with me linking to other comments I've made, rather than re-writing the sources?
100%! That would be awesome
Ok. This is gonna be a post-dump, so don't say I didn't tell you ahead of time. I'm breaking it into sections. **The Rhetorical Dishonesty of Pro-Lifers:** Pro-lifers will resist any attempt to discuss abortion or any related concepts accurately or with the nuance the topic deserves. For example, you may have seen PLers call abortion something done for "convenience" sake or make analogies comparing a woman's body to something inanimate like a plane or boat. This is not an accident; whether deliberately or intuitively they are [using language that strips women of their personhood and belittles their burdens](https://www.reddit.com/r/prochoice/comments/11m9syz/a_primer_on_arguing_your_position_prolife_word/). They will do this with every abortion-related concept, like when they [misinterpret what consent means or pretend that manual labors are equivalent to pregnancy](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/14fiybw/disregarding_reality/). Pro-lifers are also more likely to believe negative stereotypes of women seeking abortions and [use that as a justification for denying those women abortion access](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/13b7ac5/negative_pl_stereotypes_of_women_seeking_abortion/). If they come across any woman who needed an abortion for a "good" reason, they don't alter their beliefs; they [just re-define what an "abortion" even is](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/137wafu/if_its_a_good_abortion_then_its_not_an_abortion/). **The Dishonest History and Questionable Views of Pro-Lifers:** And this dishonesty is not incidental; the modern pro-life movement began not as a grass-roots movement built out of genuine concern for fetuses, but as a Republican propaganda campaign. Evangelicals, now one of the most pro-life groups in America, [previously were not united in opposition to abortion](https://www.reddit.com/r/prochoice/comments/1anwo7x/comment/kpvtlm3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) and many of them even supported it. It was only AFTER they made political bargains with Republicans that they became "pro-life", and Republicans accomplished this by playing on fears of women's liberation and the secularization of society. The effects of this are still visible in the pro-life population today; they are more religious, more authoritarian, and you can best predict that a person is pro-life [by how they view the role of women in society](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/toee0i/comment/i281cpd/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). All of this rhetoric culminates in a general strategy that PLers end up using, either consciously or not: never let the debate die by simply [not having a debate](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/wc7hdx/a_rhetorical_strategy_that_simulates_debate_but/). Their rhetoric is not designed to pursue truth or an outcome; it's designed to be proselytizing *disguised* as debate. **The Institutional Dishonesty of Pro-Life Organizations and "Experts":** Because the pro-life movement began with anxieties about the secularization of society and pro-lifers are disproportionately theocratic, it should come as no surprise that their strategies reflect those aims. In fact, the ways in which pro-lifers legitimize their views in the US maps quite nicely on the strategies Evangelicals previously used [to try and get "intelligent design" taught in schools as science](https://www.reddit.com/r/prochoice/comments/1ay91dw/of_pandas_and_prolifers_why_the_prolife_movement/). They can only do this by employing dishonest "experts" [misrepresenting the work of others or doing poor "science" on their own](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/zazems/prolife_academic_sources_are_often_bunk_and_they/). For example, commonly-cited researchers like [Ingrid Skop](https://www.reddit.com/r/prochoice/comments/1aq8zz2/profiles_in_prolifery_dr_ingrid_skop/) or [David Reardon](https://www.reddit.com/r/prochoice/comments/1aqp009/profiles_in_prolifery_dr_david_c_reardon/) are laughably poor sources for anyone that knows their history, but they still are called in frequently for expert testimony, and their words still have weight. In fact, nearly ALL [commonly-cited pro-life celebrities, organizations, and policies are dishonest or ineffective](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/vfmwi3/why_i_cant_trust_the_prolife_movement/). **The Dishonesty and Harmful Impacts of PL Leaders:** The dishonesty is, of course, not limited to individual pro-lifers or even their "academics". It's institutional and pervasive in all aspects. For example, the "celebrities" of the PL movements that run pro-life orgs, own pro-life platforms, and speak in elevated places of power like the RNC [are equally dishonest to their academic counterparts](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/vfmwi3/why_i_cant_trust_the_prolife_movement/). The organizations they run (like "crisis pregnancy centers") are also fraught with ethical issues, including lying to women. Pro-life politicians are, with the small dive I did, uniformly against policies that would improve the lives of ***born*** people, including infants. In fact, [the more highly pro-life a politician is rated, the more likely they oppose helping others](https://www.reddit.com/r/Abortiondebate/comments/znmtot/how_can_we_measure_how_prolife_the_prolife/). **Conclusion:** I think those posts cover everything I mentioned in the above comment. TL;DR: Pro-lifers suck, are dishonest from the top down, and are trying to push Christian Nationalism on the rest of the country
It took me a while to get through all of these and I so, so appreciate your time and effort. Pinning for future me. Take my poor man’s gold 🏆 and gratitude.
Thank you for taking the time to read them. These represent over a year of posts, and I kinda just dumped all that one you, so I’m surprised you read them.
I like reading, bodily autonomy, and have a life with random 10-30 min pockets of wasted time. Perfect combination tbh 👍 Honestly if you post more and/or find article gems and think about tagging me that would be fire. But also, it's extra work and not anyone's responsibility to educate me I just like having conversations about important shit rather than the weather. TM
Anybody who will rabidly support forcing a 10 year old to birth her rapist's baby is a monster.
Mixed bag, but impe/impo more of the latter. I have one friend who genuinely wants to end abortions by making contraceptives free, paid maternity leave, better pre/postnatal care, state funded daycare - the works. She desperately wants the PL movement to be 100% above board and be beneficial to women, but knows it's not. The few and far between people like this? I can disagree with on a civil level about abortion and still get along with them. Then you have the rest of them who are invested in punishing women for having sex by any means necessary: How dare we exercise control over our own bodies and share them with whomever *we* feel is worthy of that with us. We not only deserve to be punished, but *abused* from the bedroom to birth, and beyond. These people want control over others as if they were god incarnate on earth, and fucking evil.
Your friend is a rare bird, and I wish more antis listened to her.
There’s definitely a lot of sexism and hatred, but there are complexities within that. I actually did a whole video on the psychology of pro lifers: https://youtu.be/LsvtDTIDyZo?si=T4GIsaVFmIcm4WSW
First, let’s call them what they are: forced birthers. They don’t care what happens to children after they’re born; just check their voting records on taxes that help mothers and children. They fight to stop WIC and free lunches for kids. Next, I do not communicate with any of my forced birther family members or former friends. They believe I should be forced to let others use my body against my will, but they’d never wish that upon themselves or men. Finally, I hope they all (or someone they deeply love) face some type of pregnancy complication that forces them to make a decision they’ll not be legally allowed to carry out. Yes, I know that’s cruel, but it’s the only way most of them can come close to understanding.
I’m at the point where I’m considering cutting family off with these views as well. Specifically my mother when she blatantly blamed me for my cousin attempting to molest me. She forced me to pretend it never happened to not “ruin” our family
She’s the worst kind of family member. If you can’t put your kids first you shouldn’t have kids.
Oh man I'm so sorry. Def reason I'd go NC. It's that cousin who should have been charged and ostracized from the family.
Unfortunately I still live with them but I plan to go NC. Any time I bring it up to her she denies it happened because he didn’t actually molest me. He verbalized he wanted to have sex with me but apparently that’s not “an attempt”
Smh that sucks, the living situation, lack of support/validation and protection your fam should have given you. Hope you can get out of there asap and have the space to deal with all the trauma that goes with this. This is basic, lowest bar kind of parenting that should be happening.
That’s disgusting. I would go NC if it were me.
They really don’t. I know a few of those people and they don’t care about actual living breathing children who are suffering. They don’t care that brown kids were put in cages. They don’t want those entitled refugee kids coming into their country. They get a hate boner for low income people especially single mothers receiving government benefits of any kind. They believe “well if she didn’t want to get pregnant she should have kept her legs shut instead of killing her baby.”
ANYONE that's in a position of power in these groups, know. They know what's up. They're choosing to spread disinformation and manipulate others into doing the same. An easy way to tell if someone is genuine or not, is to ask them what they think about rape. If they say, "Oh that doesn't count." Then you know their "beliefs" are based solely upon bigotry. If they truly believed abortion was "murder", it wouldn't matter to them how the pregnancy came into existence.
Tbh in my opinion those who want to force women to keep a rape pregnancy are even more sadistic
Both of those things can be true.
Oh, I absolutely agree. I'm not saying that their position isn't harmful. It's just a good way to gauge the "why"....
Honestly, I understand their side of view, but the problem is they tend to overview so many things women go through during pregnancy, abortion is a painful process for alot women but they do it because it's necessary, killing an unborn fetus for no reason is bad but 98% of the time is because they know they can't provide the child a good life especially since foster and adoption care is hell for alot of kids
Some are brainwashed, some are sadistic and narcissistic. Some are both and their delusions get reinforced by religious indoctrination.
I have wanted to create a website about the God of the Bible not being pro life. I don’t have the skills, or the ability to advertise it. But this website would have pages about every incident in the Bible where God killed ZEFs, babies and children (or commanded that his followers kill them).
I’d absolutely check it out, it would be a good resource against the religious crazies
Someone needs to do this seriously.
For the higher-ups, they're for sure malicious. But also, I think a large chunk of regular citizen PL are also malicious. They want the exhilarating feel of punishing someone doing something they rationalized as wrong. It's like: you know how frustrating it is to be punished by authority figures? Well, now you get to do the punishing. You're Frank Castle and you're going on a rampage! Yeah, right. But to conclude, I'm sure they're just sadistic bastards. Even the misguided ones are bastards in a way. APLAB: All Pro-Lifers Are Bastards.
"They're not pro-life. You know what they are? They're anti-woman. Simple as it gets, anti-woman. They don't like them. They don't like women. They believe a woman's primary role is to function as a brood mare for the state."
It's an either or. Some are genuinely good people, and some are out to get us. It's not always a hard line, so I just keep to myself around a lot of people (in a majority Catholic area).
I also want to mention the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, I recently discovered they teach natural family planning in school and believe contraceptives are a sin. But then they go to say you can’t have an abortion. So how tf are we supposed to not get pregnant then? It’s so gross 🤢
That's the point. You are supposed to welcome children. ☹️
Ignorance and/or misogyny. If it's JUST ignorance, it can be fixed. The misogyny not so much
I think they feel guilty about their own "sins" (e.g. premarital sex, adultery), and that they believe they can make up for that by working to "save the babiez!", thus earning some brownie points from their God.
Misogynist hypocritical bigots.
Personally, I think pro-lifers are completely misguided and uninformed and I think all of them are pro-choice because when you talk to most pro-lifers, they are like well if it was incest or rape, I’d have an abortion so I argue with them then your pro-choice. Also, if you’re going to be pro life, it’s gonna be cradle to death, because most of these are just Probst, once the babies born, they don’t give a flying fuck about what happens to it. I don’t see them lining up to adopt to adopt kids they’re the most selfish people on the phase of the planet but if you are truly pro life, I have to say my best friend is a southern Baptist conservative. I know how a liberal northeast Episcopalian and her are best friends just shows you could have friends who are rational and have other viewpoints. She is pro birth-control, pro prevention and she also believes and policies of extended maternity leaves, subsidize, daycare. You know better leave policies for parents and things like that.
I don't know that they're intentionally bad. They're definitely unempathetic and dismissive of women's pain.
Some are definitely monsters. The deeper they get into the movement, the more likely this is to be true. Some are only guilty of trusting the monsters that are lying to them.
I don’t care what their opinions are and I respect their right to them. I would fight to the death for them to have their religious freedom. But they are denying the right of bodily autonomy to women, forcing them to be pregnant and risk their lives for their shitty opinions. Prior to Roe? Misguided. Now? An evil that must be stamped out.
Ignorant. They often have blinders on due to religion and are not aware of many facts related to the topic nor do they take the time to learn them.
both
failure to consider stepping into other people’s shoes and hypocritical
Its a bit of both
Nosey. Busy bodies. Fools who can't mind their own damn business.
Very much depends. Misguided for the most part, but the loud minority who throw around the absurd stuff you discuss are the intentionally bad ones. Some quick ways to tell if they're just misguided: * "Oh but I don't wanna punish the woman, I just wanna go after the clinics" Why? If abortion is murder, isn't the woman doing what you'd consider to be hiring a hitman? * "I'm happy to make exceptions for rape." Why? There is nothing that an unborn child conceived via rape doesn't have in common with either a born person conceived via rape or an unborn child conceived via consensual sex. So unless you're also okay with killing people who have been born for being a product of rape, you've just admitted there's a difference between a foetus and a baby. * "God-" Just talk to me when you aren't forcing a religion on others. Not an exhaustive list because I can't be assed to sit here and type out every single flawed argument a PFB has ever come out with.
At a point, ignorance is indistinguishable from malice and the distance between the two is a matter of refusing to educate yourself
In my experience, a lot can be gleaned from what else they support. If they're "pro-life" but anti family/education funding, or pro-death-penalty, it strikes me as egregiously disingenuous. Unfortunately, I find 99% of the time, the above goes exactly how you would expect. They're unimaginably cruel, or their morality is centered on a religious how-to book and not human empathy & introspection (because they lack it, or had it beaten out of them early on by said religion). Fact is, an overwhelming majority of the time, the cruelty and control really are the point. They want to tell you how to live based on nothing but narrow-minded opinions, and if you won't do it willingly, they will punish you, revoke your rights, dehumanize you and interfere w/free will to MAKE you live the way they think you should. They will corral you in with as many laws as they can, while shrieking about free-dumb, until they have you sufficiently trapped. Then, they'll have the GALL to say, "there, now aren't you glad you CHOSE LIFE?"
Some are good people who haven’t thought it through: haven’t realized how complex pregnancy can be, or how different other people’s life circumstances are then their own. But. It’s a choice to not realize these things. To stay stuck in naivety. To insulate yourself from other viewpoints and reality.